Trip-Planning: New Year Road Trip on California’s Highway One

California’s Highway One has been in my road trip bucket list for a while and it was a great opportunity to plan for it, when an error fare emerged for flights to the region. I booked this flight with 2 of my friends.

How it started

In March 2022, there was an error fare that allowed travellers to book roundtrip Business Class flights from Jakarta to the US and Canada for around S$1,750, while earning over 35,000 miles (worth S$558). It was my third trip in 2022 (read here and here) that involves some sort of airline error pricing.

This error fare could be booked directly via Lufthansa or SWISS, and could even include flights on other Star Alliance airlines like Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways!

We planned to start the road trip along California’s Highway One on New Year’s Day.

Final itinerary and Flight routes

To position in Jakarta, we booked a flight from Singapore with a low-cost carrier for about US$60.

We intentionally included flights on Lufthansa and SWISS, as we have not tried those Business Class products.

Upon returning from the US, we skipped the final flight from Singapore to Jakarta and received the miles for all flown segments.

We spent a few days in Jakarta and stayed in some high-value Marriott hotels using points.

I’ll be reviewing these hotels and airline seats, along with some airport lounges. Here’s what I paid:

Hotel/Airline Seat	Total Cost
The Ritz-Carlton Jakarta, Pacific Place*	30k points
JW Marriott Jakarta	15k points
The Westin Jakarta (2 nights)	15k points per night
Singapore Airlines B77W Business Class (Jakarta to Singapore)	S$1,750
Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 Business Class (Singapore to Frankfurt)	–
Lufthansa Boeing 747 Business Class (Frankfurt to San Francisco)	–
Grand Hyatt San Francisco (4 nights)	US$244 per night
Hyatt Place Glendale Los Angeles (3 nights)	9k points per night
SWISS Boeing 777 Business Class (Los Angeles to Zurich to Singapore)	–

*I had previously shared a review of my stay at the amazing The Ritz-Carlton Jakarta, Pacific Place. For just 30k Marriott points, this stay was just as phenomenal!

Car rental

As we were planning a road trip, we needed to rent a car for about a week. This was at the end of our stay in San Francisco, as it didn’t make sense to rent a car while staying put in an expensive city.

I made a booking through SIXT rent a car as I have a SIXT Platinum membership status, that comes with the Marriott Bonvoy Titanium membership status. SIXT Platinum benefits include up to 15% discount and free car upgrade.

I booked the lowest model, BMW 2 series, and it costed just US$338 for 7 days.

During pick-up, I was hoping for a 2-category upgrade to the 5-series but received a 1-category upgrade to the BMW 330e instead. However, with a whopping 420Nm of torque, it was more than sufficient for the scenic, 700+km drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles on California’s Highway One!

We took our time and completed the drive in 4 days, with stopovers in Monterey and Santa Maria.

As we did not want to pay for hotel parking in Los Angeles, I booked an award stay in a Hyatt property, where Globalist members get free parking when staying on points.

Best cards for overseas spending

While in the US, I used the Amaze card (paired with Citi Rewards) for non-travel-related expenses to earn 4 miles per dollar and minimize foreign currency fees.

Upon exceeding Citi Rewards’ S$1,000 monthly limit, I used the Amaze card (paired with Citi Prestige) to earn 1.3 miles per dollar, and also minimize FX fees.

Related: Best Singapore cards for foreign currency spending

Bottom line

It was nice that the error fare held up, granting us the opportunity to embark on this picturesque journey. Stay tuned for the upcoming reviews!