Usually, we plan our flights around where we want to go. We just returned from a trip where EVERYTHING was planned around a flight. Years ago, I saw a commercial with Jennifer Aniston wanting to take a shower on a flight. In the commercial, they told her she needed to be on an Emirates plane. Ever since then, I’ve wanted that shower in the sky.  Alex found one first class flight on the Emirates A380 out of Milan and wanted to grab it for 87K miles. I booked a business class seat for 75K on the same flight (and was, fortunately, able to upgrade to first class with miles a couple of days before the flight). We then began planning a trip around a flight. You can learn more about this trip on this podcast episode.

First Flight

Our first flight was from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam on KLM business class for 68K Flying Blue miles. This was a great deal for us. We planned to just get to Europe and then position to our destination.

First flight – KLM business class!

Hotel Options

We thought of several options:

• Stay in Amsterdam
• Fly to Milan and go to Lake Como
• Fly to Barcelona

We’d done Amsterdam, so Lake Como was the winner, and the decision was to stay at the Grand  Hotel Victoria Concept and Spa, which I loved previously. There was only one problem—we couldn’t find availability during for our dates. We even set up an Open Hotel Alert, but didn’t get lucky.

We wanted to stay at a Hyatt hotel, so we saw another hotel in Lake Como, but there was no availability there either. However, there was a Small Luxury Hotel 42 miles away in Orselina, Switzerland.  We booked a night at the Villa Orselina with a category 7 free night certificate that Alex had. Villa Orselina is now a category 8 hotel and standard award nights can be booked for 40K Hyatt points/night.

View from the Villa Orselina

Planning a trip around a flight is something I would NEVER have done without points and miles, learning about bucket list destinations, AND bucket list flights. The goal was the Emirates flight—everything else revolved around it.

Alex enjoying the reason for the trip!

Bottom Line

How fortunate we are that we can be that spontaneous and flexible due to points and miles. Not only did I get the “shower in the sky” like Jennifer Aniston, but we also stayed in a beautiful villa, got a massage, ate great food, and had a great time together. I would never have enjoyed the hospitality of Villa Orselina or the beautiful towns of Orselina and Locarno without planning a trip around a flight.