Apologies in advance. This is my first trip report and potentially my last, depending on how this goes. I'm a terrible photographer and even worse writer. Got ya excited to read this one now, don't I!?
It started with a divorce in September of last year. I'm 37 years old and after 10 years of a marriage that wasn't great I had finally done what was necessary and ended it. Whaddya know I'm a lot happier these days and around the office people have noticed with remarks such as "What the #%@ are you smililng for?" and "Why are you happy, did you just fire someone?". I love the people I work with.
Given I'd just completed a process that cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars, I did what any responsible person would do. Bought one of these:
And decided to go on a little trip over Thanksgiving. Successfully avoiding extended family obligations by leaving the country seemed entirely rational to me, because sadly I seem to have a similar mindset as much of FT. Odd.
A plan came together to go to Dublin. I had never been and I found some decent rates to fly J on AA and could route through LHR and enjoy the 77W which I had tried once before on AA going to HKG in May of 2015. I don't have any specific connections to Dublin other than it seems like a cool city and the organization I work for was founded in Dublin and has a lot of roots there, so I thought I'd give it a look.
As soon as I decided on Dublin, another thought set in. Man, I keep reading about how fares out of Dublin are cheap compared to much of Europe. Hmm. I wonder what's the farthest I can fly from Dublin in a premium cabin for a comparably good price? A little searching later and I realized I could fly QF (BA to LHR first of course, then QF) F for less than it normally costs to fly J on QF from the USA to SYD. As an added bonus, if I did that it, by my calculations, should put me over the edge to hit EXP on AA. A real accomplishment given I earned less than 10k EQPs in 2015 on business travel. The rest was all personal. It's one of those accomplishments that makes sense in the FT world but when you attempt to explain it to people you get met with a dull stare and questions about your sanity. Screw em. Most people who know me well know I'm a bit odd anyway.
So there's my long introduction as to why I put this trip together. The final itinerary looked like this:
XNA-DFW-LHR (AA F/J) - DUB (BA CE). Two days in Dublin, then:
DUB-LHR (BA CE)-DXB-SYD (QF F). Two days in Sydney, then the exact reverse route home, save for an overnight in LHR before my final LHR-DFW-XNA legs.
I stayed at the Conrad in Dublin and the Four Seasons in SYD, which will also be captured in this report.
Lots of flying, just how I like it.