Weekly Recap – October 13-19

Greetings from AA 1672, somewhere 33,000 feet over Arizona (or perhaps further east by the time I finish this weekly recap).

I am so excited to be headed home.  Nine days is a stretch (especially when you have shared rooms for 6 of those 8 nights) and I am craving the comforts of home – a familiar bed, home cooked food, and the comfort of curing up in my oldest yoga pants and a t-shirt and just lounging as I go through all my mail and plan my week-long stretch at home.

I had three focus areas this past week that seemed to mirror what my life on the road was like – trade shows, cruising, and hotels.

In the trade show world, I talked about how to save money on trade show freight costs.  Those are the kinds of road warrior skills you learn (alongside mileage and points tricks) when you’ve been doing this a long time!

One of the highlights of this trip was hearing Magic Johnson speak during a lunchtime session at my conference.  He talked about so many different things (from retooling products/services for diverse market segments to his days in basketball to living with HIV) and I think he might have been glad to go on for an hour more had there been time.

I squeezed in a bit of downtime to enjoy the San Diego Seaport (and got a sneak peek at the cruise ship I would board later in the week.

In the cruise world, I shared my reasons to take a short cruise, which I did – from Friday afternoon through this morning.  My cruise took me down to Ensenada where I shared factors I use to evaluate shore excursions when cruising.  (Many of these are also helpful for ANY kind of tours in new cities!)

I tried to keep up with my hotel reviews (even though I stayed in three MORE hotels this past week) by posting new reviews for The Westin Las Vegas, Sheraton Grand Hotel DFW Airport, and the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel.

Starwood had quite the week on my blog because there was also my (almost) live report of a Starwood service fail at the Westin Los Angeles Airport.  I did receive a “We’ve shared your comments with management” reply from SPG Assist after they saw my blog post, but the Westin LAX staff has yet to contact me (or reply to my unanswered texts from Thursday night).  Verdict?  Still a fail in my book.

In other travel news, I shared a creepy story about an unexpected travel souvenir in Bali and talked about my (almost) free convertible rental from National.

I also reposted another Throwback Thursday trip report – this one from a first class OneWorld round-the-world I did in 2008.  My older blog was less travel-focused so I neglected to share (then) some travel related bits I’ve updated with this repost.

And it wouldn’t be Sunday without a few of my favorite P2B blogger posts from the week, my “other” weekly recap that I enjoy writing.

This coming week I’ll continue my hotel review catch up while also begin sharing details and stories about my Golden Princess cruise (one of which requires me to first figure out the most appropriate way to discuss a large inflatable penis – because that’s a feature that Princess neglected to mention in their marketing materials).

Make it a great one and I look forward to continuing my relationship with all of you here on the Jetsetter’s Homestead!

xoxo