YouTube vlog by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting travel from Italy to Maine (video published Oct 11, 2018). The vlog covers their departure from Italy, an ~8-hour flight to Philadelphia, a ~5-hour layover spent in the American Express Centurion Lounge (Lebanese-inspired food), and arrival in Maine to begin a Go RVing project about digital nomads. The hosts also summarize concrete benefits they used from their American Express Platinum card during this trip: the $200 annual airline fee credit (used to reimburse $100 in bag fees), and the $15/month Uber credit (used for airport-to-hotel transportation).
Questions this video answers
About eight hours.
About five hours.
$200 in airline fee reimbursements per year.
$100 (for two checked bags).
$15 per month Uber credit.
Chapters
And I'm proud to be an american.
At least I know.
So sad.
Goodbye, Luna.
Goodbye. Goodbye, Luna.
This might just feel like a regular old vlog to anybody who's watching, but to us it feels super weird because we have not vlogged in over a month because we've been doing Vespa tours in Italy.
If you missed the recap video on the Vespa tours, we publish that in real time and we will link it down below. But this morning we are up bright and early to head to the airport.
And we're both a little sad.
This is so much heavier than mine.
All right, we made it to the airport.
I slept.
Quick coffee in the lounge.
Okay.
Oh, sorry.
Okay. We just made it to our gate. We felt a little bit rushed this morning. We didn't even get to finish our coffee at the lounge and they were putting out all these beautiful dishes as we were leaving. It was such a tease.
We are about to board our eight hour flight to Philadelphia. But today's plane footage is probably going to be a little disappointing because we booked these tickets at the very last minute and we're both sitting in the middle of the plane and we're not even together.
It's gonna be a long flight.
All right, we gotta go. Oh. Alone.
Goodbye, Italy. Goodbye Bovinga. Goodbye yummy food and wine. Goodbye, sunshine. I'm sure it's still sunshining at night.
Take a look in the direction of the lavatory you des use and if there's a line for, we'd either delay your trip or pick another laboratory in the same cabin. Like, thank you in advance for your cooperation and understanding on those items. Arrival time, route of flight may be seen on the screens in the back. Number estimating approximately 20 minutes early at the gate. You like to receive the box. It's 17 minutes before the hour of 7am Weather conditions made it to Philadelphia.
For your final destination.
I finally got it.
We are officially back in the usa. It feels really good to be almost home. It's a super strange feeling being in an American airport when you can hear all the little conversations going on around you because they're in English. We're just so not used to that.
It's just been Italian and we've had no clue what was going on around us for over a month. I think that is the lowest ratio of filming to flight time that has ever been shown here on the vlog because we were basically just stuck in a dark room for nine hours. So all we did was watch movies the whole time.
I did Edit the vlog a little bit. And then I computer died. Then I watched three movies.
Now we have a five hour layover here in Philadelphia, which we weren't super excited about. But about five minutes ago that all changed.
We had no idea that there was a Centuria lounge in this airport. Our favorite domestic lounge is here at Osborne Square.
One of the reasons we love Centurion lounges so much is because of the food. All their locations have a different type of food. Our favorite one is in Dallas. They always have Mexican food. And this location has Lebanese inspired food. It is so good. This lounge is also overcrowded like all the other street lounge.
But we still love it.
We just got to our gate. According to my phone it is 8.59p.
But according to my watch, which is on the time that we left in Italy, it is 3am which is what time our body thinks it is right now. By the time we make it to our hotel in Maine, it will be, I don't know, 6am needless to say, the vlog is going downhill from here.
I'm tired just hearing those words.
In a water evacuation. The exit doors lies at the front and back in the detectation. All measures are clearly locked with signs and opening instructions if needed by signs and lights. Keep in mind the closest exit may be behind you in the event of an emergency. Leave all belong.
The honeycomb ice cream. It's honey ice cream and their ice cream tastes like butter. My friend, actually, she got me like a framed map of Casco Bay so I could learn the island. Nice chatting with you. I hope you have fun. Thank you so much. Thank you.
That's what I do like for this.
Wow. I don't think I've ever done that. First try.
When we got to Maine last night, we had not slept in over 24 hours straight, so we just kind of stopped vlogging. I'm not gonna lie, I think we're getting a little rusty after not filming for the entire Vespa tour because somehow we went the whole day and didn't explain why we were coming to Maine.
So the reason that we're here is to work with a company called Go RVing to film a video over the next few days. But the crazy thing is we're not gonna be the ones like behind the camera producing the video. We're gonna be the ones in front of the camera. So we're like the talent for this video production.
How exciting. We're not exactly sure what the video is yet. We just know that it's about digital Nomads. That's us. And we assume Arby's.
The weird thing about this is we rarely ever participate in a video where we don't have total editing control over the final product. So we're excited about it, but at the same time, I'm a little bit nervous. Just like being on camera and then putting it in someone else's hands.
It's gonna be fun, though. They've sent us the itinerary. We're doing some really cool things over the next four days.
Okay, one more thing. Before we end this video, I just wanted to share with you how much value we got out of this credit card yesterday. This is the American Express Platinum card, and it comes with $200 in airline fee reimbursements, which can be a bit tricky to use. But yesterday we were able to save $100 on our bags. So we flew American Airlines and we flew Basic Economy for the first time. And Basic Economy is pretty much like the lowest man on the totem pole on the airplane. So you don't even get a checked bag or a cabin bag included in the ticket price. So we had to buy two checked bags, which cost $100. So we got that completely reimbursed with this card.
Then we spent five hours in the American Express Centurion Lounge, and you only have to have this card to get in there, so we got tons of value out of that, and it's just the best lounge in America.
And to top it all off, this comes with A$15 a month Uber credit, which we used to get from the airport to. To our hotel completely for free last night.
It's like magic.
So $115 in value, plus free lounge access.
And this is not an ad for American Express. We've had this card forever. And we were just laying in bed last night, like, wow. We used our card three times today, and it made the day so much better. So we thought we would share.
If you want to know more about this travel hacking stuff or like, we've piqued your interest a little bit with this, then I'll leave a link down below. I'm starting to write a lot more guides on our blog about travel hacking and credit cards and that kind of stuff.
I just plugged in my computer and I just plugged it straight into the wall. I went to get my adapter out.
And I didn't delete it.
It's the little things.
Before we end this video. No. Oh, gosh. Almost lost my credit card to the air vent.
