We are planning a trip to Europe, flying in and out of Dublin due to an amazing deal they had on Alaska Airlines. Our home airport is PDX (Portland) and the flights offered for the good deal all route through LAX (instead of Seattle, unfortunately, which adds several hours of travel time). Our flight leaves Dublin at 3:45 PM and is 11 hours long. We then have the option of toughing out the 3.5 hour layover to LAX and then flying home to Portland (another 2.5 hour flight), or taking a break and getting a hotel in a 12 hour layover (flight from Dublin arrives at LAX at 6:45 PM, which would be the middle of the night/wee hours of the morning where we just came from), and leaving on our next flight at 7:00 AM.
I know I cannot sleep on planes and really, really hate being excessively tired. Is it better to tough it out and get home to my own bed? Or take a break and a proper nap between flights? I know checking back into LAX would eat up a few hours, but I would think even if we could sleep from 9pm-4am that would help a lot.
What would you do?