A few months ago marked the end of my first semester in my graduate program. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my winter break was a few weeks longer than expected. So, instead of thinking “wow, what a great chance to get a head start on my research!”, I decided to plan a trip. Some hasty, last-minute planning came together—it looked like I could take a quick hop over to the UK and Germany to visit some friends before their terms started. (Plus, the GBP has continued to fall, meaning my time in the UK would be about 15% cheaper than I had originally thought. Sorry, Brits.)

There was also a pretty decent sale on SkyTeam premium economy, so I planned my trip around two products that I wanted to try: Y+ on the Virgin Atlantic 787 and the Air France A380.

While this finally got written up over the last few days, my planned itinerary spanned the first part of January 2017:

Part 0. AUS - SFO positioning, afternoon in SF, plus bonus train evacuation
Part 1. SFO - LHR on Virgin Atlantic
Part 2. London, London - Edinburgh
Part 3. Edinburgh, Edinburgh - London on flybe
Part 4. Oxford and Oxford - London - Munich - Ulm
Part 5. Munich - Amsterdam by train
Part 6. Amsterdam for one day, then another night in London
Part 7. LHR - CDG - JFK on Air France