Weekend Blitz

Pros: RailEurope.com is a good resource for researching entire rail network in Europe and is the only place to book a multiday rail pass that covers numerous countries and service providers

Cons: If just booking a simple roundtrip or one-way ticket, it can cost 20-40% more than going direct to the train website

When planning our France trip, we needed to book about 3 train tickets to get us from CDG-Bordeaux, Bordeaux-Nantes and then Nantes-Paris. So, when trying to research the best way to book, we checked out all the venues, starting with RailEurope.com.

We were looking at taking the 11h05 [...]

Ahh yes, Spirit Air:  the self-proclaimed “America’s Only ULCC-Ultra Low Cost Carrier.” The champions of nickel-and-diming, Spirit charges the customer only for what he uses. If you want to carry on a bag, you’re welcomed to for a fee, but they don’t add it to the ticket cost because they don’t charge those who don’t want the service. No matter what your opinion is on the big change in the airline industry, you can’t deny that Spirit Air has some damn cheap fares on their routes.

I don’t necessarily expect the same level of service on a $40 flight as I do on the $8,000 trans-Atlantic First Class ticket, but we all expect a minimum level of service [...]

I had a reservation at a Sheraton property that I made many weeks ago at the Fed/Gov’t rate. On the morning of my check-in date, I received a call from the hotel manager explaining that they were overbooked for the night and were starting by calling all SPG Platinum/Gold members to see if they would be willing to accept Starpoints for having their reservation cancelled. He said that they’re offering 7,000 Starpoints for volunteers (this is equal to 1 free night at the property)–I paused and thought about my travel plans:  they were, in fact, flexible and I didn’t have to stay at that particular property.  Suspecting that they [...]

There’s nothing better than double (or even triple!) dipping when it comes to earning miles and points — and credit card shopping portals can help out a ton when it comes to finding good opportunities.

Now, I’m not sure if this is news or not, but it’s definitely news to me: Hotels.com is now a partner in the Chase Ultimate Rewards Mall at a current rate of 3x! This means that if you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred (like McCown and I), you’re getting the following for every $ of Hotels.com spent through the portal:

2.14x normal (2x on travel + 7% annual dividend standard with Chase Sapphire [...]

First stop on our whirlwind, nostalgia-inspired tour of France & Italy (index here) was our flight from New York-JFK to Paris-CDG. I was able to find low-level award space using Delta SkyMiles for the flight (which is a feat in and of itself), but throw in the fact that I found Air France Business Class low-level award space using SkyMiles and it was downright impossible.

The trip really started for me about 2 or 3 days before takeoff as a winter storm was pummeling the Northeast. You see, because of Delta’s horrible award space availabilty, I booked the JFK-CDG, CDG-FLR and then VCE-JFK legs on the award ticket. To get from CHS-JFK-CHS, I [...]