This trip report is dedicated to my boyfriend for his encouragement and Lucky for his inspiration, without which this trip would never have happened.

Up until now, I've been mostly a passive observer of Star Alliance premium cabins. I've only read about First class, thinking that some day that could be me. It was United's devaluation that became the impetus for me to burn my hoard of miles. In fact, I think UA's devaluation was the single best thing that could have happened because it forced my hand to spend the hundreds of thousands of miles that were just collecting dust. I don't have much time to travel due to work, but when I told my boyfriend about last minute availability on LH F and TG F, he convinced me that it was either now or never for this once in a lifetime opportunity.

The primary purpose of this trip was to fly in first class as much as possible, so I routed around the world. The secondary purpose was to collect as many Rimowa amenity kits as possible, after seeing my boyfriend's recent haul and Lucky's post on them. So my choices were LH F, TG F, NH F, and BR J. For the TATL, I wanted LH F since that was my aspiration. I found a variety of LH F flights, but they were either originating from the east coast, or featured the old F product. Luckily I found DEN-FRA, with their new product on a 744.

Onwards to Asia, I searched NH, but found nothing. Thai only flies their A380 out of CDG or FRA, and I there was nothing out of FRA. CDG required me to take a 24 hour layover. There were plenty of other options that had better connections such as FCO and MUC, but they may have been their old 744 F product. Since this was the only time in my life to fly TG F, I wanted to make sure it was exactly want I wanted.

Side note about the 24 hour layover. I'm not a checklist kind of traveler. When I'm somewhere, I want to experience the city, especially when it's a world class city like Paris. I didn't want to skip on time and spoil my first experience. In hindsight, I'm glad I did it. It was the longest 24 hours I've ever spent and got to see Paris in the early morning - no tourists or crowds.

So with CDG-BKK picked, I decided to make the most of the award had have a stop over somewhere in South East Asia. I've always wanted to see the Thai beaches, so I chose KBV, a short 1 hour flight from BKK. For the return, I routed back via TPE to fly on BR's Royal Laurel class to SFO, after my boyfriend's glowing experience on the same exact flight and after reading several good reviews of it.

In summary, UA F SFO-DEN, LH F DEN-FRA, LH F FRA-CDG, TG F CDG-BKK, TG J BKK-KBV, TG J KBV-BKK, TG J BKK-TPE, BR J TPE-SFO: 20,982 miles flown, and three Rimowa amenity kits for a grand total of 130k UA miles (70k outbound, 60k return vs 210k total post-devaluation) + $130 in taxes and fees. Life is all about experiences and I'd spend these miles again in a heart beat.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=sfo-den...bv-bkk-tpe-sfo

Thanks United, it was fun while it lasted!