Europe on Premium Credit Cards — The Ten-Day Guide
Two people across France, Switzerland and Italy on airline miles, hotel points and $1,250 in card credits — which card paid for what, day by day, with the receipts.
Most trip write-ups tell you which award they booked. This one tells you which card came out of your pocket for a CHF 7 locker, a mountain railway counter and a hotel that turned out to have a house car. Ten days, three countries, eleven daily guides plus the closing ledger, each answering one question we could not find a straight answer to before we left. New days are added here as they publish.
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Airline Miles, Hotel Points and $1,250 in Card Credits: Ten Days, Three Countries — Two people, ten days, three countries on airline miles from two programs, hotel points from two more, and $1,250 of Amex Platinum, Capital One and Delta hotel credits. The four-card rule we ran for the whole trip, the full ledger, every one of the eleven parts, and the seven things we would change.
Day 0, getting there: 30,000 points, three lounges and a massage chair — Day 0 of ten days in Europe. Two economy seats to Paris for 30,000 Atmos Rewards points: 27,500 for the first, 2,500 for the second after a Global Companion Award. Plus a long Dallas layover, the card lounges that all had a wait, and the eight Priority Pass venues most people never look for.
Day 1 in Paris: a late landing, the Arc and the tower on foot, and what the FHR night paid — Day 1 of ten days in Europe. A late landing at CDG, a first afternoon and evening done entirely on foot from the Arc de Triomphe to the Eiffel Tower, and one Paris night booked through Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts to take the whole benefit stack: what each benefit actually returned, and why two FHR stays double the perks but not the $300 credit.
Day 3 of 10, Pilatus: the steepest cogwheel, and a hotel in the wrong valley — Lucerne sells three day trips to the same customer. Pilatus, Rigi and Titlis all promise a summit, all take most of a day, and all cost money on top of whatever rail product you already carry. Most guides rank them by view. That is not the decision. The decision is the weather that morning, what your discount card actually covers, and how much of the day the mountain takes from the rest of the...
Day 4 of 10, Jungfraujoch: a clear summit, and a cheaper way down — Jungfraujoch is the most expensive single ticket most people buy in Switzerland, and it is the one that will not give your money back if the mountain is in cloud. That is the real question. Not whether the view is good. Whether you hand over that much for a view you cannot check in advance and cannot rebook.
Day 5 of 10, Saas-Fee: a CHF 49 train seat, and the night at The Capra — The GoldenPass Express sells a CHF 49 Prestige seat on top of a ticket you already have to buy, and nobody tells you what it contains first. The day ended at The Capra in Saas-Fee, booked through Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts, which gave us the best service of the trip. Here is the receipt, what the benefit owed us, and what the hotel did anyway.
Day 6 of 10, Zermatt to Lugano: every connection missed by two minutes — We missed every bus and train on Day 6 by two or three minutes. Switzerland forgave it. The Centovalli did not: the last train of the day, an empty first-class car, one hour of the views and one hour in the dark. How to size a buffer to the timetable, not the map.
Day 7 of 10, Lugano to Lake Como: a slow morning, and the $200 last leg — A slow morning in Lugano, the last Swiss chocolate on Via Nassa and pizza next door, then the S10 to Como for CHF 6.60 and the leg we had not solved: Como to Menaggio, where the app quoted $400, the ferries were full and a car cost $200. We reached the hotel at 19:00, which is where Day 8 begins.
Day 8 of 10, Lake Como: 170,000 Hilton points, breakfast on Gold, and the €4.60 ferry — A 170,000-point night at an SLH property on Lake Como, tested against Hilton Gold: breakfast for two held, the upgrade did not, and the spa was the reason to come. Then the €4.60 ferry to Varenna, the Bernina ticket we never bought, and the chain of trains to Milan.
Day 9 of 10, Milan to Paris: 8,800 points, and the buffer CDG nearly ate — The pitch for an airport hotel is simple. You are next to the terminal, so the early flight stops being a problem. What that pitch leaves out is that an airport hotel usually sits inside an office park, and an office park at 21:00 on a Sunday sells you dinner at whatever price it wants.
Ticks and Lyme disease in Switzerland: do you need to worry, and what we packed for the mountain days — A note between Day 2 and Day 3 of ten days in Europe. The Swiss health office treats the whole country outside Ticino as a tick-borne encephalitis risk area, ticks live up to about 2,000 metres, and the meadow paths between the lifts sit inside that band. What the FOPH and the CDC advise, how to take a tick off, and the two things on our packing list.