[Travel] Planning the Trip: Hotels, part 2

When last we left off I was planning hotel stays. As planning continued it became clear that I'd need a hotel for at least one night (or in some cases one day) in Anaheim, Chicago, possibly Montreal, possibly Bangkok, Honk Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Paris, and somewhere(s) in Germany. About the only part that was clear was that I didn't have to worry about where I'd be sleeping in England because family history and serendipitous Arsenal fandom had taken care of that.

In the previous post I covered finding hotels in Anaheim and the Disneyland portion of the Paris stay. I guess I might as well address the "possibly" in Montreal and Bangkok. As the itinerary was initially laid out I'd have a layover of 8 hours in Montreal and 12 hours in Bangkok. As both were going to be on the portion of the trip that had me in a plane or an airport for 58 straight hours I had sought out some dayrooms. All of that came to naught as the airplane gods decided that my trip would be rerouted for me by Air Canada thanks to a schedule change. I'm not complaining (I'll cover that in a later pre-trip post).

A few of the hotel decisions turned out to be easy. I sat down and looked at every chain that I either had points in or that I at least could transfer points into profitably from American Express or Chase. After doing that, a few gems stood out.

For my two nights in Chicago, one at the beginning of the trip and one at the end, I really only cared that the hotel was close to the airport. If it's close enough to walk to a Gino's East location then so much the better. There's a Country Inn that has an airport shuttle that's a reasonable amount of Carlson points so that's where I've spent most of the rest of my Carlson points from the delightful 50k Carlson promotion from November.

Seoul also ended up being pretty straightforward as there's only one airport hotel that I could do fairly cheaply on points. Hyatt Regency Incheon here I come! I have one friend who I am sure is going to try and talk me into taking the train into Seoul for a little while on my 20 hour layover, but I suspect I will sit in the Hyatt and work. Possibly even post part of this massive trip report.

I'll save the rest of the hotels for two more posts between now and the end of April. I'll also likely write up a post on the fun that was the schedule change. That is my penance for the truly awful reaction I had to the poor telephone rep who had the misfortune of calling me that day.