I am a newbie who has just stumbled on this website yesterday. Having read quite a few of the recent postings I must say that I am mightily impressed with the amount of knowledge and intelligence that exists in this forum about the BA Executive Club.

Anyway - I have just been relegated back down to blue tier status and am keen to bounce back to silver status as quickly and cheaply as possible. From reading various posts here it seems that a couple of return trips on the BAH-DOH flight should do the trick? Am I right in thinking that one return flight in first class and one return flight in business class should be sufficient? (I currently have nil tier points).

Also am thinking of making a long weekend of this trip and most probably will be base myself in Bahrain (as opposed to Doha). Anyway I would be interested to know what there is to do in Bahrain from a tourist's perspective. Are there any 'must do' activities or 'must see' sites?

Also what decent hotels would be recommended.

Would also be interested to hear if anyone thinks it might be more fun to be based in Doha rather than Bahrain. I am unlikely to be spending more than 3 nights on the trip in total.

Many thanks

ML