Weekend Blitz

I’m headed out of town tonight.

Where? I don’t know yet!!

We’re weekend-blitz-ing it up this weekend to a mystery location that only Jeffrey knows.

Here’s what I know:

1) We’re flying out tonight on Spirit Air 2) I can only take a backpack’s worth of stuff with me. 3) We’re renting a car. 4) We leave Sunday. 5) When I asked Jeffrey what to pack, he said, “It’s summertime.”

I love surprises especially when they involve traveling, so I’m so excited I can’t sit still!!!

I’ll keep you posted…check my Instagram later tonight (or early tomorrow morning) for [...]

Bordeaux was our first stop in our France trip. Roughly three hours away by train, we only had to wait a short while once we arrived at CDG (in first class style!) to board our train straight from the airport.

Jeffrey studied abroad here in the spring of 2009, so he knows this port city like the back of his hand. It was my first time here, and it was so fun for me to explore where he lived. We even got to have dinner at his host family’s restaurant! How cool!

On the Garonne River, the water plays a large part in Bordeaux’s history. And, as the fifth largest city in France (with a population of 1.1 million), Bordeaux is the world’s wine industry center, [...]

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 [...]