When a couple of accountants go on holiday there are bound to be spreadsheets & cost benefit analysis involved. A couple of issues we reviewed:

London Pass

We purchased a six day pass for £277.20. We visited:
• Hampton Court £58.00
• Postal Museum £32.00
• Charles Dickens Museum £25.00
• London Transport Museum £48.00
• Uber Thames Clipper £39.80
• Cutty Sark £36.00
• Royal Observatory £36.00
• St Pauls £41.00
• Tower Bridge £24.60
• Hop on, Hop Off bus £58.99
• London Tower £67.20
• Westminster Abbey £54.00
TOTAL £525.19

As we had purchased the pass we set to visiting as many paid sites as possible. My absolute favourite was Hampton Court followed by the Charles Dickens & Postal Museums and St Pauls. Was the pass good value? We think so but probably wouldn’t need it next time. It gave us skip the line access and meant we didn’t think twice about the cost.


Aegean Upgrade Challenge

We received an email inviting us to put a bid in for an upgrade from economy to business class. This definitely required a spreadsheet!

As we had left home in rather a hurry, the last minute bag weigh didn’t happen. Unbeknown to me Pete had slipped in a rather weighty Rick Steves travel guide which I had deliberately left behind and had already photographed the relevant pages. My bag leaving AKL was 9 kgs and Pete 11kgs. When we weighed them checking in to Dubai they were 11kg and 13kg respectively. No additions – maybe humidity in Dubai made them heavier…? So, an upgrade to allow 13kg carryon was appealing.

The LHR to ATH flight time is similar to flying NZ to Australia. The cost of economy was about the same so we put a bid in for what we would be prepared to pay for Premium Economy, less the fact it isn’t really a comparable product, and plus comfort of knowing our bags were travelling with us. Also, we had booked extra legroom seats and the flight was fully booked, likely overbooked as they are allowed to do in Europe, so needed to free up some seats. Then we ignored all that and put a bid in on the dial midway between poor and good chance of success. This whole exercise took about an hour out of our life that we will never get back but we had fun.
Oh – and we did get the upgrade!

PS: Aegean business is definitely not AirNZ Premium Economy let alone Business. However, they do let take as much as you can carry without weighing, neighbour free seat with extra legroom, fast track customs clearance at LHR and Lufthansa lounge access. We still have our bags at this point.