Introduction: AY, What a Trip

Introduction
Finnair 90 A350-900 Business Class Bangkok to Helsinki
Finnair 833 A321 Business Class Helsinki to London Heathrow
British Airways 462 767-300 Euro Traveller London Heathrow to Madrid
Hotel Preciados Madrid
Hotel Catalonia Square Barcelona
Finnair 3270 A321 Business Class Barcelona to Helsinki
Finnair 89 A350-900 Business Class Helsinki to Bangkok
Cathay Pacific 754 A340-300 Business Class Bangkok to Hong Kong

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So, as you might know, I recently flew on a whirlwind trip from Hong Kong to Bangkok, then Bangkok to Helsinki, onwards to London, Madrid, Barcelona, Helsinki, then back to Bangkok, and finally to Hong Kong. Yikes. Typing that up was enough to give me a minor headache.

Here’s a map of my incredibly confusing trip. 

Around March, I picked up a ~HK$18,000 Finnair business class fare departing from Bangkok to London, and then from Barcelona to Bangkok. Both of these sectors would require a connection in Helsinki, which seemed like a pretty seamless process. As I would need to be in Bangkok for those dates anyways for a competition, I thought it would be a good idea to book the flights, give Finnair a go, and spend two long haul flights in relative comfort, for the first time in quite possibly forever since I started getting into the whole miles and points game.

Also, I’d just like to note that Finnair offers incredibly good deals ex-Bangkok in Business Class, so if you don’t mind having to position, the fares are really worth taking.

Finnair Airbus A350-900 Business Class

Plus, the flight would give me a chance to fly the brand new A350, give free inflight wifi a go and try out some products from Marimekko, a brand that I’ve adored for quite a long time (their stuff is really, really, really, cool). What’s not to love?

Finnair Airbus A350-900 Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport 

To get to Bangkok, I booked a roundtrip Cathay Pacific premium economy redemption from Hong Kong to Bangkok, which cost only 4,000 Asia Miles more than an economy redemption. However, I was upgraded for both legs to business class, one of which was operated by a 777-300ER and the other operated by an A340-300. As both Alvin and I have reviewed the 777-300ER longhaul (Alvin’s reviewed it on my specific configuration), I’ll only be reviewing the A340 leg.

Cathay Pacific Airbus A340-300 Business Class

For the flight from Helsinki to London, we were booked on an A321, where I sampled EuroBusiness for the very first time. Suffice to say it was a pretty interesting and underwhelming experience.

Finnair Airbus A321 Helsinki Airport

In the UK, we would be staying in serviced apartments and my aunt’s house, as well as a generic Holiday Inn. So, I won’t be reviewing any of the properties that I stayed at in the UK.

To get from London to Madrid, I booked British Airways’ Euro Traveller aboard their 767-300 aircraft. As my parents were oneworld elites, they were able to select bulkhead seats in the front row of the aircraft, which also happened to be Club Europe seats (with Euro Traveller service). We paid for cash with these flights, since we didn’t think this was a valuable redemption (despite the fact that British Airways has a nice distance based award chart).

British Airways 767-300 Club Europe Seating

Despite initially booking the ancient InterContinental Madrid, we ended up choosing a more modern boutique hotel that was closer to the city centre just for our convenience, the four star Hotel Preciados. We booked a Premium Room to ensure that we could all sleep (and fit inside the room) comfortably. The room was just under $2000 HKD per night, and had really good value for money.

Hotel Preciados Entrance

In Barcelona, instead of staying at the trendy and terribly impractically designed W as I initially had planned (it was quite expensive…), we stayed at a boutique hotel located smack-dab in the middle of the city, the Hotel Catalonia Square. It was a phenomenal stay, but more on that in the review. We were upgraded to a Junior Suite at the time of booking as our original room type didn’t allow an extra bed. The hotel cost $2000 HKD per night, which was a little pricey but still amazing value for money.

Hotel Catalonia Square Junior Suite

For the flight back to Helsinki for our A350 flight back to Bangkok, Finnair scheduled an older A321 (without sharklets) for our flights, which was surprising a completely different inflight experience in terms of the comfort of the hard product, as well as on the ground, so I’ll be ranting about reviewing that flight too.

Finnair Airbus A321 Business Class Cabin

Bottom Line

This was honestly the trip of a lifetime, and overall was phenomenal, both in terms of the destination and how we got the destination. Stay tuned for the reviews. Please accept my apologies for the poor picture quality, as these were taken with my iPhone 5S. However, I’ll shortly be changing my phone to the better iPhone SE, so hopefully the pictures for my next trip report will be better.