Here is my trip report of a two week trip to Madrid, Mallorca, Rioja and Barcelona using points from 3 hotel programs and miles from US Airways to stay completely free and fly first class on Lufthansa.  We returned in July from a 2 week trip to several parts of Spain.  With my new position I haven’t been able to post in quit a while, due to hard work and a lot of travel of course.  Hope you enjoy the trip report.

Trip Report

1. Flight From Orlando to Madrid on Lufthansa (LH) in First Class
2. Westin, Madrid
3. Hilton Sa Torre, Mallorca
4. Castillo Hotel Son Vida, Mallorca
5. Marques de Riscal, Elciego
6. Hotel Arts (Ritz Carlton), Barcelona

The first part of our trip entailed flying from our new home in Atlanta down to Orlando.  We stayed over night, then headed to MCO for a first class flight on Lufthnasa to Madrid with a connection point in Frankfurt.  We left the Westin Madrid after a few days and headed to Mallorca for a week at the Hilton Mallorca and Luxury Collection Hotel Castillo Son Vida.  After Mallorca we flew to Bilbao and drove down to Elciego to stay at the Luxury Collection hotel.  Our final leg of the trip took us by train from Logrono to Barcelona to stay at the Ritz Carlton’s partner hotel, Hotel Arts.  The trip was a great 2 week trip to Spain.

Overall we were blown away by Lufthansa’s ground service.  As most of you know I usually fly Delta, but with the use of US Airways miles I was able to book 2 first class tickets from Orlando>Frankfurt>Madrid || Barcelona>Frankfurt>Orlando (detailed in this August 2009 post).  Wow, what a difference between SkyTeam business and Lufthansa first class.

So I agree, the itenerary took us a little out of the way:).  When we originally booked our tickets we were in Florida and have since moved up to Atlanta.  So we added a leg on Delta down to Orlando.  Funny thing is when we were leaving Barcelona we saw the Delta flight leaving that was headed straight back to Atlanta.  But we wouldn’t change a thing as we really enjoyed our time in the Lufthansa First Class lounge, one of a kind experience that SkyTeam doesn’t have anything even close to the experience.

Check In

We arrived at Orlando International Airport and approached a Lufthansa  first class ticket counter with no line.  The young lady checked us in and asked if we would like to be escorted through security and on to the club lounge.  We took them up on this offer and less than 15 minutes after arriving to the airport we were comfortable in the Delta club lounge.

Orlando Delta Lounge – What a difference from the Luthansa Lounge!

Seats

I’ve included a picture of the Lufthansa first class seat by the window.  My wife and I typically fly Delta’s or Air France’s semi-flat business seats.  This seat extended fully flat.  We had seats 2 D and 2 G.

Flight

The flight was smooth and service was very attentive.  The first thing I noticed was that the Thursday night flight was filled with all business travellers.  The first thing they did when getting on the plane was change straight into the full pajamas that LH provided.  We booked on the A330 from Orlando to Frankfurt and an Airbus A320 from Frankfurt to Madrid.  The main difference is that intra-Europe the First class is actually coach class with a seat in the middle folded down (see picture below).

Caviar

Main Course

Flight From Frankfurt to Madrid

Lounge

The lounge was amazing!  We went to the lounge in the terminal as opposed to the first class terminal.  There were nap rooms for us to take a power nap in between flights, I arranged a 3.5 hour layer to check out what the lounge had to offer.  They also had showers, cigar lounge, full service restaurant and a nice bar.  While we were sitting in the restaurant we saw an A380 landing behind us (not sure where it was landing from). Several lounge pictures are below.

Nap Room – That’s right, a room for you to sleep in, you will never see that in a Delta lounge

Taittinger Rose Champagne – hard to beat it

Bottom Line

Keep an eye out for the remaining segments of the trip report.  If you haven’t already done so, sign up for the RSS feed at the top (looks like a red box near the Points Miles & Martinis title).  Overall this was a great way to spend 125k US Airways miles and several hundred hotel points for each of us to spend 2 weeks in Europe at a fraction of the cost other than food and entertainment.  If you have any questions or comments hit the comment link at the top of the page.