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Happy Maui-versary! – our anniversary in Maui

March 12, 2017

Last year I got Lacey a push-pin travel map for our anniversary. It’s a really cool map, but I realized that it might have been kind of a sucky gift for an anniversary. Anniversaries probably call for a little more effort than just ordering something online. My bad. This year, Lacey and I put our heads together about 4 months in advance and came up with an awesome idea. Rather than doing material gifts, we were going to spend our 2nd wedding anniversary in Maui, HI.

This trip was a rare case because we actually paid for most of it out-of-pocket and did not use any rewards points. We did, however, get 1 of our flights for $99 + taxes while using the Alaska Airlines “companion fare” that comes with this card. So we still saved about $600 dollars on flights. Our tax returns covered the rest of the trip including a 5 night stay in an ocean front studio suite at the Honua Kai Resort.

The Honua Kai is beautiful. The resort has multiple pools, a water slide, a lazy river, a charming ocean front restaurant, and easy beach access. We would definitely recommend staying here if you’re planning a trip. It is located on the northwest side of the island, minutes from Ka’anapali Beach and Lahaina. The studio we stayed in was incredible. We had a full kitchen (where we baked our wedding/fun-fetti cake), living room, large bathroom with a tub and shower, and a large patio equipped with furniture. The best part was the sliding glass door leading out to the patio. You could slide and fold this door together creating an “open air” feel leading from your room out to the resort and ocean.

While we didn’t have much planned for this trip, there were a couple of things we really wanted to do. I wanted to see some waterfalls and Lacey wanted to do some cliff jumping. We knocked out both pretty quickly and stumbled upon some awesome plants, animals, and geography along the way. We visited the Heart Shaped rock near the Nakalele Blowhole and we happened upon the Twin Falls and Garden of Eden along the road to Hana.

We spent our final evening in Lahaina on a bench facing the ocean and sunset. We shared a giant shaved ice while marveling at nearby whales as they lept out of the water. So incredible!

For us, this was the perfect way to spend our 2nd anniversary. Hopefully this becomes a Thompson tradition!

the Honua Kai sent us an anniversary gift!

baking our wedding cake!

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Travel

Los Angeles for President’s Day Weekend

February 26, 2017

Lacey and I didn’t originally plan on taking a trip in between Aruba (late Jan.) and Maui (next Saturday!), but the weather in Boise continues to be absolutely miserable. The buzz from the Aruba trip wore off quicker than we’d hoped as the wind, rain, snow, and inversions of Southern Idaho kept coming. Lacey and I are both really affected by ugly/dark/cold weather (who isnt?!). I’m not sure if it’s to the level of seasonal depression disorder, but it sucks nonetheless. After a few days in a row of being bummed out, we decided we had to seek out some sunshine.

With plenty of Southwest points paired with the Companion Pass and our recently earned 2 “anniversary” nights with Hyatt, I started doing some searching for a Presidents Day Weekend getaway. From Boise, Southern California is usually our best bet for a quick trip to sunshine this time of year. I had a little trouble out of the gates finding award night availability with Hyatt. I searched places like San Diego, Long Beach, Newport Beach, and Laguna Beach. No luck. It seemed this was just too short of notice to book a room with awards. Then I remembered Lacey telling me about how much fun her and her mom had wedding dress shopping at Manhattan Beach. I quickly searched for, and found, availability at the Hyatt House near Manhattan Beach. After a quick chat with Lacey, we booked the trip.

The conversation went something like this:

Mat – “How do you feel about going to Manhattan Beach for President’s Day? We can get there for free, use 2 free nights at a Hyatt, and then book a 3rd night with a points+cash combination. The entire trip would cost $83.”
Lacey – “Oh my gosh, yes! Book it!”

So I did, and we enjoyed a quick and casual, no plans, just hanging out, Netflix by 7pm, awesome weekend in the Los Angeles/Manhattan Beach area.

The weather was a little chilly during the trip, but the sunshine did come out each day after some morning clouds. We ventured to Hollywood and Sunset Blvd, while hiking to the Griffith Observatory. We made our way to Venice Beach and crushed some In and Out Burgers on the way back to the hotel. We even caught a movie during a couple hours of cloudy drizzly weather one morning.

Another awesome experience courtesy of rewards points. We saved $900+ on this trip by using the Southwest Airlines companion pass and the Hyatt rewards programs. Let us know if you have any questions on how you can do the same!

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Rewards Points Travel

Nearly $22k of Free Travel in 12 months

February 11, 2017

Lacey and I just did the math and realized that we redeemed nearly $22k of free travel in 12 months. To be exact, it was $21,833.42 from February ’16 – January ’17. Holy shit! We traveled to some amazing places (20 different cities) and stayed in some incredible hotels along the way. The majority of our travel expenses were either highly discounted or completely free thanks to credit card rewards points. I can’t stress enough how easily all of you can do the same thing!

Our 12 month travel recap includes the destinations listed below. Click the links to get more details on what we experienced in the past 12 months and how we did it for next to nothing!

Feb – San Diego, CA
Apr – Houston, TX (Final Four)
May – NYC, Florence, Rome, Malta, Chicago
July – Huntington Beach, CA (Vans US Open)
August – Denver, CO
September – San Francisco/San Jose, CA (Beyoncé Concert for Lacey’s B-Day)
October – Scottsdale, AZ (medical trip)
January – Orlando, Aruba, Curacao, Miami

While there were a number of rewards programs we used to get all of this awesome stuff, there are a few programs that gave us the most in return. Keep in mind that we don’t get paid to promote any of these programs. These are our genuine opinions based strictly on our personal experiences.

Southwest Airlines Companion Pass – Lacey and I have redeemed over $5,000 worth of free flights from this reward so far. This reward lets you AND your companion fly for free for up to 2 years. Lacey and I still have all of 2017 left to use this perk and we’re going to do our best to make sure we continue earning this reward for as long as possible. Check out how to earn the SW Companion Pass here.
The Hyatt “2 Free Nights” card – link here. After meeting the spending requirements, you’ll earn 2 free nights at ANY Hyatt property. Lacey and I both earned this reward and used our 4 free nights at the Grand Hyatt in Aruba for an $800 per night ocean view suite. This card also gives you 1 anniversary night per year. Lacey and I just used our anniversary nights to book a stay on Manhattan Beach – Los Angeles.
The Wyndham card – What a nice surprise this card has been! You don’t hear much about this card on the mainstream travel blogs. You’ll earn 45k points after hitting the spending requirement. You can book ANY of their hotels for a flat rate of 15k points. So out of the gate, you get 3 free nights anywhere. We used this to book an ocean front suite on South Beach in Miami. It was one of the best hotel experiences we’ve had so far. More details in this post.
The Hilton Honors program. I love Hilton! They have multiple cards you can sign up for making it easy to stack points quickly. Their customer service reps treat you like royalty when you call to book your room(s). I’ll never forget how cool it felt to have someone say “Alright Mr. Thompson, let’s see if I can get you into our most luxurious property during your stay.” There aren’t many occasions in life when I feel like a big shot, but the Hilton reps make me feel like that every time I talk to them.

We are so lucky to have experienced everything we did during the last 12 months. We are very grateful that there are ways for people on a budget to get to see the world. When there’s a will, there’s a way! We hope to continue this pace throughout 2017 as well. So far we’re booked through June 2017 with vacations to Los Angeles (Manhattan Beach), Maui, New York City, and Sayulita Mexico.

Let us know if you have any questions once you start planning your next vacay!

Edits and pics from our travels last year:

San Diego:

Houston (Final Four):

This pic was on our custom lanyards that we wore around our necks.

New York City:

Florence, Italy:

Rome, Italy:

Malta:

Chicago:

Huntington Beach, CA:

Denver, CO:

Aruba:

“Baby Bridge”

first view upon opening our window shades at the Hyatt in Aruba. Not a bad start

Curacao:

view from our Hilton Suite in Curacao

South Beach – Miami, FL:

view from our upgrade at the Shelborne in South Beach

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Rewards Points Travel

Aruba, Curacao, and South Beach Miami for free

January 29, 2017

Idaho is going through one of the coldest/snowiest winters in the past 30 years. Snow, ice, freezing rain, slush, inversions, misery. We had to escape it if only for a short while. Luckily, we already had a getaway booked for January not knowing just how badly we would end up needing it. This is kind of a funny story how it all came about actually. Back in September, we booked this trip out of spite for the sole purpose of getting back at the Hyatt hotel brand. Somewhat of a blessing in disguise, here is how we ended up visiting Aruba, Curacao, and South Beach Miami for free.

Last summer, Lacey and I visited Huntington Beach, CA. You may remember our post about it here. We ended up staying at a little Air BnB during that trip by default as Hyatt would not let us use the 4 free nights we earned from this card. The Hyatt reps were so awful and unhelpful while I was trying to book nights at one of their $200 per night properties down there. I felt like they were doing everything in their power to prevent me from redeeming the awards we earned. Long story short, Hyatt pissed me off super bad and I wanted to get back at ’em for how they treated us.

Angrily, I googled “most expensive Hyatt hotel”. At the top of the results was their resort in Aruba. What a coincidence, Southwest Airlines flies to Aruba meaning Lacey and I could get there for free because we earned the Companion Pass. This was our chance to stick it to Hyatt as these rooms were $600 per night. Suck it Hyatt. Side note, these rooms in Aruba were a challenge to book as well. Their website would tell me there was no availability when I search for 2 or 4 consecutive nights at this resort. Oddly, when I searched 1 night at a time it was available. So, I ended up having to make 4 separate reservations in order to get 4 nights in a row. Keep this in mind when you’re looking for availability on Hyatt’s website. I’m not kidding, they do their best to prevent you from using your rewards.

While booking our flights to Aruba, I found that we could break up the trip by making stops on the island of Curacao and in South Beach Miami. We had never been to either place and both looked amazing. We booked a suite for a night at the amazing Hilton resort in Curacao with honors points and booked 2 nights at the Shelborne Boutique Hotel on South Beach in Miami with Wyndham reward points. I have to mention how awesome the staff at the Shelborne resort were to us. I emailed them prior to the trip to confirm our reservation and briefly mentioned that it was an anniversary trip. When we checked in, they said “it looks like you are celebrating a special event with us so you have been upgraded to an ocean view penthouse suite.” I had totally forgot that I emailed ’em about it and was a little caught off guard at first. Then I turned to Lacey and said “happy anniversary, ha”. If that weren’t enough, they sent us a bottle of champagne later that night. That was pretty amazing of them and we are so grateful.

Our week-long trip was just what we needed to break up this awful winter here in Idaho. Each place we visited was amazing for their individual reasons. Aruba’s beautiful white sand beaches, flamingos, and iguanas made us feel like we were in a different reality. Curacao’s tropical surroundings and heavily Dutch influenced architecture had us wishing we had more time to spend there. The hustle and bustle of South Beach blended with the beauty and calm atmosphere at the beach had us asking each other if we were ready to move there.

One last thing to point out. We ended up paying $25 a night to upgrade our room at the Hyatt in Aruba to an ocean front suite. So for $100 + taxes we stayed in a room that was priced at $789 per night. We ended up getting a value of about $3100 from our 4 reward nights. Maybe Hyatt will rethink their customer service approach when someone is trying to book a $200 per night room next time 🙂

Total Amount of Free Flights/Hotels for this trip alone = $6,799 prior to taxes

Southwest Flights – $2900 (we used Southwest points and the Companion Pass to book these flights)
Hyatt in Aruba – $3100 (Lacey and I both signed up for this card to earn 2 free nights each)
Hilton in Curacao – $309 (used a combination of these cards over time to earn Hilton Honors points)
Shelborne Boutique Hotel on South Beach – $490 (we used Wyndham reward points from this card to book this)

Photos in Aruba –

Renaissance Island (where the Flamingos and Iguanas are)

Baby Bridge (natural arch)

Bon Bini Festival

California Lighthouse

Eagle Beach

first view upon opening our window shades at the Hyatt in Aruba. Not a bad start

“Baby Bridge”

rock garden near the natural bridge

at the “Bon Bini” festival

Photos in Curacao:

Downtown Willemstad

Hilton Curacao

view from our Hilton Suite in Curacao

Photos in South Beach:

Shelborne Boutique Hotel

South Beach

Henna Tattoo on South Beach

Lacey got her 1st Henna Tattoo on South Beach

view from our upgrade at the Shelborne in South Beach

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Travel

A Day in Denver

August 24, 2016

Lacey and I had never been to Denver before. Being that Southwest has nonstop flights from Boise, we decided to give it a look. If nothing else, we could put a new pin on our travel map. With the help of some beautiful weather, public bicycles, nachos, and 21oz. margaritas, we enjoyed our day in Denver.

Thanks to the Southwest Companion Pass, Lacey and I hopped on a free flight to Denver last Saturday morning. We landed, caught the hotel shuttle, dropped off our bags, and took a $5 Uber to downtown Denver. We were enjoying brunch and mimosas at the Viewhouse on Market St. by 11:30am. The Viewhouse is one of the coolest sports bars I’ve ever been to. It’s like Disneyland for drunken sports fans. They have a huge outdoor area on the 1st level that is full of backyard games like corn hole. The top floor patio, where Lacey and I hung out, has amazing views of downtown Denver and of Coors Field. Their brunch is delicious and is accompanied by solid happy hour specials that include bottomless mimosas and a build your own Bloody Mary bar. Our day in Denver was off to a strong start!

After brunch, we walked across the street and found a public bicycle station where we rented 2 bikes. We couldn’t think of a better way to quickly find out what all was going on in the downtown area. While cruisin’ around, we ran into a Farmers Market right outside Union Train Station and then discovered the 16th St. Mall. Lacey had heard good things about the 16th St. Mall from a friend, so we hopped off our bikes and decided to check it out a bit more. Full of shops, restaurants, and people, this 1+ mile strip of outdoor mall was something I had never seen before in any other city.

As on most of our trips, I was on the prowl for a delicious margarita. I wish I could remember the name of the place we found on 16th St, but I definitely found a winner. The menu offered a 21 ounce, margarita. Yikes! It took quite a while to finish that bad boy off, but we enjoyed some great people watching from the patio of the restaurant while I worked on it.

Still on 16th St., we visited a cool little sports apparel shop. I’ve been wanting a new Chicago Cubs hat for a while now. I don’t know if it was the margarita or just the excitement of visiting a new city, but I figured this would be a good day to make that purchase. Surprisingly enough, I found the exact Cubs hat I had been looking at online the day before in Boise. An all black fitted New Era hat with a white “C” on the front…likely the best Chicago Cubs hat ever.

Still riding the high from my purchase (and margarita) we headed back toward Coors Field to grab a bite at Lodos Bar and Grill. This rooftop patio restaurant looked out to 2 other rooftop bars as well as Coors Field. The surroundings reminded me of a beer commercial or something. I always figured they staged those commercials to make ’em look like that, but as it turns out, that’s real life in downtown Denver. Well done Denver, well done.

Following Lodos we headed over to Coors Field as we had tickets to the Cubs/Rockies game. Right around that time, Lacey started feeling ill and we decided to call it a day rather then head into the game. I think the altitude played a role in her illness as I wasn’t feeling so hot either. Make sure to drink tons of water when you visit Denver! You need to keep as much oxygen in your blood as possible being that you’re not going to get as much from the air as you normally would.

Aside from getting sick, we still had a good experience in Denver. We got to see this beautiful city via bicylces and rooftop patios, we had some delicious food and drinks, and I scored a new hat! We will surely visit the mile high city again someday.

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Rewards Points Travel

3 Free Hotel Nights for Your Next Trip

August 6, 2016

Many of our recent “how to get free travel” posts have been focused on earning free flights. The reason being is that we’re currently in love with our newly acquired Southwest Airlines Companion Pass. We booked over $4k in free flights in 3 months! Anyways, that’s a previous story. While free flights are a huge piece to the free travel puzzle, let’s make it complete by adding some free hotel stays. I am going to give you really quick tip that will result in you booking 3 free hotel nights while choosing from over 7,200 locations and properties.

Before I tell you the sweet, sweet magic that will get you around $1,000 in free hotel stays I want to remind you that we do not get any sort of compensation for what I’m about to recommend. The coolest part about our travel tips are that you can trust they’re genuine. We aren’t trying to push a sale on you or anything like what some of the other point guy(s) 😉 often do. All of our free travel posts are simply a reflection of what my lovely wife and I are doing to try and see the world.

That being said, Lacey and I recently booked a trip to Orlando, Aruba, Curacao, and Miami for January 2017. Our flights were taken care of by our Southwest Companion Pass, but we still needed some free hotel stays to make this trip doable. We already had 4 free nights with Hyatt Hotels to use in Aruba, which is awesome, but we still didn’t want to pay out of pocket for all of the remaining nights of our trip. After a few hours of researching I discovered…drum roll…the Wyndham rewards Visa card.

Before stumbling on Wyndham’s site via Google, I had literally never heard of their rewards program. I usually only see updates on the same 4 hotel rewards programs over and over; Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, and IHG. At first glance, Wyndham’s bonus offer of 45k points didn’t seem very impressive. In my experience, 45k points with any of the previously mentioned hotel chains would likely get you 1-2 nights at a shit hotel in a sketchy part of town. This is not the case with Wyndham. Every single one of Wyndham’s properties is a flat rate of 15k points per night. Yes, this includes their most expensive properties. No matter where you’re wanting to go, you’ll be able to book 3 nights with your 45k points. Depending on where you book, you could save over $1,000 in free rooms with this reward.

This is how it works:

Sign up for the card (here) – there is a $69 annual fee that will post on your 1st statement
Use the card once and earn 30k points (posted to your account after 1 billing cycle)
Spend $1,000 with this card in 90 days and earn another 15k points
When your points post to your account, go shop for your hotel room at Wyndham.com

Easy enough right? Thanks Wyndham! 😉

Do yourself a favor and look at this list of the top Wyndham properties before booking your stay. That’s where Lacey and I found this $330 per night resort we’ll be staying at on South Beach in Miami for free. Spoiler alert, we’re going to put the extra money saved towards margaritas on the beach. Sounds like a good investment to me!

Let us know if you have any questions! Now go book a beautiful and expensive stay at a Wyndham property for free!

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Travel

Huntington Beach and the Vans U.S. Open

July 28, 2016

Last weekend we decided to take advantage of our free flights with Southwest Airlines and take a quick weekend trip to Huntington Beach, California. We had no reason to go there, other than having heard from friends that it was a fun little beach town. Since we loved our weekend in San Diego so much we thought “Why not?”

We had no plans other than beach, eat and drink. Just a week or two before our trip we found out that we had accidentally booked it while the Vans US Open was happening, so the timing worked out perfectly! We stayed at a place we found on Airbnb that was about four blocks from the events on the beach, so we were able to walk to everything: restaurants, bars, coffee, shopping, and of course, all of the Vans US Open events.

Not realizing how big of a deal the US Open is, we were quite shocked to see how busy the little town of Huntington Beach was! The second day we were up on the pier looking down at the boardwalk that lead to event and Mat compared it to Times Square, except everyone was in bikinis! Crazy! It was strange seeing everyone wear their swimming suits everywhere, including restaurants! It was pretty fun to be in such a relaxed environment. I literally didn’t brush my hair for the entire three days we were there and I loved it.

One day we rented bikes and (foolishly) attempted to ride to Newport. Spoiler alert, that didn’t happen. We did ride by a country festival that was happening on the beach though, which was so cool! A new item has now been added to the bucket list….attend a music festival on a beach.

Between the margaritas, watching world class surfing, skateboarding, outdoor movies in the amphitheater and the amazing sunsets the west coast offers….the weekend was an absolute blast! Oh yeah, we both left with some new Vans gear. 🙂

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Rewards Points Travel

Free Flights with Southwest Airlines

July 21, 2016

The Southwest Airlines Companion Pass is the best credit card reward we have earned so far. We booked $4,110.67 in free flights during the first 10 weeks of having the pass. Yep, for real. As of last Thursday, we are booked for 10 round trip flights on Southwest Airlines. You can do the exact same thing we did. Below you’ll find 3 simple steps to get a ton of free flights with Southwest Airlines.

If you missed our previous post on the Southwest Companion Pass, I’ll give you some quick deets right now. To earn the pass you need to earn 110k Southwest Rapid Rewards points in a single calendar year. Once you do, you’ll receive the Companion Pass. The pass lasts the rest of the year in which you earn it AND the entire next year. Now the fun begins. You can start booking your free flights with the 110k points you earned. When you do, you can add your companion to each one of your booked tickets for free. It’s pretty awesome.

Here’s how you can earn the 110k points to get your Companion Pass. While there are a few different ways you can stack these points with Southwest’s partner programs, I feel like the following route is the easiest.

Sign up for the Southwest Plus card, spend $2,000 before 90 days and earn the 50k bonus points.
Sign up for the Southwest Premier card, again spend $2,000 before 90 days and earn another 50k bonus points. (suggestion: wait 30 days in between sign ups)
With the points earned from spending $4k and the 100k bonus points, you’ll have 104k Rapid Rewards Points. Your final 6k points can come from some strategic spending through the Southwest Shopping portal. The portal will link you directly back to the online store you were going to shop at anyways, but you’ll earn 3 to 10 times the points per dollar spent when you link to it through Southwest’s portal.

The lovely people at Southwest Airlines are smart and realized that people are trying to time their sign ups to earn the Companion Pass in January. That being said, they don’t usually offer the above mentioned cards at a 50k bonus point level around that time. These cards are available now however and if you’re interested in getting a companion pass, make it easier on yourself and sign up while they’re easy to get. Lacey and I didn’t need anywhere near 2 years to fully utilize this reward. We only needed 10 weeks. …and honestly that was just time spent deciding where to go. The actual booking of the flights took an hour. Southwest now flies to the Caribbean, Mexico, Costa Rica, and everywhere in the United States. Deciding on where to go is maybe the toughest part of earning the Companion Pass.

With flights taken care of for the next year or so, there is suddenly way less pressure to keep signing up for multiple credit cards for free flights. All you’ll need to focus on now are free hotels. 🙂

Let us know if you have any questions. We can’t wait to tell you about our upcoming trips that were made possible with the Companion Pass!

Pack your bags! You’re about to get a ton of free travel!

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Travel

Our Weekend in Chicago

July 14, 2016

Chicago is quickly climbing up the ranks on our most favorite cities in the world list. The last 2 times we have visited, it seemed like the city, people, and weather have been teaming up to sweep us off our feet. Our most recent visit was no different. Again, with beautiful weather and friendly people, here’s how Lacey and I spent an early summer weekend in Chicago.

First off, I’m a big believer in managing expectations. If you’re expecting too much out of city, event, vacation, or anything else, odds are you’ll end up disappointed if it doesn’t live up to the hype. On the flip side, if you go into something with an open mind you have a greater chance of being pleasantly surprised. This was exactly the case with us and Chicago. We had no expectations. We just wanted to hang out and eat some pizza.

We stopped in Chicago this May on our way home from our 15 day Euro-Trip. The weather was absolutely beautiful at 65 degrees and sunny. We visited a few touristy locations such as the Skydeck at the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) as well as “The Bean” (Cloud Gate) in Millennium Park. Once again, we felt safe on public transportation and found everyone we were surrounded by on the streets and in restaurants to be welcoming and friendly.

We were lucky enough to stay at the historic Palmer House hotel during our weekend in Chicago. We had some Hilton Honors rewards to burn so we decided to use them in style. A funny thing I’ve noticed when we stay at fancy hotels for free is that the employees of the hotel react to us being there the same way Clark Griswold reacts when Cousin Eddy shows up for Christmas. All that aside, we enjoyed our stay and got back at the hotel a bit by “accidentally” sneaking into an executive lounge continental breakfast. Thanks for the free waffles Palmer House!

After breakfast, we walked over to Millennium Park to check out “the Bean“. While this has become a must see for travelers and instagrammers, we had actually never been there before. As with most pieces of art we’ve been lucky enough to visit recently, Cloud Gate (the bean) was much cooler in person than we expected it to be. We ended up hanging around it for about an hour. I snapped some funny pics of Lace rockin’ cheerleader moves in front of it that you can see below.

We left Millennium Park and hopped on a metro over to the Willis Tower where we had pre-purchased “Fast Pass” tickets to go up to the Skydeck on the 103rd floor. While pre-purchasing these tickets cost us about $20 more, it saved us at least 2 hrs of standing in lines. Totally worth it. The views of Chicago and Lake Michigan from the SkyDeck Lounge are crazy beautiful. While up there, we stepped out onto the “Skydeck Ledge” which is basically a glass cube that extends out from the building and over the city. It’s a pretty overwhelming experience. As an added bonus, the 30th anniversary of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is this year, so there is a roped off area where you can stand next to Sloane Peterson and Cameron Frye mannequins and put your head on the glass in the exact spot Matthew Broderick (Ferris) did. Getting to do this was super cool for me as I grew up with that movie.

After our nervous stomachs calmed down from being in the Skydeck, we decided it was pizza time. Eating at Gino’s East has become a “must-do” each time we visit this city. Their super deep dish, sauce on top of the cheese, traditional Chicago style pizza is amazing. Gino’s has been around for 50 years and has multiple locations but we always go back to the original restaurant on Superior Ave. This graffiti tagged, celebrity memorabilia filled pizza joint makes for a fun and authentic experience while waiting the standard 1 hour of required baking time for the deep dish crust. If you haven’t been, you need to stop by on your next visit to Chicago. If you’re with a group of 2-3 people, believe us, a medium pizza will be plenty.

Our weekend in Chicago was once again awesome. The only thing missing was a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Unfortunately they were out of town 🙁 Next time Cubbies!

We’re becoming so fond of this city that we’ve already booked our next trip!

See you in January Chicago!

Let us know if you have any questions!

Click here to see our video edit from this trip.

Click here to see how we used rewards points to book this trip for free!

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Travel

You Need to Visit Malta

June 29, 2016

Ever heard of Malta? Neither had we until a few months ago. Our Barcelona buddies suggested we meet there this May. Being that we had some reward points to burn, we booked it no questions asked. After booking, we finally did some Google searching to discover that this tiny Mediterranean island looked amazing! From beaches to cliff diving to ancient temples and cities; we’re going to show, and tell you a shit load of reasons for why you need to visit Malta.

If you are like we were, then you have no idea where Malta is or how to get there. Picture the map of Italy. You know how it looks like boot? Picture the island that “the boot” is kicking. That’s not Malta, it’s Sicily. Right below Sicily, you’ll find Malta. You can fly to Malta from many of the major European airports on Air Malta or AlItalia. From many locations, a ticket on these airlines will be less than $100. Lacey and I traveled to Malta from Rome for $70 a ticket.

What’s so cool about Malta? Literally everything, and I don’t use the word “literally” as loosely as some. Malta and it’s neighboring islands Comino and Gozo, are responsible for some of the most amazing geographical features in the world. Places like the Blue Lagoon, Azure Window, and St. Peter’s Pool are just a couple featured spots off the top of my head. As if the beauty of the island weren’t enough, the history of Malta is even more incredible. Ancient cities, megalithic temples (older than the Pyramids), and the roots of Christianity can all be found and explored here. For all of you Game of Thrones nerds out there, Malta is also responsible for numerous breathtaking backdrops in the earlier seasons of this show.

We felt pretty overwhelmed at first while planning this trip. There was so much to explore and there were only 4 days to do it. We couldn’t afford to lose time relying on public transportation to trek us around. We decided to reserve a rental car. Renting a car was trickier in Malta because I needed an international driver’s permit and oh yeah, they drive on the other side of the street. Yikes!

Our first day was spent cruzing around St. Julian’s Bay which was a block from our hotel, the Hilton Malta. We would definitely recommend staying in this area as it is very close to a ton of restaurants and night life while also being a central take off point to all of the sites you’ll want to visit.

Day 2 got off to a quick start as we were touring the capital city of Valletta before noon. We popped into St. Paul’s Shipwreck Church, took some pics of Ft. St. Elmo, and grabbed some lunch before taking off toward the city of Marsaxlokk. Yeah, try to pronounce that…Marsaxlokk. Just outside of this city, Lacey found St. Peter’s Pool, which ended up being a major highlight of the trip. After a few hours of cliff jumping and swimming, we made our way back to St. Julian’s for a lot of pizza and wine. This day was so much fun!

The next day was, to this point, the best vacation day of my life. We caught an early morning ferry to the Blue Lagoon on the island of Comino. Words can’t describe the beauty of this place. It’s probably easier to just check out our pics below. The Blue Lagoon is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

After the Blue Lagoon, we loaded up our rental car on a giant ferry and headed for the island of Gozo where the Azure Window is located. This landmark is so grand and spectacular. Unfortunately it’s rapidly eroding away so you better get over there and see it soon! After a couple hours of hiking around and eating a late lunch, we headed out. On the way back to the ferry we realized that there were some megalithic temples along the way, so we stopped to check ’em out. I would recommend anyone interested in Aliens and the Ancient Astronaut Theory, to read up on these temples. There were a bunch of elongated skulls found there as well as other locations in Malta.

Our final day was relatively mellow as we spent the day at the ancient city of M’dina and then at the Golden Sands Beach. I think we were all still a bit tired from the action packed day before. It was nice to finish up the trip with a relaxing beach day with friends.

Malta is incredible! I would recommend it to anyone.

Let us know if you have any questions!

Click here to see our video edit from this trip.

Click here to see how we used rewards points to book this trip for free!