Hotels and Reservations

All of the reservations for the trip are now complete. Have overnight at the Red Lion at the Seattle/Tacoma airport. I used PriceLine to bid on the room but according to what I've read I paid too much even though is was less that half of what the site was selling rooms for there on a regular basis. Oh well, next time I will bid lower. They do have a shuttle to and from the airport on a 24 hour basis so we won't have transportation worries in Washington. Will be staying at a Comfort Inn when we return to Heathrow from Egypt on March 23rd. The rate for the room was cheaper directly from the hotel than the home website for Comfort Inns and Suites and it was also cheaper than on the big hotel booking websites. Bidding for that night wasn't an option as PriceLine is only good for the US.

We still need to contact the credit card companies and the credit union to let them know that we will be travelling so they don't block the accounts on us. That would really be a nasty thing to happen. Last week we did request a credit increase on one of our cards so we would have a margin of safety in case one gets stolen or some such thing as that.

We bought some new luggage on Monday as well. We got a three piece set that includes a bigger roller than we have and a small one that we will be able to use as a carry-on and not have to worry about carrying it around during some of our generally long layovers. If the set would have included two of those smaller bags I would have really liked that. Alaska Airlines says they will honor American's luggage policy for overseas so will have to get in touch with American to have them put the luggage limitations in our record so Alaska can see them and not hassle us when we board next week. We will probably have to retrieve our bags in Seattle and check them again on American since we are staying overnight.

I guess overall for this trip we have done our homework pretty well. I talked with a travel agent the other day and she could not believe how cheaply we were going to Egypt with a stop over in London. At least that made me feel pleased about all of the work I have put into this.