"They looked around the region at all these great airports and gone: let's get the TK Maxx version of that"

Alex returns to Hong Kong, Paul discovers La Compagnie. So much travel, so little time to record!

At Layovers, we keep our promises: long time listener Alex Vukolova waited 5 years to be a guest, and this is the day, she's been awesome, for a very special show — we travel on Condor, JetBlue, Transavia, or BA, from Berlin to Almaty to New York to Tokyo and then some, and we geek out on aviation, from a rant about the bundling of the unbundling, to an admiration for Air Astana (not really for the current Almaty airport).

We visit Bologna, Istanbul, Bari, Birmingham, Brindisi, we are in a Mission Impossible movie, and we're running like Tom Cruise over the new Midfield Terminal in Abu Dhabi.

It's a lot about Japan in this episode. And the two dings, the ominous two dings, they will make robots of flight attendants.

Kyle Potter, Executive Editor at Thrifty Traveler, all-around awesome dude, Hello Kitty enthusiast, and long time Layovers listener and friend, tells us all about why MSP is the best thing ever, like everything in Minnesota.

We ate a lot of chocolate, lots of cheese, and laughed a lot — how we traveled to Geneva to record Attaché for YouTube (the airline didn't put us on a scale for the return leg).

What rookie mistake did Alex do this time? A story involving cheeseboards, Star Wars mirages, and a hot air balloon.

Alex finally flies something else than BA/AA to the US, and Paul has so many questions (but no ceiling).

How is it we had never actually done MAD as an episode title? This ends today, however the mad MADrid dash from T4S to T4 never does.