Off to London and Johannesburg
After Covid unfortunately scuttled our January trip to Madrid and Budapest, DFW_CK and I are finally off on another mileage run, or as our wives say “another trip to nowhere”.
We had originally planned a day in Copenhagen and dinner at Noma, but the EU’s you-now-need-a-booster vax rules made us dump Denmark. Enter South Africa with a much more sane “test negative, welcome” policy. What a concept! That and the price was right… an amazing no minimum stay JFK-JNB roundtrip BA First Class fare of only $4,500 (or 293K Amex points). Yeah, yeah, it’s just BA and a bit of AA, but one can only take so much of La Première. LOL. And I will requalify for BA Gold (One World Emerald) with an additional 840 Tier Points, and even earn 65,000 Avios.
Here’s the line up for the next 5 days...
• United First Class from Denver to LaGuardia
• American Flagship First Dining at JFK
• American Flagship First Class to London Heathrow
• British Airways Arrival Lounge at Heathrow T5
• Heathrow Express First Class to Paddington Station
• Lunch at Michelin Star Trishna London
• British Airways Concorde Room Lounge at LHR
• British Airways A380 First Class to Johannesburg
• Four Seasons The Westcliff Johannesburg
• Lunch at Flames at the Four Seasons Westcliff
• Dinner at Marble Restaurant Rosebank
• Touring Joburg… Soweta and Constitution Hill
• Lunch at Qunu Restaurant at Saxon Hotel Sandhurst
• British Airways Lounge at JNB Airport
• British Airways A380 First Class to London
• British Airways Concorde Room Lounge at LHR
• British Airways 777 First Class to JFK
• Amex Centurion Lounge at LaGuardia
• United Club at LaGuardia
• United First Class from LaGuardia to Denver
I’m going to try to post pics and live stream on Instagram as we go.
After a seemless pass thru security thanks to CLEAR, we started boarding at T-35.
Today's Pre Departure Beverage. Sadly par for the course for UA these days.
On the other hand, the new egg scramble breakfast dish was very good.
Some instagram videos...