Speaker 1Hey guys welcome back to another monthly recap episode in this one I'll be talking about a week long trip that we did to Italy and the Amalfi Coast and then also be talking about iPhones which ended up going pretty well so before we get started I just want to let everyone know that I will be hosting a small meetup in Portland on November 7th at the Dunaway in Portland so really we're just gonna be hanging out around the bar to try to use up all of our Hilton credits I am not going to be staying at a Hilton this quarter so I have 14 business Platinum's that I need to use as far as the other meetups in October I will not be going to mile nomics and MSP although I do really want to I won't be going to the Chicago seminars but I might be able to make it to the points travel festival in Chicago I kind of need to work around the iPhone duo release the pre-orders for that are going to be on Friday October 16th at 5:00 a.m. Pacific and then the actual release will be the following weekend I'm pretty excited for it I think that it's going to do well I hear a lot of people are talking about it how they want to get one but it's a new product so we don't really know what's going to happen about how much stock there's going to be and what the demand is going to be like so it's not as safe of a bet as the newest iPhone Pro Max but as far as I can tell from YouTube videos of people using it it seems pretty cool so I'll start off by talking about our trip to Italy we flew on the non-stop from Portland to London heather again and yeah that was a pretty good flight we got to go to the Alaska lounge in PDX for the second time the food at the lounge was the same as it was the last time so I'm thinking maybe they just rotate it by day so every Friday's the same and the priority pass lounge in Portland does the same thing I don't really like it because I feel like I'm always in the airport on a Friday so every time I go to the lounge I'm eating the same thing but I still do think that it's a really good lounge it's got great views of the runways and then as far as the British Airways flight no complaints there it's always been pretty consistent for us that was our third time I believe flying on this route from Portland to London it's a pretty good seat it has a door which a lot of people like and then the views pretty good the timing of that flight is also great it leaves around 7 30. so last time we flew into London we flew into Heathrow but then our flight from Heathrow to Lisbon got canceled so we took the bus over to London Gatwick but then that flight also got canceled and then we ended up taking the bus back so I didn't want to do that again going to Gatwick but I was looking at the flight prices and it would have been like 500 more to do the flight from London Heathrow to Naples on British Airways versus taking the bus over to Gatwick and then flying on easyjet so a 250 a person and yeah I was really going back and forth on this but at the end of the day I mean 500 is a lot of money just to save two or three hours of extra time waiting in the airport so we decided to give Gatwick another shot and at least this time we know how the bus works and how easy that is and like where the lounges are in Gatwick which weren't really that bad so we actually did have a flight to Madrid on British Airways because originally we booked a round trip from Madrid to Portland so I didn't consider going through security on that ticket to go to the first class lounge but if you remember from last time when we went to Gatwick once we got through the security there it was very difficult to get back out because you have to find a way to get to the passport control so I don't know has anyone ever told you because I know that it's pretty easy to just leave the airport upon arrival and then you could go back in like when you check in you could go to the lounge then but I don't know how easy it is to go through security go to the lounge and then leave so I still need to figure that out next time we go to Heathrow I'll try to see if there's an exit route to get back landside but I didn't think it was worth the risk of running into any trouble doing this even though I was about 100 sure that it would be fine it's just not really worth it just to go to the lounge there was one other option we could have gone to the British Airways arrivals lounge which is landside but that lounge closes at 2 p.m and our flight arrived to London at 1 p.m so by the time that I thought of doing that and figured out where the lounge was it was like 1 30. I guess we still could have just gone I mean it would have been nice to take a shower really quick but I didn't really know when you arrive after a really long flight you kind of just want to not do anything so we just took things slow and figured out how to take the bus again so we've done this twice now and I think I finally figured it out so there's three different bus companies there's flix bus there's National Express and then the other one I think is just called airline so airline is the only one where you can pay when you're getting on board the other two you have to buy a ticket either online or using the kiosk but one thing to note here is that they cut off the ticket sales I think 15 or 20 minutes prior to the bus arriving so you can't just like see the bus is coming buy a ticket online and get on the bus like that you have to kind of plan it in advance I'm not really sure why they do that it's not a capacity thing I think it's just they don't want people to miss their bus when we did this last time on one of the companies we did have like a ticket booked for the next bus and we tried to get on the earlier one that was like already there and we asked the bus driver that and he initially said no that we would have to wait for the next one but then after thinking about it for a minute he was like oh well you guys can just come with us it's fine as long as it's within the same bus company of course so yeah now we've driven with all three bus companies and they're all at different price points the flix bus is the cheapest and then airline is in the middle and then the most expensive is National Express there is like a linear difference in quality between the three I think flix bus was the worst and then the other two were about the same this is all if you're buying the tickets the day of if you do buy your ticket a day in advance then it looks like the prices are a bit cheaper and they're all mostly about the same but I think it's can be hard to predict like which bus you're going to want to take because you don't really know exactly what time you're going to get to the bus terminal so yeah that all worked out fine we had plenty of time to wait for 20 30 minutes in this kind of buffet area and then take our bus over to Gatwick and our flight from Gatwick to Naples was only delayed by about 45 minutes this time which is better than completely canceled so that was good and then we went to a different Lounge this time in Gatwick it was a little bit smaller but I think it was a bit nicer the food was still pretty bad but we weren't really hungry anyway we just found a couch to sit on and take a nap so yeah for 500 more I'm still not really sure if it was worth it if we were on British Airways we would have gotten to Naples around seven instead of it ended up being around 11 on the easyjet flight so we didn't have any issues with the immigration in Italy they weren't using the EES systems but we did have a problem with getting a taxi there was a long line it ended up taking about 35 minutes and yeah this is a common thing in Italy because there is no pickup up and you pay a small fee I think it's like two or three euros but at this time of night when all the taxis are busy and there's already such a long wait at the airport I mean you can try to request a taxi with the app I did try it but it just didn't work no one wanted to come pick us up and then they were also trying to make it kind of complicated because there were some larger taxis that could fit more than two people so they were trying to combine different parties together if they're going to the same place luckily for us when we got to the front of the line there was a smaller taxi that came so we could just get in that and not to have to share with other people but there was quite a big commotion happening there and yeah there was also like a couple people that were advertising taxi but then they were not actually a taxi they were just some random guy when one of those guys approached us I just kind of tried to ignore him and I think I said no but then there was some Italians that were in line behind us that just started yelling at him so yeah I think they were already pretty mad because they're waiting for like 30 minutes in line and that just really ticked them off and I think it is fair because yeah I mean to say that you're a taxi when you're not that is kind of a scam and especially after waiting in that line for so long I just want like a regular taxi so yeah we finally got our ride to our Airbnb and on the way the taxi driver he just kept getting pinged non-stop for people requesting rides from him his machine just kept beeping so yeah this is just how it is in Italy you know without Uber the supply and demand doesn't really work there's just going to be a shortage because taxi drivers they're not going to want to be working at midnight or 1am whereas Uber is great for part-time workers people that just want to make a little extra money but sadly that is not a thing in Italy so a rough outline of our trip is we spent two nights in Naples and then we spent two nights in Sorrento and then three nights in priano which is on the Amalfi Coast and then on the way back we spent one night in Paris just for a quick layover before our Air France flight so in Naples we stayed at an Airbnb I around but i did not see much for mx fhr or any kind of points hotel we also didn't have any fhr available at the 600 level only the 300 ones because we used most of our fhr in portugal the airbnb was about 200 a night and it was in a good location it was in the toledo area there was a lot of restaurants nearby but it was kind of like an alley so the taxi had a bit of trouble getting there eventually he had to just drop us off and we walked the rest of the way which is only about a five minute walk and then the other thing was that our apartment was on the fourth floor starting from zero with no elevator so it's just a lot of stairs getting up and down but it was a nice apartment it was clean and it looked like it was brand new and the air conditioning worked so we spent two nights in naples mainly just one day and it was interesting because i read online a lot of people were saying just to skip naples but we ended up really lucky because we didn't have to travel that much to get to the airport so we were able to get to the airport and we were able to get to the airport and we were able to get to the airport but we ended up really lucky because we didn't have to travel that much to get to the airport liking it it was kind of dirty but not really that much when you compare it to other cities i think it's just the alleys and the dirtiness that people were complaining about the food was good the things that you have to try in naples are at the sfagliatella which is like this crunchy pastry that's filled with ricotta cheese and then there's also the baba which is like this uh pastry that's soaked in rum those are both quite good and then also of course the pizza is very famous in naples it is a bit different than the pizza that you find in the us the dough is a lot more thin and delicate so it can be a bit more difficult to eat i don't know what way you're supposed to be doing it if you're supposed to roll up each slice and eat it that way or what i was doing was i would cut out the center with a knife and fork and then i would be able to hold up the slices just because if you try to cut it up and eat it like a normal pizza you wouldn't be able to hold up the slice without the center part falling down if that makes sense but i do really like the way that they make the pizza in italy i don't normally like pizza that much but the way that they do it there is just a lot less greasy and the mozzarella cheese that they use is a lot better so yeah we spent the first day in naples as sort of a recovery day to recover from the jet lag and then we went back and forth a lot on how we're going to do the rest of the trip if we're going to rent a car or what kind of transportation we were going to use because we wanted to see pompeii and herculaneum at one point and we thought that the best way to do that would be to rent a car and drive over there there is a train that goes to pompeii but we were going to do it like on the way down to sorrento and we didn't want to have to deal with like storing our luggage in a train station and then also to get to herculaneum it's a bit hard to get there without a car so planning this trip was a bit more difficult than normal there wasn't really an obvious way to do it i also saw that the hilton and sorrento it was only available for monday tuesday and wednesday night i believe so we sort of planned a trip around that there is also a ferry that you can take from naples to sorrento or positano but eventually what we decided on doing was a one-way car rental from naples to sorrento and then on that day we would stop at herculaneum and pompeii and then from sorrento we would take the bus to praiano and then on the way back we would take the bus and then the train i think that was the plan it is kind of complicated getting down to the amalfi coast there isn't really an obvious way to do it so yeah we started out in naples and we paid about 150 dollars for that one-way car rental so it was kind of expensive but that was definitely worth it because we just really like renting a car because of the flexibility that it gives us so we saw both herculaneum and pompeii i think both of them were really cool pompeii is just really big so it takes a long time to see everything i mean you can't really see everything but to see most of the major things it takes at least two to three hours and then herculaneum is a bit smaller but it's more well preserved and i definitely recommend checking out both of them as far as driving the rental car in that part of italy we didn't really have any issues all the toll roads you just paid in cash so there weren't any surprises there when we got the rental car the tenant was telling me that i needed to have the international driving permit which is like this booklet that you can get that's a translation of your driver's license i've gotten it before at the aaa office it was like 30 and then uh you can also get it mailed to you for i don't know what shipping cost maybe it's like 40 if you do that but i've rented cars throughout europe before and no one has ever told me i needed that even in italy so i didn't have it this time and they still gave me the car but they just said that if the police stopped me then i could get a fine of 400 euros and while that may be technically the law if you just think about that i mean it doesn't really make sense because what are the chances that you're going to get stopped by police and for the police to say that you need that permit when all that permit really is is something that you pay money for what really matters is your actual driver's license that is something that you had to actually take a test for to show that you know how to drive so yeah if it's paying 30 or 40 dollars for this piece of paper that i'm only going to use once plus taking an hour out of my day to do it and making sure that i have that document like packed and know where it is versus maybe getting stopped by police and them maybe making me pay that fine of 400 euros i think that the roi just doesn't make any sense and especially when the international driving permit only lasts for one year i think that's kind of bs i think that it should last a long time if you have a driver's license right i mean if all it is is a translation of your driver's license that translation is not going to change in one year so yeah we got to sorrento and we checked into the hilton the hilton is kind of up on the hill and it's about a 10 or 15 minute walk to get down to the town but it was a pretty decent value it was only i believe 50 000 hilton points a night and we stayed for two nights and then while we were there i got to make use of my hilton credits with a business platinums the hotel is a little bit on the older side but it's big it has a nice view it has a lot of restaurants and pools and stuff so i think it is a pretty solid option if you're going there so one thing that was kind of weird that happened to us was when we checked in we paid a deposit of 100 euros and it's supposed to be 50 euros per night so that makes sense and then when we went to dinner on the first night we went to the japanese restaurant which was okay it was just sushi nothing really that special but somehow the bill ended up being about 150 euros for the two of us definitely not worth it but we were planning to use my hilton credits which i had a lot of and we just charged it to the room so we thought everything was fine and then the next morning we get this note under our door saying mister and then they put my wife's name because i booked the room under her name which i mean my wife has an asian name so i don't know how they would know that she's a woman i believe there is a gender neutral way to put it that i've seen before people write mx instead of mr or mrs but getting a note like that is already a bit stressful i mean it feels like i'm getting sent to the principal's office because i don't know what it's about and so when we went down there what they wanted to talk to us about was how our dinner last night was more than the 100 euros deposit and so what they wanted from us was more of a deposit to authorize our card for more money to cover more room charges so i thought that this was very strange i've never had this happen to me before for a hotel to ask me for more money in the middle of my stay especially when it's only for two nights but i guess what they were worried about is when we check out the next day maybe we just forget like what happens if we just leave and we forget that we had a balance due they don't really have any way to charge us i don't think maybe what they normally do is they try to charge the card that you use to make the booking with online but this is a points booking and i didn't even put my credit card in there i think my account just still has some random card on it from years ago that i never bothered to update and also what do they do if it's an expedia booking or some kind of third-party travel agency they still don't have your card in that case so i'm just wondering how often this happens for them because 100 euros doesn't get you very far in this hotel and so we were talking about this with the reception person and she was saying that she wanted to charge my card for another hundred euros and i was trying to tell her okay i can do a hundred euros but we're gonna have dinner on property again tonight so i don't think that that's going to be enough and she said oh well you paid 100 euros deposit last night and then spent 150 euros for dinner and then you're paying another hundred euros now so that means you'll have 50 euros left for dinner tonight and i was just like there's no way that we're gonna spend less than 50 euros on dinner at any restaurant on this property so i'm not sure what we're trying to do here but eventually i just paid the hundred euros and we moved on with our day and then for the second night we had dinner at their main restaurant near the lobby and i remember that one was pretty good so we spent two nights in sorrento and we spent one day going over to capri so we took the ferry over there and that was a pretty cool island it was very crowded it was really nice but i don't think it was worth going there with just how many people were there and how difficult it was to get around to get up to the town you have to take the vernicular or you can walk up the hill and line for that was really long so yeah we probably had a good time but i'm not sure how many people were there and i'm not sure how many people were there and i'm not sure how many people were there and i'm not sure we'll probably will not be going back there but we did like sorrento it is a bit bigger than the other towns around there so it doesn't feel as crowded so then from sorrento we we had to get over to our Airbnb in Praiano. So Praiano is a small town that is right nearby Positano. So our goal there was to find somewhere that would be a bit more relaxed and away from the crowds. But the downside with that is that Praiano does not have a ferry terminal. So there's three main ways of transportation in the Amalfi Coast. And there's the bus, the ferry, and then taxi. And I read online about how the buses can get very crowded, but I was just hoping that, you know, September, all the kids are in school, so it should have been a bit less crowded. But no, it was still very much full. It was just jam-packed, and it was kind of hard to maneuver it when you're carrying suitcases. So I definitely would not recommend doing that. And like I said, we could have taken the ferry over to Positano, but there's no ferry that goes all the way to Praiano. I think theoretically, we could have taken the ferry over to Praiano, but there's no ferry that goes all the way to Praiano. So I definitely would have taken a water taxi from Positano to Praiano, but we did not explore that option. And then the taxi would have been 150 euros. In hindsight, that's what we should have done. Or we could have done some sort of pre-booked transfer service, maybe for a bit cheaper, because that would have been able to just take us directly from our hotel over to our Airbnb. It's just really tough to use the buses with luggage, or even at all, really. There's just not enough buses for the amount of tourists that there are there. And while we were planning our trip, we went back and forth a lot on whether or not we should rent a car, because everyone online was saying not to. But I think that given that we were staying in Praiano, that's what we should have done, is just rent the car all the way from Naples so that we don't have to pay for the one-way car rental. And yeah, after taking the bus from Sorrento to Praiano, we were like, okay, we don't want to take the bus again. So we ended up spending one day in Praiano just hanging out, and then the plan there was I would go over and get the car in the morning, and then we could spend all day using the car to drive around to other towns. And then on the last day, we could return the car in Positano, and then we ended up taking a shared transfer van over to the airport. So that ended up working out really well. It can be difficult to find parking, but we did figure it out, and the only place where it's a problem is in Positano. In all the other towns, there's street parking, which costs anywhere from free to $5 an hour. And then in a mall fee, there's no street parking, but there is a parking garage, and that I believe was 7 euros an hour during the day. And then I think at night, it goes down to a bit cheaper. So yeah, this may be a bit of a controversial opinion, but I really think that renting a car is the way to go. The roads are a bit narrow down there. I guess it's really just one road. But most people that are typing on the internet about telling you not to rent a car, are taking the bus, right? And obviously, if you're in the bus, then it's going to feel narrow. But if you're in a small car, then it's really not that bad. And then another thing people say is about how the traffic is really bad, so you need to not rent a car. And for that, I mean, the road isn't really that long. It's only about a 35-minute drive from a mall fee to Positano. So with traffic, maybe it'll take an hour, an hour and a half at most. I mean, that's not something that is going to ruin your day. A 30-minute drive that takes an hour is something that you can experience every day in Portland. So yeah, the buses are just really crowded. And a lot of times, you can see really long lines at the bus stops. And then right next to that long line of people waiting for the bus is a long line of taxis, because no one wants to take the taxi because they're so expensive. So it just seems really inefficient for the prices to be that high. Because of course, the taxi driver is going to want to charge you a hundred euros when they've been waiting in the queue for over an hour. And so again, this would be where it'd be great to have Uber. But I think a lot of people, they just pay whatever it costs for the taxi, or they get their own private driver to just stay with them for the entire week or however long they're staying. And just what people say about the Amalfi Coast is to be prepared to spend more money. It will just help you out a lot. And that's what we did for our Airbnb while we were in Pryano. It was $600 a night for three nights. So one of the most expensive Airbnbs accommodation that we've ever stayed at. And it's funny that $1,800 is still less than the cost of the boat ride to the Waldorf Astoria in Maldives. That was $2,300. And it might even be more now, because that was a year ago. But it was a really nice Airbnb. And I think we were pretty happy to be staying there and not in a more crowded place. We had a really nice view overlooking the water. And the Airbnb was right next to the bus stop, although we didn't really take the bus. We did have a few minor issues with the service at our Airbnb. You know, you can't really expect a lot of people to be able to come in and check to have much. There was no self check in at this property. Well, there was one in Naples. So we had to coordinate with someone to meet us there at a certain time. And there was a guy that met us at the entrance with his motorcycle. But the entrance is at the top of this really steep driveway. And it's quite a bit of a walk to get down to the actual apartment. And so he just showed up with his motorbike and was like, Oh, yeah, I'll just meet you guys down there. So he drove his bike down the hill and just kind of left us with our suitcases. And then when we got out of the car, Ben, there was no soap in the shower, which I thought was a bit of an inconvenience. There were just a couple of small packets, which only lasted us the first night. And when I asked the host if we could get more, they just told us that we could go walk up the hill and get it ourselves. And then we also had an issue with the power going out. And we had to ask the host originally asked the host if they could come fix it. But then they said that they didn't have time and instead was trying to give me directions on how to turn it back on myself, which I thought was a bit stressful because I don't know what the issue is, if the circuit was just overloaded, or if there was some other problem with it. And I was also a little bit worried because when the power went out, so did the Wi Fi and the signal coverage is just not really great over there. So I was kind of worried that I would run out of service and then wouldn't be able to contact anyone. So I was expecting a bit better service for paying $600 a night. But I think this is just the Italian standard that you have to live with. But overall, our stay was pretty great. And there was even this little private swimming hole that we could go down to it was this pool that was kind of separated from the waves because it was pretty hot while we were there. It didn't really seem like it should be it was only about 80 degrees or so but it felt very humid. And especially when you're walking up and down all the hills over there, you can build up a sweat really easily. And I remember one time all I did was walk up our driveway and was just sitting there waiting for the bus and I was like, why am I so sweaty? It's not even that hot. But it's just once you start getting sweaty with the humidity, you just won't get dry. So a pretty common thing to do in the Amalfi Coast is to go swimming and you can go down and rent a lounge chair by the beach for like 30 euros. We didn't do that on this trip. I'm not really sure why I guess we just didn't have time for it. And rather spend our time visiting other things. But that is something that you can do. And I mean, that's kind of the main reason why you'd go there during the summer. If you're not interested in the beach and the water, then I think it's a lot better to go and like the season, October, November, when the crowds are a lot less. I'm sure it's pretty there year round. So yeah, we spent the first day in Praiano, which is just a smaller town. And we just kind of hung out in the Airbnb, went down to the swimming hole and ate at the restaurants around town. And it was kind of funny the first night when we went to the restaurant and my wife was looking around and she's like, yeah, I don't think any of these people we would see on the bus, they just don't look like bus people. It was a lot more older, like Americans, mostly maybe retired couples, you're going to see a lot more of the younger Instagram type people in Positano. And yeah, the prices were quite high all around the Amalfi Coast in the restaurants. And it seemed like prices get more expensive, the further you get from Naples. So if you go off the Aperol spritz, which is a very common drink down there, and it's always the same ingredients in Naples, it's like six or seven euros, and then in Sorrento is around 10 euros. And then when you get to Amalfi Coast is around 14 euros. And on average, it's around 10 euros. And then when you get to the Amalfi Coast, it's around 15 euros. And on average, prices were about double in Amalfi Coast versus in Naples. And then Sorrento was somewhere in between. But there's not really much you can do there, you kind of just have to bite the bullet and pay the prices. And as far as the food quality itself, I thought that it was not really anything special. I think the food was a lot better in Tuscany. So yeah, after a day in Priano just chilling, we went and got the rental car in Positano and then drove it over to Amalfi and then Ravello. Amalfi is I think the second most crowded town after Positano. It was pretty big and just had a lot of things happening. So we did some shopping. And then we went to get lunch at this pizza place. And then after that, we went to do this lemon tour at a lemon farm. And that was cool. They told us all about the history of how they grow the lemons. And then of course, talking about limoncello, which I still don't really understand why people like that. It's basically just a mixture of Everclear and lemons. So you just don't really like the taste. And then after that, we went up to Ravello, which is like this garden town. It is not on the coast, but it's way up on the hill. So you still do get a pretty good ocean view. But it just doesn't have a beach. But it is a really nice town. It's not too crowded. And there's a lot of cool things to do and some nice restaurants over there. It is a little bit difficult to get up there from Amalfi because there's this one lane road that only allows traffic in one direction at a time. So you might be having to wait for 10 or 15 minutes at the stoplight. And this is another case where the buses do get full, so you might be having to wait for a while for the bus if you're trying to take the bus back down but from where ravello is positioned there is actually a road that goes behind it back up to naples so you could just drive from naples directly there you don't even have to go down to the amalfi coast road and there's also a lot of free parking just outside the city which like i said it's usually not that hard to find in the other towns in amalfi coast but in positano we did see some people parking pretty far away from the town and then in amalfi there's the parking garage but i think it probably does fill up in peak season peak times because when we were there looked mostly full and if you can't park there then i don't know where else you would go so yeah that was as far as we went for this trip we did not make it to minori and maiori which are some other towns that you can visit on the coastline and then on the way back we went to positano and then from there we took a shared van back to the airport so we had a few hours while we were in positano and we were able to just drop off our luggages with the car rental people while we explored the town for a few hours we were definitely glad we did that just because of how hilly positano is it would have just been really difficult to be dragging along our suitcases for that so while we were there we just went to some restaurants and walked around a bit we went down to the beach which it's a really big beach but we didn't have our swimsuits with us so we didn't get to go swimming and so we ended up just being really hot after that and just went to go get some lunch and then we got to naples and we flew over to paris that night we spent the night at the hilton at the cdg airport just because i was trying to burn the rest of my hilton credits so we were able to use a good chunk of them at the hilton sorrento didn't have any problems splitting the payment between five or six different cards at checkout but we did have some issues at the hilton at paris airport it is kind of an older hotel and so i think they just have older systems so it just doesn't make any sense to do it and the hotel was also very expensive it was like 300 euros which doesn't make any sense it's just nowhere near worth that quality there are other alternatives that are like 150 or 200 euros that are probably even a bit nicer than the hilton but we eventually did get that worked out splitting between six or seven different cards i don't know how but they just kept messing it up they charged one card and then told me that it didn't go through so they had me charge it again but it turns out the first one actually did go through so then they had me charge it again and they charged it again and it was just a mess probably the worst experience that i've had trying to use my hilton credits it's never not worked out for me to be splitting between multiple cards but sometimes it's just harder than others so yeah the hotel was fine we ended up getting a pretty big room but we didn't really need it because we were only there for like nine hours and then the next morning we got on our flight from paris to lax and it was on one of the newer air france planes one thing i was thinking about was whether or not we could try to upgrade into the air france first class because that's like a really exclusive product and cost twenty thousand dollars but about a month before our trip they stopped allowing people to upgrade on award tickets and i did also try with the check-in agent to see if we could do it but she wasn't able to do it in naples i guess i could have tried again in paris but i just didn't bother because i just saw that no one was able to do it online you used to be able to do it on the online check-in page there's like a button that you could upgrade to first class we probably wouldn't have done it anyway because usually it's like two or three thousand dollars but i was just curious to see how much it would have costed and maybe we got lucky for it but business class is totally fine like i said i was on one of those newer airplanes and yeah i think everything was good one thing of note here was that i did notice that the window seats do get a little bit more space than the middle ones so normally when we're traveling together we book two middle seats but i might start booking us two window ones because you do get an extra probably three to four inches of width and for this flight i booked us one in the window and one in the middle ones i'm not really sure why but when we booked this flight we had to pay for seats or we would have had to pay if we wanted to select our seats but then when it got to online check-in then seat selection was free so that's just the way that it worked out for us but even the middle seat was totally fine i still i mean it's still business class and i was able to sleep pretty well as far as the food i didn't really notice any difference in quality between air france and british airways i think they're both good and the service was also good as well i think the flight attendants were pretty nice it's really only been the american carriers american and united where i've experienced some attitude from the flight attendants oh and hawaiian as well but yeah everything worked out well and then when we arrived in lax because we were on an air france that gave us access to the new delta one lounge that opened a couple years ago in lax and i was also a little bit curious because based on the terms it wasn't 100 clear that we would get access because our next flight was on alaska on a separate ticket and if you read the terms of the access rules it says for delta one passengers you get access when departing on a delta one flight when connecting or when arriving on a delta one flight and then for air france and kom and a few other airlines it's not every sky team airline by the way it's only certain ones but for those airlines it only says you get access when departing and connecting so it does seem that there is supposed to be some difference between connecting and arriving and if you're connecting with a separate ticket does that still count and does it matter if it's a separate ticket on delta or if it's on alaska or southwest and also it's a bit interesting because if you're arriving on a delta one flight that's international then how are you even going to get into that lounge if you're not connecting onwards you'd have to get past security and you need a ticket for that unless it's specifically on the jfk lax flight which i think is marketed as delta one so yeah there was some uncertainty on flyer talk about that i was trying to read whether or not we could get in or not and there's also apparently some distinguishment between the delta one security line and actually accessing the delta one lounge because there is like a separate security so we didn't have any problems getting into the security or into the lounge for the security part we just kind of showed the person our ticket and he just looked at it for two seconds i was like oh air france okay sure and then when we got to the lounge they did try to scan our ticket but he was just like oh it doesn't say you have access based on my scanning your ticket and i had to tell him we're arriving on an air france flight and he was like oh you're not going to be able to get in if you're not going to be able to get in like oh okay well for that then you can just talk to the reception person and they'll handle it for you so no problems there and yeah that delta one lounge is great it has alucard dining and pretty good food way better food than the quantus first lounge and it had good views of the runways as well so i think it's easily the best lounge in lax and i think it's even better than the polaris lounges i did also take a shower and for the showers you actually have to go over to the sky club for that but the showers in that lounge are much better than the polaris lounges i did also take a shower in that sky club are already really nice i don't think you could really ask for anything better than that it might just be a little bit inconvenient that you have to walk from one lounge to another and i did get someone to walk with me to show me where the shower is but there was no one there like they just dropped me off they didn't wait for me to come back so i had to figure out how to get back on my own and you have to walk through this door that says like employees only or something like that so yeah we spent about an hour in that lounge and then we flew on a last day back to portland it is a pretty long walk to get over to terminal six you can save a little bit of time by walking across through the parking lots you can kind of cut the corner on the horseshoe but it's still at least a 15 minute walk to get over there but luckily our gate was just right after security so once we got to the terminal we didn't have to walk any further than that and we also got upgraded on our flight home so that was great so overall i think it was a great trip the flight is kind of like a bucket list item that i felt like we had to go at least once i'm not sure if we would want to go back i think for the prices and how crowded it is there there are other places i would rather go and maybe explore other parts of italy like sicily or sardinia is kind of where i want to look to next or just go back to tuscany doing any kind of road trip around there is always going to be really fun all right so we got to talk about iphones and i'll just start off by saying i realized that the last episode i was being a bit negative about the things that were happening and really i was just sad that pokemon was dying at walmart because that was something that was going really well for me up until that point and i think that did kind of hurt some of my motivation to go after these iphones and another thing that was a problem for me was so originally and how it's been every year is that the iphone pre-orders have always been at 5 a.m the week before on a friday so one week before they released in the stores but for some reason we don't really know why apple decided to do their pre-orders on saturday so this really messed me up because originally i was planning on that friday i was going to be in the airbnb in priano but then saturday was when we were gonna be leaving the amalfi coast and going back to naples to fly to paris and so the time change is nine hours so 5 a.m pacific time was 2 p.m in italy so that was original and going to be great for me because i would be able to be well rested and then i'll have all morning to set up for iphones now with it being on saturday then we weren't at an airbnb that we're staying at so i ended up just going to some restaurant with wi-fi and doing it there which was kind of chaotic you know i've got like five or six phones that i'm trying to order on so the drop itself didn't really go well but i thought it'd be fine because i normally don't really do that well on pre-order day because i'm usually going for in-store pickup and traditionally it's just been very hard to get pickups on the pre-order day i've said this before and i think it's sort of common knowledge at this point that ios devices get about a 10 minute head start so by the time everyone else gets in most of the pickups are gone and then also normally the shipping orders can be kind of hit or miss and last year and all throughout 2026 iphones have been very difficult to get apple has just been cancelling or delaying most shipping orders so this is what i thought was and i just didn't even bother trying with shipping because i thought that apple was just going to cancel it anyway and i've been through this several times where i make like 200 orders and then i have to go in there and cancel them one by one because apple just delays the shipping date indefinitely and i don't want to just end up with 400 iphones in november but really what i should have done is to try it anyway and i even wrote down into slack how it's been every year for the past three years and i wrote how 2023 it was hard to get like they limited you to two or three orders per address and then 2024 was unlimited and then 2025 i said that i got like 70 phones on the release day and then i got another 75 or so phones on the following monday so if you count friday through monday that was like 140 phones and then everything after that got cancelled and i think it was because i was using real apple accounts for the orders i got through most people that i know that used guest checkout got everything delayed so if i had actually thought about what i'd written there and looked at you know the data and if 2024 was unlimited after 2023 was limited then there is a chance that 2026 could have also been unlimited and so it definitely would have been worth a try to do that but there was probably a 25 ish percent chance of that happening because i thought you know like all the orders are getting cancelled throughout the year and like i said you know some lack of motivation for just being sad about walmart and also we're in the middle of our vacation so i don't want to be spending time on something that won't work and i remember looking back to last year or i think the year before that was when i started taking iphones really seriously and i remember i was thinking about iphones every single day for the entire week leading up to it i was getting all my cards ready and all my profiles and bots in order and i was even doing like some test orders just to make sure everything would go through i would order like a single airpod for pickup i would get everything locked in like a few days before the release day and then yeah i would hardly even sleep the night before because i was so excited about it and so all that time that i was spending thinking about iphones was really missed this year because i was on vacation so yeah how it worked out this year was it was unlimited per address for guest checkout so that was a really big missed opportunity there was guys that were getting thousands of iphones shipped to their house i probably wouldn't have ordered thousands because that is a bit beyond my risk level but i definitely would have done at least a few hundred and this is just the way that it goes sometimes there's a lot of things that you do that may have a 10 20 30 chance of working and you just kind of have to keep trying it and hope that one of those is going to hit big it was like this in pokemon as well where you don't know what's going to drop at walmart until a few minutes before the drop so you're spending all that time and money on proxies and stuff just to get everything started and then it could get to 6 p.m and there's just nothing there so i've learned my lesson this time i'm not going to be doing any vacations before or after the fall so i'm just going to have to wait and see what happens and i'm going to have to get back to work and i'll also be extending that to black friday as well it's really tough because we usually go on vacation for thanksgiving but i'll have to find some way to work around that and just be okay with there not being a deal which is how it was last year sort of i was really hoping that the airpods were going to go on sale but they didn't so yeah that's how it worked out for the pre-order day so all that was left was to do things the hard way which i was going to have to do and i was going to have to go to the store and go to my store and go to the store and go to my store and going for the restocks which can be a grind i mean i spent like a solid week driving around to all three apple stores almost every day and i was spending a lot of time scaling things up with my bot and rotating business goals around because i would keep maxing them out and managing all the orders it was basically a full-time job for those two weeks i'm pretty sure i did spend around 40 hours both of those weeks on iphones and the pick-up side but i just had to work for it i was really jealous of those people that were just getting a thousand burgundy pro maxes delivered to their house or to their warehouse and they don't even have to get off of their couch but yeah going into the store and getting phones that way went better than i expected it was quite a bit harder in the stores this year compared to previous years there were a lot of times when i was told that i would need to come back at another time and there was times at the bridgeport store specifically where they just told me to go and wait at this table and they would just make me sit there for hours and i would just keep asking them hey do you have any estimate on how long i'm going to be waiting because i could leave and come back and they just said oh well we'll just get to you when we have someone available so i ended up just bringing my laptop into the store and would be doing some work while i was waiting which ended up being fine it just made it a lot harder to go to all three stores by the shipping cutoff time and it was a lot of work for me to be able to go to all three stores so i decided to just go to one store and wait and see how long it would take to get back to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna have to wait a little bit longer to get to the store so i was like okay i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the store and i was like oh my god i'm gonna wait a little bit longer to get to the with target and pokemon 30th anniversary but at least for me i am mostly done with pokemon i still have a little bit of stock left that i was planning to hold long term but it does seem that walmart has officially stopped releasing any pokemon through their queue system and it's all just on raffles they did have a pretty decent drop on september i know seventh or eighth while we were still in europe i decided not to wake up for that i mean 6 p.m in portland is like 3 a.m in italy and i was just not feeling like getting up i was pretty jet lagged and it was like the time like a few days after we arrived where i was finally being able to sleep through the night and i was just not going to wake up at 3 a.m to maybe get something from walmart when we already know they're mostly doing raffles so i missed out on that one too i probably could have made like anywhere from 10 or 20 000 from that drop i don't know it's really hard to wrap my head around this kind of perspective when we're kind of worried about you know spending 200 euros on a taxi ride or an extra 500 on airfare to get there three hours earlier and then at the same time missing out on these five or six figure opportunities how we've always done our vacations is to optimize around company holidays so we're using less pto like from our jobs but really we focus more on working around the big sales of the year so yeah that's pretty much it for this month i did also do a few best buy deals for some laptops that seems like it's been going pretty steadily and we are coming up on a second prime day which is supposed to be october 6 i think or six to seventh so just keep an eye out for some deals this week it looks like the macbooks have already dropped in price by a hundred dollars i don't think there's going to be anything that amazing but just something to do while we wait for the iphone duo and then after that is going to be black friday so that is all i got for this episode i really appreciate everyone's support thanks for listening and until next time
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