Seat2A, thanks for the feedback. With you on the waiting for a report to be finished before taking the time to enjoy it whole: as it happens, I treated myself to your Cookin’ Up An Adventure: Traveling From Cape Town to Chicago with Seat 2A on a recent train journey of my own.

ND76, Aha, good to know! Although I would feel deeply uneasy driving down a lane I had been using in the opposite direction previously (and not just because I can't drive )

sporadic, I did discover post-trip that I'd missed a trick with Iberia, and had meant to bring it up in the report, actually. Moreso with Hilton: for each of those single-night stays I was getting 500 avios direct to BA, when I could have had 750 via Iberia. Although weirdly, if you're on points and variable miles (as I was for the long ES stay) it's better to route those through BA than Iberia. As for Accor, I would indeed get more avios via Iberia, but they would only transfer once I hit a certain threshold: with BA I followed some mysterious web link to activate autotransfer so now I can receive my mighty 34 or 120 or whatever after each stay. As I'm not a frequent Accor customer, this seems better, especially as by dumb luck it triggered a 2000 avios bonus for me on a pre-christmas stay of just the right length.