Travel, Miles, & Luxury: Tokyo: The Long Way

Part I: IAD-MUC in Lufthansa First Class

IAD-MUC-NRT-DFW-DCA

My friend and I decided to burn some miles and visit Tokyo. Unfortunately, we had to make it a really short trip since we had to get back for our graduation. We started by flying from DC to Munich in Lufthansa first class and then onto Tokyo in Lufthansa business class. In Tokyo, we decided to stay at one of the best hotels in the world, the Park Hyatt Tokyo (the hotel from the movie Lost in Translation). For the return, we flew American Airlines first class back to DC through Dallas. The entire trip would have likely cost in the $30,000 range, but it was completely free thanks to miles from credit card sign-up bonuses.

After months of hard work and studying, school was finally over and it was time to head to the airport. We decided to take the bus, which seems kind of unfitting when you're about to fly first class. When we arrived at Dulles, we checked in at the first class counter and the agent thought it was odd that we were flying to Tokyo through Munich.

We got our boarding passes, and then headed to the Senator Lounge (if you want to see more pics of the IAD Senator Lounge visit my post here). One interesting thing to note is that some guy had his dog in the lounge, which I thought was kind of strange. However, the dog was very well behaved.

Guy with his dog in the Senator Lounge

In the lounge, they told us about a new service for first class passengers where we could eat dinner in the lounge. They had partitioned off an area of the lounge just for first class passengers.

First class dinner area

First class dinner menu

Overall, the dinner was very good. I tried not to eat too much to save room for the food on the plane. Time flew by and before we knew it they announced the flight was boarding. Boarding was quick and painless and we were in our seats in no time.

Seats

Legroom

Pre-departure beverage and macadamia nuts

After getting settled in, one of the flight attendants came around to ask us if we wanted to be woken up for breakfast. They also passed out pajamas, amenity kits, and dinner menus. The nice thing was that there was only me, my friend, and another guy in first class. So we basically had it to ourselves.

Amenity kit

Dinner was very good. We started off with a big heaping of caviar followed by a delicious salad. For my main course, I got the beef tenderloin, which was pretty good as far as airline steak goes.

Champagne

Amuse bouche

Caviar

Salad

Beef tenderloin

Hazelnut crunch bar

Baileys

After dinner chocolates

Drink table setup

After dinner, I relaxed by watching a few TV shows. My TV didn't work, so I had to switch seats. The Lufthansa first class TVs aren't very good. They're really old and small and the touch screen doesn't work very well. Also, they've got very limited content. The flight attendant said the TVs in the new first class configuration are much bigger and nicer.

I managed to get a few hours of sleep. When I woke up, the flight attendant said even though we were landing very soon I could still have a quick breakfast. I just had some orange juice, but my friend got something.