Our entire trip was built around a Thailand group adventure with Ben Big's Deals. More on that part of the trip later — but spoiler alert: it was AWESOME!

We were determined to fly all four of us together in business class — which is no small feat! It required repositioning flights in both the U.S. and Asia on the return… but totally worth it — it allowed us to see some other cities along the way. So our “Thailand Trip” quickly turned into an “Asia Trip” with our first flight to Tokyo.

Before our long-haul to Tokyo, we built in a fun stop in LA — and it ended up being such a highlight!

🌴 LA Highlights

✨ Our hotel was AWESOME — Downtown LA Proper Hotel.
🎶 Visiting the Grammy Museum – fantastic!
📚 Browsing a downtown market and hanging out at The Last Bookstore – the coolest secondhand bookstore filled with art installations.
🖼️ Quick visit to The Broad – small contemporary art museum with FREE admission.
🍝 Fun lunch at De La Nonna (bonus: used our Amex Resy credit!).
🍸 Dinner and drinks on the rooftop of our beautiful hotel — paid for with our $100 property credits!

✈️ How We Did It

MCI–LAX:
Southwest Airlines – 22K points + $22.40 total for FOUR tickets.
We paid for 2 tickets and the other 2 flew as companions using the Southwest Companion Pass. 🙌

Hotel:
Downtown LA Proper Hotel – such a fun, stylish property (check out the hand-painted walls in the reception area!).

We booked through American Express Platinum Fine Hotels & Resorts (FHR) and used our $300 credit, plus $129/night per room.

FHR perks included:
✔️ Free breakfast for 2 daily
✔️ Upgrade if available
✔️ $100 property credit
✔️ Guaranteed 4pm checkout

Building in this LA stop put us in the perfect relaxed mode before our long-haul nonstop to Tokyo ✈️🇯🇵

More on that flight and our time in Tokyo in the next post!