A spontaneous trip

One of the perks of being both perpetually unemployed and a credit card nerd is the ability to "afford" to go somewhere on a whim with the help of award travel and the generosity of your best friend who is willing to host you for free. And it turned out to be one of my best decisions... maybe ever? One of my closest friends, initially "just" a language partner, told me last month that he would be headed to the Bay Area for a few weeks on a business trip. His first time in the US. We had met in person only once before, about 1.5 years ago when I stopped for a few hours in the Netherlands, where he has been living for several years now. Starved of in-person social interaction lately, I booked the flights two weeks out from my departure, even though I would spend all of approximately three days there. Neither of us expected this to pan out. He was interested in visiting the US someday, but it seemed so unrealistic to him in the near future that it never crossed his mind. I didn't expect…