Category Archives for Travel.
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I love using Google Chrome as a browser. It’s light, powerful, and has lots of good plug-ins… er, extensions.
Some of them have elevated to near-constant use territory.
I’ve written about useful apps because I love time-saving productivity stuff like a good millennial lol.
These 4 Chrome extensions come with my highest recommendation. They’ve helped me save a lot of time, money, and clicking around.
I rented a car this past weekend in Albuquerque.
And I’m renting another one this upcoming weekend for a work trip to Austin.
I’ve rented enough cars by this point to rely solely on 2 places to look: the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal and Costco Travel. One or the other of them has the best deal almost always.
Laaaa! Behold Costco Travel’s car rental search
For good measure, I usually run a search through Kayak, too – just to be sure.
Last week, I booked through Costco. And this week, I booked through Chase. One of them simply always works out for the best.
I’ve been flying American a lot lately, and there’s a loophole I sometimes use to get free Gogo internet. I used it today on my flight back from Albuquerque.
There are a couple of catches:
No IFE as in, no screens overhead or in the back of the seat in front of you.
If you’re lucky, you can squeeze out closer to an hour of free internet. But it depends on the flight – there doesn’t seem to be a pattern to it.
Here’s how it works.
I’ve gotten some pretty terrible IHG offers from IHG’s various “Accelerate” promotions (including one that required me to stay at a hotel brand with only 2 locations).
But their new Q3 Accelerate offer is actually… kind of OK (but couldn’t they come up with a different name for it? Even the URL is bland lol).
It’s not worth moving a minor mountain for or anything, but it seems I can stay at an IHG for 2 nights in September 2016 and earn an extra 35,000 IHG points.
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I’ll never forget the thrill and uncertainty of booking my first award ticket. I thought I’d show up to the airport and be turned away for not paying (or something like that). Can a flight really cost ~$11 when you book with… points?
That was a few years ago. But there’s still something so novel about booking award trips. Some of them are planned in advance, like my upcoming trip to Hawaii. And some are aspirational or in the future, like the Brussels Airlines flights I booked with Etihad miles.
Love the high desert!
Long story short, I needed to spend a couple of days in New Mexico to get some work done there. Looking at my upcoming weekends:
4 weekends = a month of plans. I started poking around and realized, holy crap, I’m gonna book this trip for next weekend!
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Holy crap, it worked – I’m going to Belgium!
I’m coming for ya, Brussels!
I found a ton of Business Class award seats between NYC and Brussels on Brussels Airlines in May and June 2017 (with a few dates in April and July available, too).
On Saturday, I transferred 37,000 Citi ThankYou points to Etihad Guest in hopes the space would remain. I checked this morning – no miles. But when I checked a few hours later, they were there!
I fired up United.com to hunt for dates:
Nearly every day in May and June 2017 still has availability
Tips: Tick “Show only nonstop flight availability” to isolate Brussels award space. And use “NYC” as the search if you want to see flights from both EWR and JFK.
Once I found the dates I wanted, I called Etihad Guest at 877-690-0767 with a pair of crossed fingers.
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When last we parted, all was happy and good. Flights for 4 people were booked to Honolulu. Then life, as it does, got in the way.
Jay went back to New York for a too-good-to-pass-up film job. That’s right – I am now in Dallas alone. *cue torrential tears*
That was a whole other wrenching experience, but it also had consequences for this planned trip.
“So no Hawaii trip?” “I can’t.” Crap.
No Honolulu for you?
I called Connexions Loyalty (the travel agency Citi uses to book flights with ThankYou points) to ask if I could transfer the ticket to my little brother. I knew it would be a long shot, but worth trying.
The best they could do was cancel the ticket and give Jay the credit – no transferring, no name-changing. Oh, and there would be a $200 fee to redeem the credit. That stung, but at least part of the ticket will be put toward eventual travel.
By the time this all shook out, I accumulated more Citi ThankYou points. And continue to earn 30,000 to 40,000 ThankYou points per month.
Then I thought, why not take my little brother anyway?
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Next month, I’m headed to Honolulu with my Mom, stepdad, and little brother. I’d been throwing around the idea of a family vacation for a while.
I haven’t been back to Hawaii since 2013.
I enjoyed my time at the Hilton Hawaiian Village so much, I swore I’d go back someday. And now that I’m all Hilton-y and have Diamond elite status, I thought my Mom would absolutely love staying here with me. So I wanted to treat her to a trip.
Nothing quite like a Hawaiian sunset
But first, to get there.
I just so happened to be casually looking for JFK-BRU Business Class award space on Brussels Airlines because that’s what Saturday mornings are for, right?
Space is open nearly every day in May and June 2017 in Business Class to AND from Brussels
I was able to find a Business Class award seat on the JFK or EWR to BRU route nearly every day in May and June 2017 (with a few dates in March and April, too).
The reason I’ve had my eye on this award is because Citi ThankYou points transfer 1:1 to Etihad Guest miles. And Etihad has a very generous award chart on this particular route.
37K round-trip in Business Class? Yes, plz!
A round-trip ticket in Business Class costs just 36,620 Etihad Guest miles. Of course, you have to transfer in increments of 1,000, so realistically this will cost 37,000 Citi ThankYou points. Which is a steal.
Look for SAVER award space
United would charge 70K miles each way, or 140,000 miles, round-trip. So you’ll save a huge number of points by booking through Etihad instead.
Or, “Why I’m Flying Delta Again”
In my quest to credit partner flights to earn elite status on Alaska Airlines, I’ve been focused on flying coach with American. That’s because ALL AA economy flights get 100% credit with Mileage Plan.
Welcome indeed
If economy is your preference, American is by far better than Delta – if your end goal is to earn status or redeemable miles with Alaska.
But, if you fly Business or First, Delta wins hands-down. And, it might even be worth it to fly Delta anyway.
Let’s take a look.
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I set the date, said my goodbyes, and cut the ties.
The move to Dallas has been a long time coming. I picked Memorial Day weekend to drive from Brooklyn to my new place in Dallas.
Now I’m here and it’s been about 4 weeks. Everyone kept talking about “getting settled.” Pssh, I don’t need to get settled. I’ll just pick right up.
It’s been a crazy few weeks:
In short, I guess, yeah, I did need time to “settle.”
The drive down took 4 days. I thought it would take 3. Here’s how it went down and why it took longer.
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I should say up front: I really wanted to stay at the Hilton Osaka, but there wasn’t availability – paid or with points – for my dates.
And the Hyatt Regency Osaka wasn’t available, either. (Even if it was, it’s pretty far from most attractions, unless you want to be near Universal Studios Japan, which I hear is incredible.)
Lobby of the ANA Crowne Plaza Osaka
The only thing available as far as chain hotels was the ANA Crowne Plaza Osaka, an IHG hotel. It was between this and an Airbnb.
In the end, I opted to pay 50,000 IHG points for 2 nights here because:
Hello and welcome to Out and Out! My name is Harlan – I’m a points and miles enthusiast who loves to travel. I am interested in personal finance, the power of positive thinking, and the extraordinary journeys that make life worth living.