Overall, this year has been a very light year for me because of some things going on in my personal life.  However, I have been able to gain some new destinations and routes along the way in my travel this year.  So without further adieu, the new cities I have been to or through this year:

Vancouver Seattle London The more interesting thing has been the new lines I've encountered this year, and already looking for some more new lines in January of the new ...

I got status matched to Priority Club Platinum from my Hilton Diamond Status a few weeks back. Tonight is my first stay in an IHG hotel, a Crowne Plaza in the UK.

All I can say is how can people be loyal to this program? What the hell do you get from being a Platinum? I’m currently top tier with Hilton and Hyatt; I have been top with Starwood in the past. So I have become used to great upgrades, free internet, Free Breakfast at Hilton and Hyatt, welcome amenities and ...

So for my trip to New Orleans, I decided to add another hotel night, since it is an hour drive from where I live to the airport, and I did not look forward to leaving the house at 4am on a Saturday morning, especially since I did not know how long I was going to be staying up that night.  I was able to get a good rate, and stack the bonuses so this one night stay on a sub $100 rate netted me 5000 Priority Club points.

Check-In

The hotel provides complimentary shuttle ...

On the last upgrd.com podcast, we talked a bit about New York airports. The consensus seemed to be that flying in or out of Newark isn't necessarily any more inconvenient than flying out of JFK or LGA.

Turns out that someone at JetBlue disagrees.

I stayed at the Crowne Plaza by Newark the last couple nights, even though I flew in and out of JFK (the client is in that part of New Jersey, but flying into EWR on AA would have cost way more than flying into JFK, so if I wanted to ...