We got home in November 2022 with good thoughts about our river cruise experience, and the benefits of becoming repeat customers with Uniworld were also appealing. There was one offer that expired the day after our return, too soon to think about doing this.
Just a little later, there was another sale offer for the Bordeaux cruise, which is where I was focused, an area of France where I haven't been and has been of interest to me. As I remember, I initiated a booking on the budget deck and it was showing sold out, but I contacted them and they got us a cabin.
As we booked the cruise, it was uncertain what the rest of the trip would be. First, for the flight over, I was planning to convert credit card points to airline miles. Among Chase's partners, being based in the U.S. for a transatlantic trip, I think first of United, but as their transatlantic miles price is usually over 30,000 miles each way, I was finding better deals on Europe-based partners. I first looked at Aer Lingus to go from Boston to Bordeaux via Dublin, but it became clear that there could be problems being on an island and something going wrong with the one flight to Bordeaux.
Seeing that Air France via Paris would be better, it gradually came to be that we could spend about a week in Paris before the cruise. Even after using IHG points for the stay in Amsterdam, the leftover points, annual free nights for having two credit cards with them, and a 10% rebate of the Amsterdam points meant that we'd have a free Paris stay just by buying a small number of points at the cost of less than a night. We'd be convenient to Gare Montparnasse, where we could experience the TGV train to Bordeaux.
On the Flying Blue program, a one-way Boston-Paris flight could be had for 17K miles; I think it helps that Boston is in a lower-distance mile band. There was also a bonus for converting American Express Membership Rewards. (I should also note that there's a money component to award booking, larger than with U.S.-based airlines.) I started the booking, and with a confirmation code there was an error message that I needed to call. I understand that this is common with award bookings on points just transferred from another program, an effort to watch for fraud. It took a few calls, some cut off, but the outbound was booked.
I was still thinking in terms of some time in Italy after the Bordeaux cruise, but it came to be that we didn't want to be away for so long, and there weren't great options for getting from Bordeaux to Rome or another Italian gateway. We finally decided just to return home after the cruise, a connection from Bordeaux via Paris, and I completed that reward booking with a similar need to call.
In both directions, we were booked on the later of Air France's two flights on the route. In late December, I got a notice that our flights had been changed: those flights were taken off the schedule for those days. We were on the earlier flights, and that's how the outbound stayed, but a few days later I got an email in Spanish with a link to AF's Mexican site saying the original flight was cancelled, and not showing us having anything. The originally rebooked flights were still on the timetable, and I made a call that got that reinstated. There was another notice changing our flight out of Bordeaux to something still earlier, and the cruise line will probably want us up really early for their transfer to the airport. Oh, and our bid for an upgraded stateroom was approved, much closer to the cruise start than it was last time.
Going over, our flight arrival is set for 6 a.m., and I was able to add an IHG free night so our room is booked for the previous night and we can have it ready on arrival. We look forward to interesting times, having seen about the ongoing protests in Paris, apparently generally not affecting travelers all that much, and we don't have too much of an agenda.
But back to the plans to go to Italy: we're looking for a trip there in September. Margaret has been looking to take Business Class when possible; I look at Flying Blue's Promo Rewards every month, and I understood I was seeing a good deal out of Montreal, which is about the same distance as Boston for us. With a bonus for converting Chase points to Flying Blue, I booked a September trip in Business going over and Premium Economy on the return, looking good even though there is a notable monetary component to the booking. I later learned that these didn't meet the definition of Promo Rewards; they're the low end of the dynamic rewards pricing, but we'll make the best of it. Also, I completed the booking, after sleeping on it for a night, on the day that Flying Blue started charging for seat assignments on awards, but then they got the system fixed so they didn't charge on North American routes.
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