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Travel Prep Part 1 – Public Transportation

February 6, 2016

Anytime someone tells me they have a vacation coming up and I ask “got everything dialed in for your trip?” and they answer “meh, we’ll figure it out when we get there”, I wanna blow my brains out. Not because they don’t have a bunch of events/excursions/tours booked, but because they haven’t put thought about ANY of the details that could literally make or break their trip. Packing, food, transportation, hotels, dining, site seeing, etc. are all things you can have figured out before you head to your destination.

Being that Lacey and I are super OCD when it comes to this topic, we’re going to share our thoughts in a multi-post, Travel Prep, series.

First up – Public Transportation

Alright, so let’s say you’ve just arrived at your destination (by using our best practices for booking a free flight of course 😉 ). When you walk off the plane and out those airport doors to a city you’ve never been to, do you have a plan? If not, you’re already wasting precious vacation time and you’re likely feeling super awkward and uncomfortable…not to mention standing out like a sore thumb as being a dumb shit tourist. Not only does it totally suck to be in this position, it also lets any scam artist know that you’re a easy target.

We’ve all been there, I know I have. It is an overwhelming and embarrassing feeling. Well here’s the good news, you never have to go through this again if you spend a little time before-hand doing some public transportation Travel Prep.

Start by doing a Google search on your destination city. Get an idea of all forms of public transportation available. Do they have a metro? Do they only have buses? Do they have both? I know most cities have taxi/uber services, but why spend $50 getting to your hotel when the metro costs $2? Spend that extra cash on a celebratory “we’re here!” bottle of booze at dinner that night.

Buses in Paris will drop you off right outside the Louvre.

Did you pick your preferred form of public transportation? Now find out if you can pre purchase a travel pass online and have it mailed to you. Overkill? Maybe, but this will help you avoid a confused walk around the metro or bus station looking for a way to purchase your ticket. You’ll already have your pass in-hand, ready to use, like the rest of the locals. Even though it’s pretty easy to find a ticket machine at a metro or bus station, I’ve run into many cases where the ticket machines are out of order OR for some reason they only accept certain types of payment. Just a couple of the reasons to buy your pass before your trip if it’s an option.

Taking this a step further, most transportation services now have YouTube vids on how to use/swipe their cards at the station. Watch these vids a few times to get super comfortable with the process so by the time you get to the station you’re a pro. No more holding up lines while you get stuck at the subway turn style.

Below is an example vid for Chicago’s Ventra Card. Kind of a silly video, but at least you’ll feel dumb in the comfort of your own home instead of in a crowded train station.

Ok, great, so you made it to the train station and through the turn style gates. Now what? None of the giant signs have the name of your exact stop on ’em…shit! Are you in the right place? Where do you go? What train are you supposed to get on? Again, the feeling of being an awkward dumb ass rushes over you. But wait, you can avoid this hiccup too!

Here’s where the internet comes in handy again. Once you’ve decided which form of public transportation you want to use (before your trip), look up their daily routes and departure/arrival times. You’re looking for a map similar to the one I found below for our upcoming trip to Rome. I know that we’ll be starting at the TERMINI station and that we’ll need to get to the S. Pietro (St. Peter’s Basilica) stop. The Ottoviano/S.Pietro stop will NOT be on the main signs in the TERMINI station. Instead the signs will have the final destination of that route on the sign. So for the example below, I will be looking for the red line to Battistini. I know that our Ottoviano/S.Pietro stop will be the 6th stop along the way.

Making this even easier, nowadays there are TONS of public transportation apps you can download that will help with your trip. These apps will give you all of the routes and arrival times. Here is a really cool public transit app that we’ve been using lately. You can also do a simple AppStore/Google Play search for “Your City + Public Transportation”.

Simple enough right? For a lot of you, this might be common sense. For the rest of us that drive cars everyday instead of using public transportation, this can be intimidating. It definitely was for me. By spending just a few minutes researching this stuff before your trip, you can take the stress off of a big portion of your trip. Being in a new city is overwhelming enough with all of the new sites and sounds, the last thing you want to worry about is getting lost. Spend less time being lost and confused and spend more time enjoying your trip!

Train Station in Riomaggiore, Italy the day after getting engaged!

I hope this helps! Let us know if you have any questions.

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Rewards Points Travel

San Diego for Rihanna. Rewards Flight in 12 Days

January 31, 2016

A few weeks ago, Lacey told me that she really wanted to go to San Diego to see an upcoming Rihanna concert. Being that we just used all of our flight and hotel rewards points to book our Final Four and Malta trips, I didn’t think this would be possible on such short notice. My initial response to Lacey was “I’m sorry, we just can’t afford it right now.” A day or two later I realized what an asshole response that was since I hadn’t even investigated our potential rewards options yet.

Rather than spending time on my acceptance speech for the shittiest husband of the year award, I decided to hop on the computer and see if there was any way to make this trip happen. After all, Lacey was amazing enough to let us use some of our rewards points and cash on our upcoming trip to Houston for the Final Four, so I needed to do my absolute best to return the favor. I began searching for any rewards programs that might help us get to San Diego for free or at a discount. Not kidding, it took me less than 10 minutes to find an option that would get us round trip flights from Boise to San Diego for $87 ($75 sign up fee and $12 taxes and fees while booking the flights). More importantly, this option was doable on short notice.

Below is the process I used to help us save over $400 on flights which ultimately made this trip possible for us…

…oh and spoiler alert, at the end of this post is a video of Lacey dancing to Rihanna on Halloween last year.

As usual, I started with Google. I typed in “Boise to San Diego Flights”. The returning results let me know which airlines we could use (Alaska, American Airlines, United, and Delta). I noticed that Alaska Airlines offers a non-stop flight, so I immediately Googled “Alaska Airlines Rewards Program”. I was looking for the current Alaska Airlines credit card offer and for the booking section on Alaska’s site that would show me if there were available flights on the dates we needed, and if so, how many rewards miles we’d need to book ’em.

I found that the current rewards offer for this card is 25k miles “upon approval”. That’s amazing! More often than not, rewards cards like this have spending requirements that can takes 2-3 months to achieve. This card gives you the points “in 2-3 weeks” following your application approval. Perfect for a short notice trip!

While snooping in the booking section on Alaska’s site, I found that there were round trip flights Boise-San Diego on the dates we needed that cost exactly 25k bonus miles. Heyo! I immediately submitted our applications for this rewards card.

We received the bonus points in 12 days and were able to book our highly discounted flights for $12. Again, the sign up fee for this card is $75, so our total cost is $87 for these flights. Still a lot better than the $500-ish we would have paid for full price tickets. We used the extra money saved on these flights to get some pretty decent seats for the Rihanna concert.

To keep the rest of the trip budget friendly, we’ll be staying at the Hampton Inn near the Gaslamp district. Why this hotel? I know it doesn’t sound super luxurious, but it has an airport shuttle, free hot breakfast, and is super close to the public transport station that we’ll be taking to the concert. This hotel is also within walking distance of all the restaurants and bars we’re hoping to check out. All of these perks combined will likely save us another $200-$300 on our trip.

So it looks like we’ll “shine bright like a diamond” with Rihanna in a few weeks down in San Diego. Hopefully the weather is beautiful and we won’t need to take an umbrella-ella-ella-ay-ay. …I’m such a dork sometimes I make myself want to hide under a table.

Hopefully you found this useful and can use the process outlined above to book your own vacay on short notice. For more tips and options, check our previous post relating to this subject here.

We’ll see you soon San Diego!

As promised, an awesome video of Lacey Killing it to Rihanna on Halloween last year. …dressed as a Day of the Dead.

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Rewards Points Travel

How to Book a Free Vacation on Short Notice

January 21, 2016

Most of our “traveling for free with credit card rewards points” posts so far have focused on getting BIG trips for free. Trips that take months of planning and spending with various cards to achieve. Well what if you can’t wait that long? What if you want to get a free vacation on short notice? Spoiler alert…you can.

I’ve spent the last few weeks researching this topic as Lacey and I are trying to squeeze in another quick vacay before our upcoming trip in April to see the Final Four. The weather in Boise can be pretty gnarley in February, so it would be perfect timing to go somewhere warmer for a couple days. That being said, we don’t have a lot of extra cash laying around right now. The only way we’ll be able to book a trip for February is if it is either free or at least highly discounted.

Here are some options I came up with during my snooping around that I wanted to share with you guys. Hopefully this helps you guys get an idea of how you could book a trip of your own in just a few weeks!

Get a super cheap flight in about 2 weeks:

Apply for the Alaska Airlines credit card (25k miles for signing up and paying the $75 sign up fee)

You can book your rewards flight about 2 weeks after you get approved for the card.
Alaska partners with a bunch of different airlines which results in a ton of travel options within the U.S
In just a couple weeks, you could be flying to sunny Florida (for example) for about $100 (sign up fee and taxes). …which would cost us about $450 normally from Boise

Get a couple nights free at a hotel in 4-5 weeks:

Apply for the Chase Hyatt Credit Card and you’ll be ready to redeem your 2 free rewards nights in about 4-5 weeks (if you hit the $1000) spending requirement.

The Hyatt has a ton of beautiful properties around the world where you can redeem this reward.
The super lower spending requirement makes it easy to get the reward bonus quickly
$0 sign up fee for the first year. It’s $75 per year after that but they give you a free night every year on your sign-up anniversary.

The beautifulPark City Hyatt. Image from expedia.com

Cover Additional Vacation Expenses with Points

Apply for the Capital One Venture Card and take it with you on your trip. You will be able to use the reward points you earn from this card to pay for many of your additional expenses on your trip. You can wipe out up to $400 dollars of expenses with the 40k bonus points you’ll receive after hitting the spending requirement.

Details on how you can redeem you Capital One Venture rewards

While I know there are numerous other ways to book a free/discounted trip on short notice, hopefully the info I shared above will at least get your wheels turning. You CAN book a trip with points on relatively short notice. The next time you get that “I gotta get outta here for a few days” feeling, remember that you can do it…soon…with points!

Lacey and I will keep you posted on where we end up going in February. It’ll likely be somewhere sunny!

Please share any additional questions or tips you may have!

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Rewards Points Travel

Points Planning for Maui

January 9, 2016

One thing we’ve learned since getting into the reward points traveling game is that it takes a lot of planning ahead. So even though we just finished booking our big trip for May, it’s already time to start planning our next adventure. While we’d love to book another 2 week multi-city trip, it’s not very realistic with our work schedules to take this much time off in the same year. That being said, we are going to be working toward a free trip to a single location for this fall…Maui.

Being that Lacey and I have just begun planning for this trip, it would be perfect timing for any of you that are interested in taking a similar vacay, to start planning with us.

After receiving some excellent tips from our friends in regards to rewards traveling to Hawaii, Lacey and I have settled on our initial plan. Here goes…

Step 1: Getting free Hotels

We just signed up for the Chase Hyatt Card. The reward bonus for this card is 2 free nights at a Hyatt property. We’re looking forward to using these rewards to stay at the beautiful Andaz Maui. With Lacey and I both signing up for this card, we’ll obviously receive 4 free nights total. We’re only looking to spend 5-6 nights in Maui total, so this Hyatt card is going to take care of most of our hotel costs for this trip. This card has $0 in sign up fees and only has a spending requirement of $1,000 over 3 months to receive the 2 free nights. Pretty awesome! We’re still going to work on getting 1-2 more free nights for the trip but haven’t yet decided on where we want to stay. I have my eye on the Grand Wailea Resort from Hilton 😉

Andaz Maui from Hyatt

Step 2: Get Free Flights

Once we get the reward nights from the Chase Hyatt card for the hotel stays (likely 2 months-ish from now), we’ll start working on our free flights. The tentative plan right now is to use the British Airways card for our travel. British Airways partners with American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, as well as some others that should help give us some solid options for traveling from Boise to Maui. The rewards we’ll receive from the sign up bonus should be enough to get us to Maui, but if not, there are a few different cards we could get from partners of BA to help supplement our airline points. As we’re still a couple months out from signing up for the BA card, this plan could very well change depending on any new rewards offers that other airlines may come out with this spring. We’ll keep you posted if we find any better options.

Step 3: Get Free Stuff in Maui

Thanks to some awesome advice from our new friend Bryce at 10xtravel.com, we now know that if we take the Capital One Venture card on our vacation with us…and use it for all additional expenses at the hotel (food, spa service, excursions, etc.), the reward bonus of 40,000 points we’ll receive from this card will help us wipe out up to $400 of expenses during this trip. Pretty awesome tip! There are obviously exclusions and exceptions that you’ll want to read about before assuming the types of travel expenses this card will take care of, but if used correctly, this card will be a huge help.

To wrap it up for now, Lacey and I are super excited at the opportunity to travel more this fall. We’ll keep you updated on our progress towards Maui. Let us know if you have any questions, tips, or anything else you’d like to share.

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Rewards Points Travel

Big Trip Booked with Points!

December 23, 2015

You might remember from a previous post that Lacey and I have been stacking credit card rewards points for about 8 months with the original end goal being a free trip to Moorea, Tahiti. Well…we changed our minds. I know, I know, changing your mind this late in the points planning process isn’t usually a good idea, but when you hear about the trip we just booked, you may understand.

Before I get into the details of the trip, I want to tell you what caused us to switch the game plan and put Tahiti on hold. After 8 months of strategic reward points earning, we had a total of 160,000 American Airlines points and 250k Hilton Honors points along with 4 weekend night certificates. Pretty solid pile we accumulated right? We would’ve needed to double that amount before we’d be able to get the trip we wanted to Tahiti. Kind of a defeating thought at first.

Lacey and I started thinking more about whether or not the Tahiti trip was actually worth all of the points and additional fees it would take to stay at an over-the-water bungalo at the Hilton Moorea. Yes, this would likely be one of the most beautiful beach vacations you could take, but that’s ALL the trip would be…a beach vacation. You would check in to your hotel and spend a week lounging/swimming/relaxing. Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE vacations like that, but we just had a vacation like that in Cabo over Thanksgiving. We’re kinda jonesing for a more action packed vacation now.

I often break vacations down into 2 categories:

Do nothing vacation – lay on your ass all day, eat tons of food, sleep way too much…usually involves a beach.
Do stuff vacation – action packed days full of museums, landmarks, concerts, sporting events, and general site seeing.

Last week we definitely booked a “do stuff vacation” …at a HUGE discount with our points.
We’re doing 5 cities in 2 weeks. New York, Florence, Rome, Malta, and Chicago. There’s definitely enough to keep us busy each and every day of this trip.

So here are the details:
We are flying to New York City for 2 days. We’re staying at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria on Park Ave for free with our Hilton weekend night certificates. The plan is to try and catch either a Broadway show or a Yankee’s game (the Red Sox will be in town!), or hopefully both. In addition, we have some general walking around/site seeing to do…not to mention some excellent pizza to eat!

From New York, we’ll head to Florence, Italy for 3 days. We’re planning on visiting the Duomo, seeing the David, and likely doing a wine tour in Tuscany. We’re still working on booking a small apartment in downtown Florence (out of pocket) for this trip. Florence is a beautiful, romantic, and mellow city when compared to some of the other major Italian cities. We can’t wait! …not to mention, they’ll be some excellent pizza to eat.

After Florence, we’ll hop on a train to Rome where we’re going to spend 2 days. Most of our time will likely be spent around Vatican City since we didn’t get to see St. Peter’s on our last trip. The Italian Open will be going on and we’re going to do our best to catch a session. Maybe we’ll see the Williams sisters throw down. We tried to book a free stay at the glamorous Rome Cavellari with 2 more of our weekend certificates, but unfortunately the hotel is fully booked. We’re going to pay out of pocket for a cool little B&B we’ve stayed at previously. Rome is by far the most historic place we’ve been lucky enough to visit. We’re really excited to head back…not to mention, there should be some good pizza to eat.

Then we’re off to Malta for 5 days. Malta is a beautiful, small, island below Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, you have likely seen some imagery of Malta as numerous scenes were shot there. One of the more recognizable landmarks is the Azure Window. We booked (with points) 5 nights at the Hilton in Malta. We’re super excited to explore this island…not to mention, find out what kind of pizza they have there.

the famous Azure Window (arch) shown in the background

Finally, we’ll make our way back to Chicago for a couple of days where we’ll be using 2 more weekend night certificates to stay at the historic Palmer House on Monroe St. Chicago is one of my most favorite cities of all time. I am really excited for Lacey to finally experience this city. This is going to be a great place to wrap up our vacation with museums and site seeing…not to mention, there will be some great pizza to eat. We’re coming for you Gino’s East!

So now, the main event.

How much would this trip have cost if we paid for everything on our own? $10,284

How much are we paying for this trip? $1390 total ($695 each)

Since we used points to book the majority of the trip, all that was left to pay for was:
1 one-way flight home from Chicago.
2 round trip flights Rome to Malta
5 nights of hotels (Rome/Florence)
Taxes on our free flights

We are getting an 86% discount on this trip by using our rewards points. We saved about $8,900. You might be in disbelief, and so was I, but I looked up the exact cost of the same flights and same hotels for the dates we were traveling…and that was the exact cost of the trip. Yikes!

Our 8 months of the points planning and strategizing seems to be paying off!

All this being said, we still had 100k Hilton points left over after booking this trip. We could have used these points to stay for free in Florence, but the Hilton properties there don’t look all that cool. We opted to pay out of pocket for what should be a better experience at local B&B’s.

*side note, we ended up using those remaining 100k points to book 3 nights at a suite in Houston for our upcoming trip to see the Final Four. This saved us about $950.

To wrap it up, we’re stoked for our upcoming trip! We still hope to make it to Tahiti one day, but are more than fine with putting it on pause for now…especially for a trip like this!

Below are the cards that gave us the bonus rewards to help make this trip happen:
American Airlines – AAdvantage card
Citi – ThankYou Premier Card
Hilton – Reserve Card
Hilton – Signature Card

Let me know if you have any questions!

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Lifestyle Travel

Adios Thanksgiving!

December 9, 2015

This year, Lacey and I decided to go a different route for Thanksgiving. Instead of sticking around our home town of Boise, and freezing our asses off, we decided to leave the country and hit the beach for some R & R. Being that we’re always ballin’ on a budget, we decided to go the very affordable, all-inclusive, Solmar Resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. This place is insanely cheap. From Boise (and I imagine most other cities) you can book a full week of all you can eat and drink (including booze) for about $1100 per person. That price includes flight. Yeah…insane. Anyhow, Lacey did a full review on the resort here if anyone is thinking about checking it out.

So this trip couldn’t have come at a better time for Lacey and I. The weather had been getting colder in Boise, work had been going through a stressful patch, and we hadn’t been on a “do nothing” vacation in a LONG time. We very much needed it.

My goals for this vacation were as such:

Sleep 8-10hrs a night
CRUSH food throughout the day
Drink 6-8 Pina Coladas per day (sometimes substituted with a different fruity beach drink)
Nap by the pool for 1-2 hrs a day
Take a lazy 15 min. stroll on the beach at some point in the day (you know…gotta stay in shape and all)
Hammer an enormous dinner and a variety of desserts
Watch the sunset
Repeat steps 1-7

We absolutely nailed these goals each and every day we were in Cabo. Not gonna lie, it actually got pretty hard to keep up with this pace by the time we got to day 6. I was feeling like an about to explode balloon. ….but yet, I still powered through the last couple of meals even though I was nowhere near hungry.

Throughout the week, we saw some amazing sunrises and sunsets. We caught a private boat to the famous Lover’s Arch. We ate some amazing food…and some that wasn’t so amazing. We set and broke our own records for blended drink consumption on a daily basis. The main highlight, however, might have been the super awkward Thanksgiving buffet hosted by the Solmar Resort.

I still want to say thank you to the Solmar for going out of their way to cater towards us chubby Americans on our (eat-your-face-off) holiday. They put together a solid spread of typical Thanksgiving foods. There were performers playing what was seemingly a selection of Selena’s greatest hits throughout the evening…which Lacey loved. I think the main thing that made this dinner awkward was the fact that there were only about 6 people there to enjoy it. The restaurant is giant, so it seemed even emptier than it probably was. When the performers finished a song, there was definitely a shortage of claps trying to fill the silence between songs. Lacey and I were actually kind of dressed up, while the other 6 people in the restaurant were dressed as if headed to a Cousin Eddy look-a-like contest. There was one 85ish year old lady rockin’ a Tony Romo Dallas Cowboys jersey, so I’ll give her some credit for at least wearing sleeves to the restaurant. If you watch the vid at the bottom of the post, you’ll get the overall vibe. AWK-WARD

Lacey and I had fun in Cabo, no surprise there, but would likely subtract a day or 2 from the trip next time.

We left Cabo on a Saturday afternoon and headed for Phoenix to catch a Collie Buddz (reggae) concert. I’m guessing most of you aren’t familiar with him, but he’s really special to Lacey and I. We first discovered him years ago on our very first vacation together in Hawaii. Fast forward to last spring when we used one of his songs as our first dance song at our wedding. All that being said, we were both really excited to see him in concert. …we ended up being in the very front row. It was awesome! Check the vid on our instagram if you wanna see me killin’ it.

All and all…this was the best Thanksgiving of my life thus far. I couldn’t be more thankful that I have a smokin’ hot and hilarious wife to spend it with. We hope you all had a great holiday week as well!

…I’m not sure how X-mas is going to compete with this. Ha.

Additional good news, we put this entire vacation on our Citi ThankYou card and reached the 50k bonus point offer with these expenses. These 50k points are going to transfer to the Hilton rewards program at a 1:2 ratio. So thanks to Cabo…we’re getting 100k more points to use for some free nights at a Hilton during our next vacation!

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Reviews Travel

Solmar Resort Review – Cabo

December 1, 2015

For Thanksgiving week we decided to ditch the normal cold weather and turkey tradition for getting a tan on the beach in Mexico! Yep, we are totally that couple from the movie Four Christmases. Except we were honest with our families what we were doing.

We decided to stay at the Solmar Resort for a number of reasons. 1. Affordability 2. Familiarity (several of the guests at our wedding stayed there) and 3. They offered an all-inclusive package.

Mat was especially excited about the all-inclusive, because that is the one part about travel that he struggles with-always being hungry. Well, I can assure you, that definitely didn’t happen this trip.

We got in pretty late at night, so all of the restaurants on the resort were closed, which meant we had to order room service for our first dinner. We found out that room service wasn’t included in the all-inclusive package. Bummer. But we found out that because we had the all-inclusive, we did get a 25% discount on room service. Not as bummed now.

I was so exhausted from traveling that I honestly don’t remember the first meal that night from room service. Is there such a thing as sleep eating? If so, that’s what I did.

We woke up refreshed on our first morning and were psyched to finally be on vacation! We of course went straight to breakfast. For my first meal, I had basically an ice cream cone with two mimosas. Not a bad start. The meal I ordered was actually waffles with a side of ice cream, but since they didn’t bring us syrup, I put the ice cream on top of the waffles. Basically a waffle cone.

It took us a couple of days to figure out which meals we liked and which we didn’t. By the end of the week, we were getting the same thing for breakfast and dinner each day. Lunch and mid-day snacks (hey, you can’t expect us to eat only three times a day at an all-inclusive) were a little trickier. We never did quite find anything that we liked well enough to order it again.

We aren’t going to lie, the food isn’t fantastic, but it’s not terrible either. And it’s available anytime between 6 a.m.-10 p.m.

We didn’t try too many different drinks either. Similar to the meals, once we found something we liked, we stuck with it. We had so many pina colladas and mimosas that I think I lost count.

I was impressed that they had fresh juice-but only two kinds: green and orange. And that was seriously the name of the juice. Green Juice. I’m still not sure what was in it (we think kiwis and cucumbers) but I really liked it. It was fresh and sweet at the same time.

The staff of the Solmar were all very friendly. We of course had a favorite waiter, Emmanuel. I’m not sure if we loved him because he was polite and attentive or because we saw him accidentally whack an annoying lady in the head with an umbrella. Either way, he was our favorite. We also loved one lady in particular out by the pool. I especially loved her because she told me that having children was like having a nightmare that lasts forever and you never get to wake up. We laughed so hard! I appreciate the honesty, Irene.

They of course had one “Activities Leader” that, well, led the activities. The resort offered daily Spanish lessons, water aerobics, bracelet making, board games, casino, etc. At the beginning of the week I was very excited and motivated to participate in all of the activities. But as the week drug on, I just wanted to lay in the sun and have Irene bring another round of pina colladas.

The day that there was a “tropical storm” (it was just rainy and windy-not deserving a tropical storm category) I did make a bracelet. The Activities Leader was very kind and attentive to all the guests. He helped me make a bracelet and gave Mat a “special drink” for winning some silly guessing game (guessing how many pages were in a book the activity leader was holding). I call it silly because I didn’t win. Mat now thinks he is a local legend, “El Mateo-Counter of Pages”.

The day it rained I also decided to try out one of the resort’s spa services. Since we had the all-inclusive package, that meant we got an extra free 30 min if we booked a massage. I of course booked a massage. The prices were ok, I guess, depending on what you are used to and what your expectations are. I got a 90 minute massage for $100. That seems pricey because you can get massages in town for $20 (or so I have heard). However I wasn’t in the mood to go traipsing around downtown Cabo looking for a place across the street from a bar called The Laughing Donkey. I also didn’t feel like being uncomfortable/unsafe during my massage, so I chose the lazy/more safe/more expensive option.

The massages are given in these adorable little huts made of what look like twigs at the end of the property line for the resort, looking out over the ocean. Sounds amazing and relaxing right? Well, yes and no. It is amazing if there is nobody on the beach and nobody in the resort hot tub, which is located right beside the huts. Lucky for me, it was raining so there weren’t many people on the beach or in the hot tub, so it was actually nice. The massage itself was fairly standard to other massages I have had in the states. Other than the whole armpit massage thing. And the ringing of some chimes. But other than that, pretty standard.

Overall, we enjoyed our vacation, but decided that maybe five days, not seven, of all-inclusive would have been sufficient.

See our ratings below, based on our four lemon scale:

Room/Grounds –

Food/drink-

Service-

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Rewards Points Travel

Step by Step to a Free Vacation

November 7, 2015

I thought it might be a fun idea, and hopefully useful for you guys to watch me start the process of getting a free vacation using credit card rewards points. The steps provided below can apply to any vacation; not just the example trip I’m about to use.

First things first, to set expectations. While it will take me maybe 20 mins to get my plan together for earning a free vacation, it will likely take me a couple months of regular spending with these cards to get the bonus rewards they offer. In other words, I’m planning today for a vacation that I will take no sooner than 3-4 months from now.

Secondly, I feel obligated to put in a quick disclaimer for all of those that are shitty at paying bills:

Go to this site and learn as much as you possibly can about what activities can positively and negatively affect your credit score. Do you have a hard time paying bills on time? Is your rent sometimes a day or two late? Do you ever simply forget to pay your cable bill on time even though you had more than enough in your account to cover it? If this is you….DON’T get a credit card and definitely DO NOT get multiple. The credit cards that have the best bonus rewards ALWAYS have the highest interest rates. Usually around 25% or higher. If you miss one sizeable payment…you and your credit score will be screwed.

Alrighty, for those of you that are left…here we go! I’m literally just going to make up a vacation I want to take after I finish writing this sentence.

Where do I want to go? : New York City

What time of year? : Fall

Where do I want to stay? : In a nice hotel in Time Square

Actually sounds pretty nice right? O.k., here we go!

Step 1: Google “Boise to New York flights”

The first result shows me a list of flights and airline carriers that will take me to New York City from my home town of Boise, ID.

Step 2: Google search to see if the airlines that can take me to New York City, have a rewards program. Search Airline Name + Rewards.

I started with a “Delta Airlines Rewards” google search since it was the first airline listed on my initial search’s results
The first search result was for the Delta Sky Miles program…which I clicked on.

Step 3: Find out what the current bonus rewards program is offering.

Looks like I’d get 50k bonus miles after spending $2k in 3 months. I like it so far.

Step 4: Find out how many miles I need to get a free round trip flight to New York.

I went to the “book rewards travel” link and typed in my origin (Boise) and destination (NYC) and kept my flying dates as “flexible”.
I actually found a pretty decent round trip flight from Boise to NYC, next September, for 50k miles which is exactly how much that credit card bonus off is for. Who knew?!

So now I know that if I apply for this Delta Credit card and spend $2,000 in the first 3 months, I will get enough bonus points to fly round trip Boise to NYC FO FREE! (not counting the $25 or so in taxes I’d have to pay).
The same flight would have cost me over $500. No thanks!

Boom! Free flight to NYC…done. K, now I need to get a hotel.

Step 4: Google search “Hotels in Time Square”

I found a few hotels I liked and then did a couple follow up Google searches with the “hotel name + rewards program”
After about 10 mins of snooping around hotel rewards program sites, I saw that the Hilton Hotel rewards program currently has a credit card bonus offer that would give me 2 Weekend Night Certificates if I spent $2500 on their card over 4 months. Perfect for my trip to New York!

I now know that if I sign up for this Hilton Reserve Card, I will get 2 free weekend nights in a nice Time Square hotel in New York City!

Well shit, that was easier than I thought. I may actually do this. Ha. Who doesn’t want to go to NYC for free in fall? I could land, grab dinner and a Broadway show. Maybe wake up early and go see the Statue of Liberty and Central Park before hitting up a Yankees game. …I digress.

So at this point you may be saying to yourself “that’s great and all, but how the hell am I going to spend $4500 in 4 months to get the rewards on those 2 cards to get this free trip?”

Once you put ALL of your monthly expenses on these cards (rent, car payment, utilities, gas, cell phone, groceries, EVERYTHING) it really isn’t as difficult as it seems. According to recent statistics, the average person in the United States spends $1010 per month.

If you don’t have that many bills (which is awesome) then do 1 card at a time. Start with the airline rewards card….earn the bonus. Then get the hotel card and earn the bonus. This will obviously take longer, but what’s the rush? Start planning early. My example trip above isn’t until September of 2016. I would have PLENTY of time to hit those bonus rewards.

Another trick that Lacey and I use is the “buy one, get one” approach. We pay for 1 vacation with the credit card(s) that will help us get our next vacation for free.

Well hopefully this is useful for anyone who wants/needs a free vacation. Let me know if you have any questions as you start snooping around. Good luck!

Some pics of our last trip to NYC since this post brought some memories back.

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Rewards Points Travel

Tahiti for Free. Planning Process

October 21, 2015

In previous posts, Lacey and I have mentioned that we are working toward our goal of traveling to, and staying in an over-the-water bungalow in Moorea, Tahiti….for free. Yep, we have been stacking credit card points for flights and hotels for about 5 months so far to try and make this happen. Why are we going through so much trouble to get this trip for free? It’s simple. We literally would never, ever, EVER be able to afford a trip like this if we paid for it out of our own pocket. These over the water bungalows in Tahiti can cost up to $1300 per night. Tack on another 2k per person for flights and you’re looking at spending $10,000 for a 5 night stay in Moorea…and this isn’t even taking in account the cost of food (which I’ve heard is insanely expensive there) and/or the cost of excursions/entertainment. So more than likely, for 2 people, this trip could cost over $15k.

If Lacey and I are ever going to Tahiti…it HAS to be for free… or at least HIGHLY discounted.

Hilton Moorea Bungalows | DitchingNormal

Here’s where the credit card rewards points come in to play. After spending a few months learning from credit cards reward blog sites such as The Points Guy, I put together a plan to try and get Lacey and I to Tahiti for free.

First, I researched the best reviews for over-the-water bungalows in Tahiti and the hotel chains that owned these bungalows. While there are a few that have amazing reviews and pics (InterContinental Thalasso, Hilton Bora Bora Nui, The Four Seasons), we decided to go with the Hilton Moorea. We chose this one for a few different reasons.
- 1 – there are a number of Hilton Credit Cards available with solid spending bonus reward offers (aka, a lot of bonus points available to earn for Hilton)
- 2 – the Hilton Honors program partners with other non-Hilton credit cards allowing for quick/easy points transferring into your Hilton Honors account. The Virgin Atlantic, Hawaiian Airlines, and Citi ThankYou cards are a few off the top of my head.
- 3 – While Bora Bora reviews as the fanciest of the Tahitian Islands, it is also a little trickier to get to than the island of Moorea which is where we’re trying to go. We would lose at least a full day’s worth of travel time getting to Bora Bora. As you all know, paid vacation days at work are valuable and no one should waste one sitting in an airport or sleeping in a shitty airport hotel for a night while you wait for your connecting flight.
- 4 – Again, while Bora Bora is fancier, we also learned it is more secluded. Meaning that there aren’t as many other exploring options in your direct surroundings. As torturous as it sounds (sarcasm), you would be stuck in your bungalow and/or resort for pretty much every activity you wanted to do. Lacey and I want to see some local life and have the option of getting groceries from local markets, etc. Maybe do some hiking and what not.
Second, I investigated the approximate amount of points we’d need for a free night at the Hilton Moorea. You can do this by going to the Hilton Honors site and typing in your desired resort location and clicking the box that says “Use Honors Points” box before hitting search. I looked through the entire year’s worth of results to see if there were high seasons and low seasons as far as costs go. There were and there usually are at most hotels. Keep that in mind while planning but also keep in mind that the low season is the low season for a reason. Sick rhyme bro. In other words, the low season probably has shitty weather or something.
Third, I went back to the Hilton Credit Cards site and mapped out which cards would get Lacey and I to our points goal the quickest. I also investigated Hilton Honors credit card partners and found out that the Citi ThankYou Premier card transfers points into the Hilton program at a 1:2 ratio from now until the end of January, 2016. So 50k Citi ThanYou Premier points will get you 100k Hilton points. Killer timing for this particular trip.

Toward the beginning of the planning process, I ran in to some more unexpected good news. I learned that if you book 4 consecutive nights at a Hilton resort using rewards points, you receive a 5th night for free. This was super good news considering it would take us a couple of months to earn enough points for 1 night. This just shaved off a bunch of planning time.

Happy dance

More good news was when I found out that the Hilton Reserve card does not reward you with points when you hit your spending bonus….they give you 2 weekend night certificates instead. This is HUGE for the trip we are trying to make. To better explain this one I’ll tell you that most reward bonuses are around 50-75k points and they can take anywhere from 2-3 months for Lacey and I to reach with our spending habits. The bungalows we are trying to stay in will require upwards of 90k bonus points PER night. So the Hilton Reserve weekend certificates (for where we are going to use them) will be worth 180-200k points. So if you’re trying to stay at a really expensive Hilton Hotel, this is the card you need to get.

So where are Lacey and I at in the planning process? Well, our goal continues to be to earn enough points for 7 free nights in Moorea, Tahiti. As of today, we have 4 weekend night certificates and about 200k points. We need at least 200k more points before I even think about making the call and try to book anything. We already have the next 100k points in our sights with the awesome Citi ThankYou transfer promotion (mentioned above) headed our way. For the next 100k + points we’ll need after that? Who knows right now? I’m crossing my fingers there will be another promotion linked with Hilton that can get us there.

Wish us luck and best luck to you all if you’re trying to plan a similar trip!

Final note…if you’re new to this…please research best practices for signing up for and using credit cards. Educate yourself on what all effects credit scores in order to maintain a healthy one.

Peace out!

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Reviews Travel

San Francisco Continued…

October 4, 2015

Our second full day in San Francisco was just as action packed as the first. I am a lover of Full House, so of COURSE I wanted to picnic in Alamo Square just like the Tanners. I knew the day was going to be good when we scored an amazing parking spot right at the entrance to the park. Before sitting down and enjoying the view, we walked just a block around the corner to grab some food at The Mill-which is famous for it’s $4 slices of toast. That’s right, $4 for a slice of toast. Mat and I went all out and each had a coffee, then we shared the Country, the Whole Wheat Sesame Poppy and an amazing strawberry filled doughnut. I’m pretty sure the total was $47 or something.

After breakfast from The Mill and hanging out in Alamo Park, we continued with the Full House theme and went to find the actual house the Tanners lived in. It was a little anti-climactic because the current owners had re-painted the house, most likely to deter crazies like us from stalking them and taking pictures all day. Well, the joke is on them because of course we still loitered and took pictures.

I have a friend who lived in San Francisco for a few years, so she had told us to attend Off the Grid-a giant, local food truck party that had a bar and a live DJ! I guess this event happens a few times a week in different locations. This was maybe one of my favorite things we did while in San Francisco. We made our way to The Presidio (scored another amazing parking spot) and of course ordered a mimosa and Moscow mule immediately. We then laid in the grass, soaking up Vitamin D all afternoon and mingled with the locals. This event reminded us of Boise-just a little bit larger scale because it was family (and dog) friendly and really laid back.

We ended the day by dressing up a little fancier and having cocktails in the most amazing lounge, The View. Oh. My. Gosh. The views from the 39th floor of the hotel were AMAZING. When we first arrived we grabbed a little table that was just back from the window, with the obvious hope to poach the table that was right next to the window as soon as the people currently sitting there were finished. Our little plan worked! I would say this is an absolute must when visiting San Fran. Even if you don’t want to sit and enjoy a cocktail, I still suggest taking the elevator up and checking it out.

Our last morning before flying out we wanted to check out a couple rooftop gardens. Our favorite was at the top of the One Kearny building. We spent the morning soaking up the sun and drinking our coffee with more gorgeous views of the city.

The Full House house.

This is me mingling and blending in with the locals.

This is the building where we stayed….AND where we met almost 9 years ago!

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