5th anniversary preparations

So it's started.  The hubster and I have always talked about going to Europe and we finally are going to be able to next year.  It coincides with our 5th anniversary.  Holy crap, 5 years married!  The most exciting part...how we are getting there.

Business class all the way baby!  When we first decided on going to Europe, we both decided we wanted this to be a big trip and we would spare no expense, so first class it was.  I've been trying to finagle and come up with a way to do it as cheaply as possible even though money was no object for this trip.  I had just earned Silver Status on Delta and that comes with certain upgrade benefits, but they don't extend to transatlantic flights, boo.  Besides, those upgrades are always a gamble and we wanted guaranteed comfortability.

So next option was to use my miles which I just had enough for a low tier business ticket and buy my own ticket.  I researched and researched on ways to game the system and was running into some success.  First off the list was that low mileage awards tickets were available in the time frame we wanted, but the same ticket was going to cost over $5000.  Hmmm, not so economical.  It was actually only $100 more expensive if I bought two cheaper first class tickets.  I did more research and tried different cities to fly into which was the big eye opener.  We didn't have to fly into Paris.  With the European train system, we had a lot of options. I looked into Amsterdam and Frankfurt and finally found luck with Brussels.

I stumbled randomly on a low fare sale to Brussels which matched up with a low mileage awards and voila, two business class tickets to Brussels for two weeks for the great price of $1700!  That's the same cost as two coach tickets!!  You can't believe how happy I am.  Seriously, there could have been tears.  The only downside if I can even call it that is that the first class seats might not be the lay flat beds.  Wah Wah...

But I have read that they are slowly upgrading the planes and have read some blogs that our particular flight has had one of the modified planes.  So keeping my fingers crossed.

Next step, buy some travel guide books, decide what to do and where to stay.

Europe here we come ... (in 10 months)!