Trip Report: Paris & Copenhagen (Spoiler: We Got Engaged!)

We got engaged on the trip of a lifetime to Paris and Copenhagen, which could not have happened without churning, hard work, and a bit of luck!

We spent 4 nights in both cities, stayed at 5-star hotels, dined at some of the best restaurants in each city, and flew to and from the US in a combination of economy and business class, all of which would have cost over $25,000 and yet we did it for less than $2,100 per person!

This is a long post so if you’d like to jump to a section I’ve provided a table of contents below.

Table of Contents:

1. Itinerary
2. Miles & Points Summary
3. Miles & Points Value Summary
4. Trip Cost Summary
5. Credit Card Summary
6. How We Did It
7. Flights
   1. Initial Flight Booking – January 2016
   2. Flight Changes & Upgrades – 12 Hours Prior to Departure (Both Directions)
8. Hotels
   1. Hotel Booking
   2. How to Get Upgrades For Special Occasions
   3. Upgrade Experience at Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme
   4. Utilizing Concierge
9. Conclusion

Itinerary
Date(s)	Route/Location
April 16	San Francisco (SFO) to Paris (CDG) via Chicago (ORD)
April 17-19	Prince de Galles Hotel, Paris
April 19-21	Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme, Paris
April 21	Paris (CDG) to Copenhagen (CPH)
April 21-25	Airbnb in Vesterbro, Copenhagen
April 25	Copenhagen (CPH) to San Francisco (SFO) via Paris (CDG) and Philadelphia (PHL)

 

Miles & Points Summary
Description	Quantity	Per Person	Total Cost
American Airlines SFO-ORD-CDG (One way, Economy)	2 tickets	20,000 AA	40,000 AA
SPG Prince de Galles Luxury Collection Hotel, Paris	2 nights	30,000 SPG	60,000 SPG
Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme Hotel	2 nights	–	2 Free Nights
American Airlines CDG-PHL-SFO (One way, Business/First)	2 tickets	57,500 AA	115,000 AA

 

Miles & Points Value Summary
Description	Quantity	Total Value	Per Person
American Airlines SFO-ORD-CDG (One way, Economy)	2 tickets	$3,600.00	$1,800.00
SPG Prince de Galles Luxury Collection Hotel, Paris	2 nights	$1,568.00	$784.00
Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme Hotel	2 nights	$3,461.00	$1,730.50
American Airlines CDG-PHL-SFO (One way, Business/First)	2 tickets	$12,720.00	$6,360.00
Total Value		$21,349.00	$10,674.50

 

Not a bad redemption value at $0.105/mile! ($8,160/77,500 miles).

Trip Cost Summary
Description	Total Cost	Per Person
Airfare (Paris-Copenhagen RT on SAS)	$324.60	$162.30
Camera Rental (Canon 6D + lens from BorrowLenses.com)	$274.77	$137.39
Entertainment (Museums, tours, etc.)	$418.84	$209.42
Fees (airfare ticket & upgrade fees, taxes, ATM fees, etc.)	$449.21	$224.61
Fine Dining (Paris: Frenchie & Le Stresa, Copenhagen: Höst)	$817.88	$408.94
Ground Transportation (Trains, buses, taxis, bikes, etc.)	$453.22	$226.61
Miscellaneous (Packing material, etc.)	$86.11	$43.06
Shopping (Clothing, stationery, candles, etc.)	$91.18	$45.59
Snacks & Casual Meals (Breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinners)	$494.84	$247.42
Tips (Hotel concierge and staff, restaurants, taxis, etc.)	$136.67	$68.24
Total Trip Cost	$4,175.32	$2,087.66
Total Trip Value	$25,524.32	$12,285.86
Implied Savings	$21,349.00	$10,674.50

 

Credit Card Summary
Card	Bonus	Spend	Period	Who	Notes
Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select	50,000 AA	$3,000	3 mos.	Brendan
Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select	50,000 AA	$3,000	3 mos.	Brendan	World Elite Upgrade
Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select	60,000 AA	$3,000	3 mos.	Maureen	Targeted Offer
American Express SPG Personal	30,000 SPG	$3,000	3 mos.	Brendan	Best Offer
American Express SPG Personal	30,000 SPG	$3,000	3 mos.	Brendan	Best Offer
Chase Hyatt Credit Card	2 Free Nights	$1,000	3 mos.	Maureen

 

How We Did It:

Overall booking these flights and hotels wasn’t particularly complicated, although there were a few curve balls and complications that arose throughout the process. It was honestly just a little more tedious than anything else, due in large part to our indecisiveness on what dates and cities. One piece of advice that I’d like to reiterate is to be patient and be flexible! Finding award seats takes time, especially on popular routes (like the US to Paris) and at popular times, and thus you might have to try different dates, different routes, different departure/arrival airports, and combinations thereof, until you find something that works.

Tips

1. Be flexible and be patient! It takes a lot of legwork to find award space on popular routes, and even then your dates might not be perfect.
2. To add to Point 1, American and other airlines often open up more award availability very close in to the departure date (within 24-48 hours of departure) so be sure to check again last minute before you leave to see if there are open seats either in another fare class (Business/First) or for different departure times.
3. American is great when changing award tickets and doesn’t charge change fees, just the difference in miles and taxes as long as you’re only upgrading classes (costs money to downgrade, weird, I know) and changing dates/times of departure (but not departure/arrival cities).
4. If flying AA or partners to Europe, avoid British Airways. BA passes on fuel surcharges to passengers so in addition to the 45,000-60,000 AA miles RT you’ll shell out per ticket, you may be on the hook for $400-$600 in fuel surcharges and fees. 100% not worth it.
5. Moreover, if flying to London/UK try routing through Dublin, Madrid, Rome, or Paris, then getting a cheap connection with cash instead of flying BA through LHR (London Heathrow).

 

FLIGHTS

Initial Flight Booking – January 2016

We started broad and narrowed things down.

1. What month do we want to travel?
   1. Ok, April or May it is.
2. How long do we want to travel for?
   1. One work week, plus the weekends sounds good.

After those parameters had been set I could start the search.

One of the first challenges we ran into was that due to the then-upcoming (now implemented) AA devaluation, award tickets on American seemed to be severely limited (flights on AA and partners from US to Europe RT rose from 40,000 AA miles off-peak to 45,000 AA miles off-peak; not a huge swing but enough to motivate people into booking flights way in advance; business/first saw even steeper increases; tickets in economy during peak months are 60,000 round trip).

When booking transatlantic award tickets on American, it’s best to exclude British Airways from your search parameters as BA passes on fuel surcharges and other exorbitant fees, making it particularly expensive and not worth the points and cash.

For a while I kept striking out (especially in May), but eventually got lucky and found round trip MileSAAver availability leaving early Saturday, April 16th via Chicago (ORD) returning Monday, April 25th via Philadelphia (PHL). 40,000 miles per person plus $86.50 in taxes and fees.

Yes, I know, crappy route. And it’s true – routing from the west coast to Europe via AA isn’t ideal as there are no direct flights (currently), but it’s hard to complain when you’re paying $86.50 per person for round trip tickets to Paris!

 

Flight Changes & Upgrades – 12 Hours Prior to Departure (Both Directions)

Another sticking point, one that Maureen, especially, wasn’t too happy about, was that when I originally booked the tickets our departure out of SFO to ORD was at 5:00am. Maybe I’m somewhat masochistic or just a morning person, but as the departure date neared it was clear that a 5:00am departure time was not going to fly.

I checked AA’s site again and we got lucky! There MileSAAver availability on a later flight out of SFO to ORD leaving at 6:50am, which still gave us a 3-hour layover in Chicago before heading on to Paris. Although it wasn’t a huge improvement, getting up at 4:30am for a flight definitely beats 2:30 or 3:00am! I called AA to change the reservation, which was easy to do and totally free as AA doesn’t charge for date changes or class upgrades.

Lessons Learned: I should have checked Business/First Class availability day-of because when we boarded our ORD-CDG flight we were the last to board and there was hardly anyone seated in Business (no first class)! Oh well…

Tip: When calling AA reservations for an international award ticket, be sure to mention that you have an international award ticket straight away so you don’t get transferred around a bunch of times. This should limit it to 0-1 transfers rather than 3-4. Saves time.

Having learned my lesson from the outgoing journey, I was very intent on finding business or first class availability for the trip home. After we’d packed and tidied up everything in our Airbnb apartment in Copenhagen the night before heading back to Paris and finally SF, I sat down at the table, logged onto AA’s website, and searched for MileSAAver availability in Business/First from CDG to PHL and the PHL to SFO (sometimes it’s easier to search segments separately in different tabs).

And lo and behold there was availability on both!

I wrote down the flight numbers, which seats we preferred (also confirming how many seats were available), and then called AA reservations. After having the agent explain the process to me a few times, I finally understood how the upgrade was going to work. She would redeposit all of the miles (40,000 total) into my account, refund me the taxes and fees for the original tickets, then deduct out the new mileage amount (57,500/person) and charge a new fee/tax amount ($255.00).

I know it sounds kind of cheesy but I felt pretty damn proud when I heard the agent say “I have you in 1H and Maureen in 1F from Paris to Philadelphia, and you in 2F and Maureen in 2D from Philadelphia to San Francisco.” Boom – booked! If only Maureen had still been awake to tell…

 

HOTELS

Hotel Booking

Prince de Galles, an SPG and Luxury Collection Hotel, 33 Avenue George V, Paris, 75008, France

The hotel booking process was much simpler than the flight booking process as by this point we knew our dates and how many nights we needed (4 in Paris). Since we don’t typically stay at luxury hotels I thought it would be nice departure from the norm to book nights at some of Paris’ best hotels.

After doing some preliminary research on SPG’s site, it appeared that a few of their Category 7 hotels, including the Prince de Galles, were 30,000 SPG points per night, which was perfect as we each had just over 30,000 points earned via our American Express SPG cards (30,000 point bonus after $3,000 of minimum spend in 3 months). As I’ve learned through experience (and many hours on the phone with customer service representatives) it’s often easiest and fastest to call to book award nights and flights, especially if you’re booking from two accounts. Thus I called SPG and walked them through our reservation request, giving them both account numbers and tying the reservations together, that way we didn’t have to switch rooms or anything when we arrived.

The only hiccup was that by the time I went to book the rooms, which I had looked at earlier in the day, they had a king available for the first night, but only a queen room available the second night. I let this go with the CSR and emailed the hotel directly after the reservation had been placed to let them know that if possible we’d prefer to be in the same room for both nights, and additionally that we were arriving in Paris on a 7:30am flight and would very much appreciate an early check-in if possible in order to shower, relax, change, and unwind after 20+ hours of travel. More on this later.

Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme, 5 Rue de la Paix, Paris, 75002, France

We wavered between getting an Airbnb for our last 2 nights in Paris but instead decided to push our luck and have Maureen sign up for the Chase Hyatt credit card that earns 2 free nights at any Hyatt property after $1,000 minimum spend in 3 months. Others on Reddit and elsewhere mentioned the free nights were typically deposited into one’s Hyatt Gold Passport account within 10 days of meeting the spend requirement, which was good as we’d left booking hotels until 3 weeks before our scheduled arrival. Thankfully the two free nights showed up with enough lead time to book!

The one oddity in using the free nights from Hyatt is that you can’t book both nights at the same time, but rather have to book them one at a time. Additionally, the free night option doesn’t appear when trying to search for a stay longer than one night, as shown below, so I searched for each night individually and confirmed that the free night redemption was in fact available.

Done! €780/night rooms booked for $0! More on the room upgrade below.

 

How to Get Upgrades For Special Occasions

Tips:

1. Don’t be afraid to ask! The worst they’ll say is no.
2. Contact the hotel directly (via email works fine). Contact info can be tough to find but just keep searching.
3. Be explicit in what you’d like, such as a room upgrade, champagne, etc.
4. Be deferential and respectful in how you ask and reiterate that anything they can do to make your stay more enjoyable, special and memorable would be greatly appreciated.
5. Tip and thank the staff who helped you if you do end up getting upgraded or receive special treatment! (Not sure what’s customary but I gave the two staff who I’d been in contact with €100 and wrote them a letter that I left with the staff at the front desk).

 

Upgrade Experience at Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme

Because I was planning on proposing in Paris, I saved the better (or at least pricier!) hotel for the last two nights of our stay. Staying in a fancy hotel felt nice, but I wanted to make everything even more special and memorable.

I did a little reading on how to get upgrades at hotels and then decided to contact the hotel directly and let them know my plan. I emailed two days before our departure to let them know that I planned to propose and that we would both greatly appreciate any and all steps they could take to make our stay that much more memorable and unique. I was also very explicit listing potential upgrades that we’d like such as a room upgrade, discounted spa treatments, drink and or meal vouchers for their restaurant, or just a bottle of champagne in our room after I’d popped the question. I was a little apprehensive as I don’t normally ask for upgrades (let alone propose!) but the outcome was even better than expected!

I received an email from the hotel guest relations coordinator saying that they would be more than happy to upgrade our room contingent on availability and that a bottle of champagne was in the cards as well. Fantastic!

When we arrived a few days later it was even better than expected! All of the staff knew our names and promptly told us at check-in that they’d been able to upgrade our room to a suite, we’d be able to enjoy breakfast and room service for half price, and that we’d been upgraded to “Platinum Status” (still not sure what that meant) during our stay. Needless to say I was floored and she had no idea(!), but was pleasantly surprised as well.

The Park King Suite that we had been upgraded to was on the top floor (6th) of the hotel, had a luxurious king bed, huge living room, an enormous gilded bathroom with his and hers vanities, and two balconies that overlooked Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme!

Did I mention the room service was delicious? Some of the best French toast I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something as I pretty much exclusively order French toast when we go out to breakfast or brunch.

 

Utilizing Concierge

As I mentioned before, we don’t normally stay at high-end hotels, and certainly don’t utilize concierge. Have we been missing out!

I’m not sure if this is reserved for just luxury hotels but the concierge staff at both the Prince de Galles and Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme were worth their weight in gold!

The concierge at the Prince de Galles recommended great breakfast and dinner spots (including Chez Andre nearby) as well as great shopping districts (St. Germaine and Les Marais) plus very specialized shops including perfumeries, stationary stores, and candle shops (Maureen’s requests). Moreover, which was to become a theme, we’d read about an Italian restaurant in the city called Le Stresa that was highly recommended, so we asked the concierge if it might be possible to get a reservation there. Emily said it wouldn’t be easy and that we should have a Plan B and C, but that’d she’d try. After a few hours of wandering the city we went back to our hotel for a break and were greeted by a beaming Emily who said she’d been able to get us a spot! (However after eating there I was a little dubious of both how high-end the restaurant was and how hard it was to get a reservation as it was only half full throughout the entirety of our two-hour meal).

The concierge at the Park Hyatt were even more incredible! We’d heard that a restaurant called Frenchie was fantastic, but didn’t think to make a reservation in advance of our trip. Maureen asked the concierge on the morning of our last day (and the day I was planning on proposing!) and received a chuckle from him. We weren’t sure if we just asked about a touristy, less-than-stellar restaurant or if we were out of our minds for thinking we could get a table day-of at one of the best restaurants in the city. Turns out it was very much the latter. We were informed that Frenchie only answers the phone for reservations at 3pm, but the concierge assured us he would do his best to get us a spot.

Hours later while admiring impressionist, expressionist, and modern art at the George Pompidou Museum, we received a phone call from a French number. Opening with the line “we are going to make magic happen tonight!”, Daniel informed us that he was able to secure a table for 2 at Frenchie at 9:15pm. Needless to say we were both stunned, grateful, and extremely excited!

 

Conclusion

Although it definitely took time and effort, plus a lot of luck and coordination, to pull off this trip, it was certainly the trip of a lifetime and one neither of us will ever forget!

This post may be long and seem daunting but don’t let it be! It’s really quite easy once you get the hang of it. And as I’m learning, it’s easier to earn miles and points than it is to burn them, but at the end of the day churning and all that it entails is absolutely worth it as it allows us to do and experience things and places we would likely never be able to.

Hope you enjoyed and good luck!

Feel free to reach out or comment with questions, always happy to help 🙂