Regrettably, upgrading with cash or points is specifically excluded.
It is a verrry long time since I've travelled long-haul in whY.
We're doing it in late October. QF codeshare on EK metal PER-xDXB-FCO. Four nights in Rome, train to Florence, four nights there, ITA FLR-FCO, Then back on the EK metal FCO-xDXB-PER.
Eerily, it pretty much mirrors a trip a CBR-based colleague and I did back in 2004 to go to a conference in Florence. He has friends in Rome, so we spent a weekend there before heading by train to Florence. About seven years prior to that, he and his wife followed the same route on their honeymoon, using a car borrowed from their friends!
Talk about spooky action at a distance!
When I phoned my friends in CBR to ask whether they'd like an all-expenses paid trip to Italy, we all ended up ROFLOAO about the whole coincidence. So those friends are joining PJM and me, after finding their own way CBR-PER.
That John and I had a lot of fun on that trip, so it will be great to retrace it with our partners. The friends in Rome have been alerted to the onslaught.
It includes a cooking activity at somewhere in Piazza Navona nd a small-group tour of the Colosseum dungeons in Rome, a golf-cart tour of Florence and a day trip to Siena and wine tasting and lunch in Chianti, plus $4K spending money.
Even better than buying some points and getting a case of wine thrown in.