Jakarta, Bad Travel Days, and Other Adventures

Oh what a week!  When I sat down to do my weekly recap, my mind was blown at how much ground I’ve covered in real life as well as here at the site.

I started off on Monday in luxurious style on Seabourn, touring the northern Bali highlands with Virtuoso Voyager that day.  I wrapped up the week leaving Bali hot and bothered with a broken toe.  In between I saw Komodo dragons, took a private cooking class at a top-rated restaurant, and enjoyed some beach/pool time.  While my Indonesian adventure is coming to an end, I have so much to share that it will take me a few weeks to write about it all (while keeping up with usual subjects).  In the meantime, I’ll continue to update that master page for the trip so all of the content can be easily located.

Here on Jetsetter’s Homestead, I shared a few bits from the trip this week including highlights from a great day tour of Jakarta (which was prefaced by some wonderful mosque etiquette advice from Muslim Travel Girl, my guest blogger).

I shared a bit more about the “suite life” on Seabourn – one of several life on board posts I’ll have this month.  (And oh, what a difference from the Golden Princess review from last month!)

I gave away another vintage Cathay Pacific first class amenity kit from Ipa-Nema.  (I have yet to hear from last week’s winner yet so if I don’t soon, I’ll be rolling down to the next person on the winner list!)  I shared my travel bucket list along with this week’s winner so check to see if you won!

For those who like the monthly beauty box reviews, my Birchbox or Ipsy analysis for November has been completed.

As usual, I shared some of my favorite tidbits from around Prior2Boarding from this past week.

My vacation comes to an end today – if all has gone right, as you read this, I’ll be inbound on a Cathay Pacific flight to the US and sipping Krug as I try for a gentle reentry to real life.  I need to get ready for Christmas, a fact my parents pointed out when they snapped a photo of my front porch still decorated with Halloween ghosts yesterday.  Oops!  (Can I get away with saying they are the ghosts of Christmas past?!)

From this point, my year in travel winds down as I don’t think I’ll have any more business travel for the year.  I planned a bit too exactly, it seems and I’m still two segments (or 3,369 miles) short for my American Airlines Executive Platinum requalification because I’ve had several rebookings and cancellations that have left my business travel about 25% below the norm and almost no personal travel outside of awards.  I’ll also be looking at my hotel requalification as spreading them across four programs has left me similarly short.  The newly found cruise addiction has definitely altered my travel patterns so I will be putting pen to paper to come up with both a 2014 wrap-up strategy as well as a 2015 program priority list.

This next week you can expect more Indonesia-related content as well as the start of my countdown to Christmas.  Once I recover from jet lag, that is!  Until then….

xoxo