Weekend Blitz

479B King American $$$$ – Plan on dropping some cash here Part of Indigo Restaurant Group: Includes Oak Steakhouse, O-Ku, & The Cocktail Club

The Macintosh is one of Charleston’s highest-rated restaurants on Urbanspoon. Coming in with a 90% rating, you’d expect the food to be good.

The good news is: you’ll be right. It may very well get my vote for the best dinner in Charleston. At the very least, it’s secured a top-three rank. And, in 2012, it earned a nomination from Bon Appetit magazine as one of the 50 Best New Restaurants in America.

Located on Upper King, the big glass doors showcase the inside [...]

Having recently acquired the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, I knew that Hyatt was a 1:1 ratio transfer partner. The bad thing about the nice hotels in Paris is that they’re expensive in Euros, which means they’re outrageously expensive after making the conversion to USD. While shopping for a way to spend at least one night in a luxury hotel, I had totally ruled out paying $1000+. The only other option is to use points, specifically hotel programs that I could transfer AMEX or Chase points to…

These choices will assuredly put a dent in the travel budget

The goal: Find the [...]

Amtrak Acela Express 2168 – First Class Car Review

I needed to get from Washington-WAS to New York-NYP and had already decided I was taking the train. But, instead of a Northeast Regional train (which has appx 1 departure every hour), I wanted to try America’s one and only “high speed” train.

The Acela Express train isn’t cheap, especially when considering that it’s not so much of a “high-speed train” than an “Express Train”. The Acela will typically save you about 35 minutes when compared to the slower Northeast Regional train, but tickets can cost as much as 80% more (cheapest rates on the [...]

(A preview of) the Priority Club PointBreaks list has been updated through May 31, 2014! Below is a list of all of the hotels that IGH/PriorityClub Rewards is offering for just 5,000 pts a night. Don’t forget that you can buy 5,000 points for just $35, which basically allows you to book any of the rooms below for just $35/night:

Check our tutorial on how to book rooms for $35 / night

When you’re ready to book (note, booking starts Monday March 24): Click here to go to the PointsBreaks site (the new IHG site)

Again, this is just a preview list with 150 properties, more hotels will be released on March 24 (according to IHG). Sample prices below [...]

Basilica Cistern – Yerebatan Sarayı – “Sunken Palace”, or Yerebatan Sarnıcı – “Sunken Cistern” Address: Very close to the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque in the old city of Istanbul. Alemdar Mh., Şeftali Sk No: 6, Fatih, Turkey Price: 10 TL (~$4.50 USD) – a bargain, totally worth the admission price. Hours: Daily.  April-October: 9am – 6:30pm; November-March: 9am – 5:30pm

After touring the Hagia Sophia (click for post) with the other 6 billion people that morning, we headed just across the way to the Basilica Cistern. When we saw the crowds there, too, we were so over crowds and ready to walk around the city that [...]

We’ve just got great travel tips and tools flying at you guys these days (Great Travel Tool: Get a Credit Card with a Chip, Credit Score Crash Course etc…). Next up is the litmus test for that question of: “should I book with points or pay with cash?” or “should I transfer AMEX points or use AMEX travel for my booking?” I created this for my own personal use as I was tired of pulling out the calculator every time I needed to run the calculation.

Here is the calculation going on behind the scenes:

The St. Regis Atlanta – Starwood Category 6 Eighty-Eight West Paces Ferry Road, Atlanta,Georgia 30305 United States Award Redemption: 20,000 pts or 10,000 pts +$180 Normal rate: Varies b/t $385-$485, average around $450 + tax Starpoints return: 1.9 cents points – 3.0 cents/point = below average – average return

I booked the base “Superior Room” at appx 2 weeks before check-in and received a corporate rate of $275. When we arrived, the check-in agent was very polite and extremely enthusiastic and happy to see us–a great trait to have as an employee that has dozens of check-ins/check-outs per day. He confirmed that we were in [...]