This post is for Friday, October 2, 2026.

We were up at 4:20am to get ready for our 4:50 Uber pickup to Heathrow.

All went well and we made it to the Cathay Pacific Airways lounge about 5:45. Our flight was also delayed a little. We had about 2.5 hours to board.

Cathay has the “best food” reputation amongst lounge people. First Class and top tier miles people (which of course Ash is) have access to a full on restaurant. Cathay is part of the OneWorld alliance so his American status gets us in.

We are both fighting the very beginnings of a cold and opted for Chinese comfort foods for breakfast. The soups felt good.

After breakfast we chose a spot where Ash could watch planes and we would have easy access to coffee.

It feels like forever ago that we landed in Basel, much longer than the 2 weeks it has been. We packed a lot in, as we always do. There’s something about international travel that really slows down time for me. I think the intensity of having to be so present all the time just to navigate is a primary driver of that for me. It feels like we’ve been gone a month.

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We are now about 2 hours into our 11 hour flight.

When we checked into our flight yesterday, we were given the chance to upgrade from Economy+ to Business for under $700. Score. The day before they were selling these seats for $12k. We got them for about $1400. For an 11 hour flight in what will be a 32 hour day (because of the 8 hours we pick up with the time change) it’s well worth it.

So much stuff! Comforter to lay on the seat. Pillow and blanket. Socks and eye mask, toothbrush and paste. Charging station, super nice headphones, and a bottle of water.

I have a bunch of photos of the food but will skip those for now. Let’s just say it didn’t suck.

I am notoriously bad at sleeping on airplanes but I’m hoping I will get at least a few hours on this flight.

Which seems like a good place to start my traditional Final Thoughts.

1. Sleep. I probably slept more on this trip than I ever have. Ever. Vacation or not. With the exception of a few jet lag adjusting nights, most nights I slept on average 7 hours. Easy. With naps almost every day. I usually only get 5-6 hours a night so this has been a huge treat. Ash generally gets 8 hours and that was true here as well. The downside of me sleeping so much is he was often awake already or soon after, so I often didn’t get my quiet time. He’s ready to go and chattery as soon as he’s awake. Give me 2 hours of quiet and coffee and Maybe I can start to function. So that part was challenging but we managed.

2. Smokers. Wow. I forgot how much Europeans smoke. It’s shocking. Maybe we are just spoiled by California. But it’s a drag when you’d rather sit outside at a cafe but the smokers ruin that for us. If that’s all we have to bitch about I guess we’re doing pretty good.

3. Just a random admission that I’ve never talked about: I carry around an almost ever-present low level of stress when I travel. It’s surprising for as much as I do it, no? It’s heightened at security and passport checks. Which is somewhat irrational given how little goes wrong for as much as we travel. But I’m constantly monitoring: passport? Phone? Wallet? (Except that one time in PV! IYKYK.) Sunglasses? Carry ons if applicable? Which is why me leaving my backpack in the cab in Basel that first day was so irritating. All that nonsense in my head and I still do stuff like that. It’s a constant chatter in my head. And it’s exhausting. I just don’t let it stop me.

Ok enough of the random stuff. Here’s what stood out:

4. Schonburg Castle: now THIS was a castle stay. Everything about those 2 days was special. Highly recommend. And we got some of our best sleep there.

5. Blasingen. That was the one night stay after Basel. The hostess was amazing. The food spectacular. And there was something super relaxing about being so remote and walking through farms and vineyards.

5. London. Wow. This was my 3rd time in London but I’d never stayed in Soho before. And hadn’t explored as many areas as we did. Ash hadn’t spent much time there since the late 90s. We both fell in love. It’s a beautiful city full of life and history. Very clean. No homeless to speak of. Amazing public transportation. We will definitely be back.

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I wrote that next section while on the plane and then was too tired to concentrate. Never did sleep much but we got home without any trouble. Landed in LAX, short flight from there. Walked in the door about 4pm Friday.

Both of us with full on colds. Ash got over his quickly after a good night’s sleep. I barely got out of bed on Saturday.

It is now Sunday afternoon and feeling a little better so back to this while Ash is at the opera. That boy never stops 😎

Throughout this post I’m including photos that may or may not have made it through on their original day.

6. Driving vs the River Cruise. In the end, we probably did this trip for a quarter of what we would’ve spent on the cruise. The downside was the moving around with all of the luggage. Which kept growing because we shopped. So it could’ve been nice to just be in the same place for seven nights in a row. However, the upside was we got to do exactly what we wanted to do, when we wanted to do it, and spend as much time there as we wanted to. Which we wouldn’t have had on the cruise. We actually got to stay in castles instead of just seeing them. In the end, we are super happy with the way this trip turned out. But everything from the first Sunday night through the final Sunday night was planned three days before we left.

And we didn’t lose any money on the cruise. What we had paid got moved to the Antarctica cruise that we have scheduled for November 2027. Which is probably the next trip I’m going to blog. For a variety of reasons, I am going to cut back on big trips in 2027. We already have the smaller annual trips planned: New York City, Puerto Vallarta multiple times for me, Denver, etc. But I tend to not blog those trips.

Over the last 15 months, we have taken five big international trips. not to mention a handful of smaller trips, both domestic and Canada and Mexico. So I am about out of time from my work perspective. Need to build that up some and also just relax a little more at home. Ash doesn’t feel the need to do that so he’s already planning other things for him which gives me my downtime, so it all works. 

With that, I’m signing off for a little while. I deeply appreciate all of the interactions with you while traveling and thank you for coming along.

Until next time.