Adventures of Lydia & Calvin

Friday, April 8, 2011

Moscow 2011: Conclusion

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I am not going to say much about the rest of the trip. We attended our friend's wedding and flew back to Penang low cost style on AirAsia. We flew close to 19000 miles and had over 40 glasses of champange (we were trying to see if we could beat the infamous 8 bottle challenge going from LAX-BKK and we were not even close) in less than 2 weeks! There was no way we could have experienced or even afforded this without those US airways miles. Thanks to flyertalk for making this happen ! :)

Our thoughts on the whole experience:

Best Ground Experience - Lufthansa First Class Terminal in Frankfurt (with the Thai experience coming a close second). Stealing a line from Kyo from sqtalk, if the Thai and other lounge experience was burp, the FCT experience was BURRRPPPP!
Best In-flight Service - Lufthansa First FRA to CAI. The attendants on this flight were simply just friendly and kept checking on us if we wanted anything.
Best In-Flight Meal - Turkish First Class IST to HKG. Caviar for breakfast!
Best Seat - Turkish 77W First Class.
Most memorable experience - A tie between walking in the snow and seeing Red Square in Moscow & seeing the pyramids in Cairo.

Moscow 2011: RIP THY 1st class: Istanbul to Hong Kong

Moscow 2011: RIP THY 1^st class: Istanbul to Hong Kong

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On arrival in Istanbul from Cairo on Egypt Air, there was a rep from Prime Class (premier service ground agents in Istanbul) waiting for us at the gate thanks to the connecting first class flight on Turkish Airlines. We were whizzed to the security checkpoint with a cart and went through the premier security line. We were then taken to the Premier Class lounge which was the first class lounge for Turkish Airlines.

The lounge itself was TINY! It has no windows and I would not spend more than 1-2 hours here. We had a 6 hour layover and it definitely did not feel like a first class ground experience similar to Lufthansa or Thai. The lounge itself was shared with other premium passengers of other airlines so it was packed until later during the night. We had initially planned to head down to Istanbul for some last minute shopping/sight-seeing but just got lazy - should have done it in hindsight! The only redemption for the lounge was the food itself. There was an extensive menu first class passengers could order from. The service itself in the lounge was somewhat disappointing. I had to call on the waiters several times for top-ups and he didn't seem happy about it which is something I don't expect in a first class lounge.

Picture of the lounge:

Dining tables reserved for first class passengers:

Food we ordered in the lounge:

Braaazzziilllll!!

Lydia and I are heading to Brazil thanks to the Turkish (TK) Airline mistake fare from Bangkok to Sao Paolo via Istanbul in Business Class for ~571 Euros!! :) It's only been a couple of days since we booked the flight on the TK website directly but everything looks like the fare is good to go. The flight shows as confirmed on TK's website and my credit card's been charged. Here's hoping that they honor the fare.

The current plan is to hop to Bangkok on AirAsia. We'll spend 4 days in Sao Paolo and head back to Istanbul for a one night layover before flying off on Malaysia Airlines to KL. It was initially pretty hard finding reasonable fares for the return trip but got lucky with the GRU-IST-KUL TK codeshare fare of only ~700 USD. I'm still looking for better options as we don't get *A miles on the code share on MH but might be a good experience since it's been forever since I flew MH internationally.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Moscow 2011: Cairo to Istanbul

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I wasn't expecting too much on this Cairo to Istanbul flight after reading some trip reports and reviews about Egypt Air. Our experience turned out to be inline with the rest of the majority where it was an OK experience but I wouldn't go out of my way to use Egypt Air again. Check-in went by pretty quick and our bags were tagged all the way to Hong Kong.

We then proceeded to one of the business lounges airside. The lounge was pretty basic and small. They had some sandwiches, fruit and drinks available. I just used the rest of the time to catch up with email. I would not want to spend more than an hour in the lounge itself.

Lydia in the lounge:

Moscow 2011: Cairo Layover

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Our flight to Cairo arrived at about 8pm and our next flight to Istanbul was scheduled to leave at 3pm giving us a good 18 hour layover to explore Cairo. We decided to hire a tour guide for the layover tour and it was a good decision. Our tour guide (Marian) did an excellent job! (Send us a comment/email for her details for those who are interested). She took good care of us and provided excellent info to the sites we visited.

Our first stop that night was the Al-Muizz Street in Islamic area of Cairo. The street consisted of shops selling various souvenirs and antiques and old mosques with beautiful architecture.