After my wife and I completed our adventure across the Pacific in the spring, things became relatively dormant in the trip planning department. A trip to New York in May to celebrate my mother's 60th birthday with a fantastic dinner at Eleven Madison Park was the last time we were on a plane. My wife was in no hurry to get back in the air, now that our little munchkin was able to crawl, and more recently, walk. The more mobile he's gotten, the more difficult it is keeping him confined and entertained. To this point, talk of going anywhere at the end of the year was shot down immediately, since Mrs. ChongL is consistently mentally and physically drained. I'd like to say that my charm changed her mind, but in reality it was more likely my persistence and pestering (read: annoyance) paying off. I can still hear the words, "Fine! We'll go somewhere for Christmas." And with that, I suddenly had the go-ahead for our 5th anniversary.

As usual, the destinations varied, but ultimately, the allure of the Christmas markets and memories of our trip to Vienna during the festive season led us to Prague. Not wanting to spend the entire week there, a short 2 days was allocated for one of our favorite cities: London. With the IB promo burning a hole in my pocket, I booked our return on the world's best business class. The outbound took a while longer since LH is so stingy with award seats, even for their own frequent flyer program members. I was able to book about a month out, and purposely decided to go through both MUC and FRA in the hopes of scoring 2 different ducks as opposed to continuing straight to PRG. We'll see if that ends up being a mistake or not...just expect lots of food pictures if you decide to follow along!

If you enjoy this report, here are some of my previous trips that I've posted:

Spring, Fall, and Hopefully Sakura in CX F, SQ NEW and Old Suites, CZ J, and OZ J/F
3 for the price of 2? RTW Babymoon to Japan, Maldives, UK (JL/EY/LH J/F/Apartment)
Slummin' it to Spain - BCN, PMI for some Park Hyatt, and MAD
Christmas in Vienna with a Splash of Porsche and FCT - LX/OS Y, OS J, LH F
The Journey is Half the Fun; RTW in SQ Suites/CX F/JL J/EK F/EY Apartment/AA F
Escaping to the Southern Hemisphere: A Bora Bora Getaway
Honeymoon In Europe (UK, France, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, etc.) - AA/LH/EK F




In the morning, we took our positioning flight to SFO out of LAX's terminal 7. I'm going to skip this boring leg since it was uneventful other than a 1+ hour delay where we were sitting in banishment at LAX. Luckily, I gave us plenty of time to connect in SFO since the LH legs were on a separate ticket. After grabbing our luggage from baggage claim, we proceeded to the international check-in counters. Aisle 4 was the place to be today, as we sauntered up to the desk with glee





Looking at the non-existent line behind us



Boarding passes in hand, we cleared security and head towards the relatively new Polaris lounge



Entrance located next to the Gucci store



The lounge was quite large with lots of empty space on the opposite side of where most people chose to congregate. I was fairly impressed since this was meant to be a business class level hideout

A Christmas tree separating the 2 sides



The more "popular" side of the lounge







The bar



A very generous pour of Balvenie 12 Doublewood



We opted to dine in the restaurant area with some supplements from the buffet area

White rice and some bulgogi that was tough as hell



Lemon chicken scallopini



Pot roast was pretty decent



Noodle bar



Salad bar and other cold offerings







Cold sandwiches



Sweets



The a la carte menu



Clam chowder as soup of the day



Fried shrimp cake had a little kick to it



I opted for the cioppino



Mrs. ChongL had the hand cut pappardelle



And then a tiramisu that nobody ordered showed up, but we said "we'll take it anyway!"



Up next: the whalejet to MUC