The morning of Tuesday, September 27, we finally boarded a flight out of Europe for the last time on our world tour.

Our Foursquare/Swarm map as we left Europe showed us that we did pretty well on the continent! We’ve just got a few blank spaces we’ll be sure to hit up next time.

Our destination was Muscat, Oman, and thanks to our stash of American Airlines AAdvantage miles before this trip started, we had the chance to fly in a premium cabin! Because American Airlines is a member of the Oneworld Alliance, we redeemed our miles for a really nice flight on Qatar Airways, headed from Warsaw to Muscat (Oman), via a connection in Doha, Qatar. The price was a fairly paltry 45,000 miles per person, less than a domestic roundtrip in the United States in American Airlines’s domestic first class product. The service onboard was absolutely incredible, as was the meal and champagne; I can’t say enough good things about the Qatar Airways product.

Cheers, Europe! Thanks for all the memories!

What’s interesting is that international flights with two classes are always classified as “economy” and “business,” whereas flights with three classes break into “economy,” “business,” and “first” classes. Imagine our surprise when our boarding passes for our short hop from Doha to Muscat had FIRST printed across the top in bold letters! We had a short connection time in Doha, but we certainly made sure to show ourselves into the Qatar Airways Al Safwa First Class lounge. In a word, it is absolutely STUNNING. If you want to see more detail, take a look at this piece from One Mile at a Time.

Qatar Airways’s First Class lounge in Doha is an absolutely astounding space, and perhaps the most elegant public space we’ve ever visited.

We had such a nice time that it was almost a shame to get ourselves up and board our flight to Muscat, where we met with Charley’s college buddy Jim and had an incredible time staying with friends and seeing some sights around Oman. We’ll have plenty more of that in our next recap update.