How We Saved $20,000 On a Luxury European Trip (Points, Perks & Miles Guide)

00:00:00.000 | A few weeks ago, we took an incredible vacation to Europe that should have cost a fortune,

00:00:04.880 | but instead we saved over $20,000 by dialing in the entire trip and booking most of it with

00:00:10.960 | points and I want to walk you through the entire process of planning, booking, and in our case,

00:00:16.240 | canceling and then booking again and do it in such detail that you can learn all the tactics I used

00:00:22.400 | because honestly, this was one of the best trips we've ever taken and I would love for you all to

00:00:27.280 | be able to have a similar experience. After I walk through how we made it all possible,

00:00:31.920 | my wife Amy's going to join me and we'll do a little recap and review of the entire experience.

00:00:36.800 | For anyone new, I'm Chris Hutchins and if you enjoy this video, give us a thumbs up or if you

00:00:41.280 | have a question, leave it down in the comments and if you want to keep upgrading your life,

00:00:45.360 | money, and travel, consider subscribing and if you want to get the latest deals,

00:00:49.280 | news, and other great things I find every single week, head on over to chrishutchins.com/email

00:00:55.040 | or click this link and subscribe to my weekly newsletter. We always seem to take an overseas

00:01:01.040 | trip each year, but this year it seemed like nothing was going to happen except in early May,

00:01:06.480 | we looked at our calendars and we actually saw that there was a four-week window that

00:01:10.160 | we had no commitments in August. Now, we haven't taken an international trip with the kids since

00:01:15.040 | we went to London two years ago and now that they're two and four, we decided we were ready

00:01:19.600 | to do it. So I used award tool and seats.aero to set up a bunch of alerts from San Francisco and LA

00:01:26.560 | to major European airports and we looked over the dates of the first kind of two weeks of that

00:01:31.680 | four-week window. Now, if you have the premium versions of either of these tools or a few others,

00:01:36.720 | you can set these alerts up really easily across a bunch of different destinations with all kinds of

00:01:42.480 | criteria from cabins to stops to duration, maximum number of miles, maximum fees, and I actually went

00:01:49.440 | through all these tools in episode 166 and 167 with Greg from the frequent miler. So if you want

00:01:56.080 | to learn a little bit more about those tools, definitely check that out. And really we didn't

00:01:59.760 | care where we ended up because we were only looking at direct flights from San Francisco

00:02:04.080 | and from pretty much every city in Europe you can get to direct. It's really easy to buy a short

00:02:09.120 | ticket from Paris or London or Frankfurt or Zurich to somewhere else in Europe. So we were really

00:02:14.240 | flexible. And sure enough, on May 25th, I got an alert for four tickets from San Francisco to Paris

00:02:21.360 | direct in business class for just 50,000 Air France miles with about $200 in taxes,

00:02:27.440 | which is a ridiculously good deal. But to make it even better, Air France offers 25% off the

00:02:33.680 | number of miles for children under 12. So their tickets were only 37.5 thousand miles. As a one

00:02:40.960 | way, these tickets probably would have cost us around $4,500. And in episode 175, I went a bit

00:02:47.200 | deeper into this whole process. So if you want to dig deeper, go there. But I don't think it's

00:02:52.000 | quite fair to use that 4,500 number because a lot of international one way flights are way more

00:02:57.520 | expensive than round trips. And honestly, if we booked this trip out of pocket, we would have

00:03:01.520 | paid for a round trip. Most of the round trip flights were closer to the same price, about

00:03:06.000 | $4,500, but let's just use the value of $200 for this flight. So our total outlay was 175,000 points

00:03:14.320 | plus $800 in taxes. Relative to what we would have had to pay for those, we were getting about

00:03:20.160 | 4.1 cents per point, which is absolutely awesome. If you look at a card like my Amex gold, which

00:03:26.320 | earns 4X points on dining and groceries, then being able to get 4.1 cents on 4X points per

00:03:32.720 | dollar is like getting an effective 16.4% cash back on dining and grocery spend, which is great.

00:03:40.240 | Now Air France does have a 70 euro per person fee to cancel, but we were okay with that because we

00:03:46.400 | knew that there was a decent chance we'd take the trip and worst case we'd be out a few hundred

00:03:50.880 | dollars if we had to cancel. As for the flight home, we waited a few days, we set up some alerts

00:03:56.480 | and eventually we got an alert for a direct flight from Amsterdam back to San Francisco 12 days after

00:04:01.920 | we left, which was perfect. Now it's important anytime you think about booking flights to not

00:04:07.280 | just book on the airline that has the availability because it might be way better to book through one

00:04:12.800 | of their partners. So I've set up this transfer partner spreadsheet. You can find it on the

00:04:17.200 | product section of our homepage. And what you'll see is that there's a handful of Star Alliance

00:04:23.040 | partners that are partners of United that you can transfer points to from any of the major

00:04:27.840 | credit card points programs. Now I went through this in a lot of detail in episode 184 and all

00:04:34.240 | the different ways to do it, but the short version is I could have booked it through United for 80,000

00:04:39.360 | points and $93 in taxes per person. And this is all for a one way business class ticket per person.

00:04:46.800 | And United would have given me free cancellation, which is great, but it was 80,000 points. Now

00:04:51.440 | Aeroplan is another way I could have done it. And it was 70,000 points plus $144 in taxes and fees.

00:04:57.440 | So maybe you could argue that slightly better, but $110 to cancel. On the bonus, Aeroplan is

00:05:03.680 | a transfer partner of a lot of different programs. So it's a lot easier to get those points than if

00:05:08.400 | you were trying to get United miles. They also have an option where you can spend a few more

00:05:12.880 | miles and get free cancellation. So that option was 85,000 points, but the same taxes and fees.

00:05:18.880 | However, at the time there was a 20% transfer bonus from a popular bank. And that transfer

00:05:26.080 | bonus brought that price down significantly. However, I already had Aeroplan points from when

00:05:31.440 | built had a hundred percent transfer bonus. So this was already a pretty great option,

00:05:36.320 | but I'll just remind everyone of the third option, because I just want to make sure you realize how

00:05:40.640 | lucrative it can be to spend a little time on this process. And that was looking at Life Miles,

00:05:46.160 | which is, uh, from Avianca and they're also a Star Alliance partner. And that same flight

00:05:51.040 | was 63,000 points and $115 in taxes. Now that was, if I was willing to accept a $200 per person

00:05:57.600 | cancellation fee, but they have this Life Miles plus program that you can pay for.

00:06:02.320 | That was going to be an effective about $65 a person in extra cost, but it would give you

00:06:09.040 | free cancellation and a refund of some of your miles, which ended up being about 40,000 miles.

00:06:14.480 | So the total cost was going to come down even further from that 63,000 miles when you netted

00:06:20.080 | it all out. However, there was also a 15% transfer bonus from Amex to Life Miles, which made it even

00:06:26.400 | better deal. We ended up doing the Aeroplan option and we did it with some extra flexibility

00:06:30.880 | for 85,000 points, because in our mind, we had used the built a hundred percent transfer bonus.

00:06:36.320 | And so these points were effectively even less. So it was almost 42,500 points if you factor that

00:06:41.760 | in. And so these transfer bonuses can be really awesome. For example, on September 1st, just

00:06:46.560 | recently built had another great one where it was 50% transfer bonus to Avianca. So if you needed

00:06:52.000 | those 63,000 points, you actually only needed to transfer 42,000 and that's 42,000 to get

00:06:59.040 | international business flight with $115 in taxes, which is absolutely amazing. Now, since I'd priced

00:07:06.640 | all of this out, Avianca has increased some of their flight award costs, you know, devalued,

00:07:12.480 | but that's 63,000, I think only went up to 70,000. So it's really not that big of a difference.

00:07:18.560 | So if you look at what I ended up doing, spending 85,000 points, if you don't factor in the transfer

00:07:23.600 | bonus, it was still two and a half cents per point. You want to factor in the fact that those

00:07:28.400 | Aeroplan points were a hundred percent transfer bonus, then we're closer to five cents per point,

00:07:33.440 | but even at two and a half cents, it's a great value. Again, I went deep on this process in

00:07:38.800 | episode 184, but just to flag a few days later, another option opened up from Air France for only

00:07:45.280 | 50,000 Air France miles, plus a few hundred dollars in taxes. So I just want to remind people of a few

00:07:51.360 | takeaways. And that is that even if you're going to Europe in the summer with four people looking

00:07:56.400 | to fly in business class, one, make sure that if you find availability, you're looking at all your

00:08:01.920 | options for transfer partners to get the best deal, which is why I think it's so valuable to

00:08:06.480 | have transferable points. And if you need more transferable points, we have links to the best

00:08:11.200 | cards and all their bonuses at the top of the website, allthehacks.com. The other big, important

00:08:16.080 | reminder is that if you can be flexible on the destination, the date, how close to when you book

00:08:21.360 | it, it is possible to find awards. I did it in the summer for Europe with four people. So I know it

00:08:27.520 | can work for you too, but it does require a little bit of flexibility to get the best deals. We had

00:08:32.000 | flights booked and it was now time to make a plan, but here's a little wrench. As we started thinking

00:08:37.680 | about where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do, we really started to second guess our decision

00:08:42.560 | to take two toddlers overseas for two weeks. We were actually less concerned about the time changes,

00:08:48.320 | but our youngest is still napping and doesn't nap in a stroller. And on top of that, we found it so

00:08:54.160 | hard to find hotels in Europe that allowed four people to a room. And then we started thinking

00:08:58.800 | about how next year it would be so much easier that girls wouldn't be napping. And just around

00:09:04.320 | that time, I was recording episode 187 with Lee Rowan about travel planning. And it popped into

00:09:09.760 | my head, his question and his comment, are we choosing this trip or is this trip choosing us?

00:09:15.200 | And after a good heart to heart with Amy, we realized that this trip was definitely choosing

00:09:19.840 | us. And we just felt like we would be much happier punting the entire trip, the big international

00:09:25.760 | family vacation, one year when we were out of naps and it would be a little bit more enjoyable.

00:09:30.880 | So we decided we were going to cancel the trip. However, one really interesting thing happened.

00:09:35.920 | I had realized a few days earlier that somehow we booked our flights to Paris right in the middle

00:09:42.560 | of the Olympics. And you probably don't know this, but Amy is an absolutely massive fan of the

00:09:48.400 | Olympics. The entire time it's happening, if she's not watching it live, she's watching replays of so

00:09:54.000 | many different sports. Now that's not to say I don't love the Olympics. I do love the Olympics,

00:09:58.720 | but for Amy, it's at a whole different level. And on top of that, and we were about to turn 40

00:10:03.680 | and we didn't really have any big plans to celebrate. So when my parents naturally asked

00:10:08.560 | me if there was anything I wanted for my birthday, of which, you know, from episode 188, there was

00:10:13.760 | not. I threw out the idea that what if we drove the kids to their house with our au pair and they

00:10:20.480 | all could watch the kids for a week and we could take a 40th birthday trip. They said yes to my

00:10:25.760 | surprise. And it was time to plan an entirely different trip and give Amy and myself, of course,

00:10:32.000 | one of the best 40th birthdays ever. So first step, I canceled the kids' tickets to Paris.

00:10:36.640 | We ate the 140 euro fee and we canceled our return flights, which thankfully, because I booked with a

00:10:41.840 | few more aeroplane miles had no fee. And now we needed to figure out a plan. And so we started

00:10:46.560 | with return flights. And the reason we did this was because we had a lot less flexibility.

00:10:51.840 | My parents agreed to some certain dates. And so we really had two dates that we could find

00:10:57.840 | flights back home, but we only needed two seats. And because the kids weren't with us,

00:11:02.560 | we had a lot more flexibility on our ability to take a layover if necessary.

00:11:06.880 | Fortunately, it wasn't hard to find two seats from Zurich back to San Francisco direct.

00:11:13.760 | I think we were using a combination of point dot me and award tool, but points. Yeah. Seats dot

00:11:20.240 | arrow. There are so many options. Go back and listen to that episode with Greg, the frequent

00:11:24.080 | miler, if you want to run through of all of them. But we found these flights and we were actually

00:11:29.360 | able to use some of those refunded air Canada miles to book them. Though this time we were

00:11:34.320 | less than a month out. So we actually opted to take a little risk and do the 70,000 point option

00:11:39.920 | where we would have to pay a hundred dollars per person to cancel and get our points back.

00:11:43.840 | But we felt pretty optimistic that we were going on this trip. And so now we had flights to and

00:11:49.520 | from Europe and it was time to plan the best six day 40th birthday in Europe ever. And here is

00:11:55.520 | exactly what we did. Now we were landing in Paris three days before the Olympics ended, and we've

00:12:00.000 | been to Paris a handful of times. So we knew we didn't want to be there for the entire trip.

00:12:04.400 | So it was time to find an Epic place to relax for three or four days. And honestly, we knew

00:12:10.000 | that there were so many options that would be amazing. So whether it was in France or Spain

00:12:14.560 | or Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, or plenty of other places, we knew it would be great.

00:12:18.720 | So we actually decided to let the points guide us. And the only requirement aside from a beautiful,

00:12:25.120 | relaxing resort is that it needed to be a direct flight away from Paris and a direct flight away

00:12:30.720 | from Zurich, which really wasn't too bad. So I started doing some research to pull together a

00:12:34.640 | shortlist of hotels, and I do wish this step was a little easier, but I went to the Marriott, Hilton,

00:12:40.240 | Hyatt, IHG sites. I found their hotel maps and I started looking around. I'm actually looking at

00:12:45.680 | the Hyatt one right now, and it's really great, right? You can search by award category, brand,

00:12:51.360 | you can even search by some features, like I only want a hotel with a pool or a spa,

00:12:55.280 | and you can find all of the options. For some of the sites on the Marriott side,

00:12:59.840 | it's a little easier to search by country because they don't all have maps and then narrow down by

00:13:05.200 | filtering for their luxury brands. And I then looked at Flight Connections, which is a great

00:13:11.120 | site to look at all the nonstop flights from a certain city. And so if you go in and type,

00:13:16.320 | "Zurich" from Flight Connections, what you'll see is here are all the places in Europe you can go

00:13:21.760 | direct from Zurich. And there are a lot of options, but if you start to look at where the warm summer

00:13:26.880 | destinations, it was really just following the coast from Portugal all the way to Italy,

00:13:32.880 | and then some of the islands in between. So now armed with a few ideas and a few places,

00:13:39.440 | I started thinking that the award search tools for hotels that we covered in episode 167 would

00:13:45.200 | actually serve me a little better. There was a Waze, PointsYeah, Rooms.arrow, AwardTool,

00:13:50.880 | and honestly, all of them probably would have worked. Some of them are better than others if

00:13:56.480 | you don't have a specific region in mind. For example, on a Waze, it's really nice that once

00:14:02.240 | you find a place, so let's say you wanted to search for Nice in France, you'd be able to

00:14:08.400 | search for Nice and see all the hotels nearby in a 30-mile radius. But then if you want to

00:14:14.160 | move the map down the coast and go to Cannes or Monaco, you can do that and redo the search.

00:14:20.400 | So since I kind of knew where the airports were, I just started kind of moving around and looking

00:14:24.560 | at these different regions and finding a ton of great options. At the time, either it didn't exist

00:14:30.720 | or I wasn't sure, but PointsYeah has this Daydream Explorer tool for flights that just kind of says,

00:14:36.640 | "I don't know where I'm going. Show me amazing options." They now have the same thing for hotels,

00:14:41.040 | so that probably would have been another decent option. The good news is there were so many good

00:14:45.440 | options for Points. A few highlights were the Seven Pines in Sardinia and Ibiza,

00:14:51.040 | the Hotel Martinez in Cannes, but as soon as I found one particular hotel,

00:14:56.320 | I kind of knew it was the one. And it was this property called Cap Rocat in Mallorca, Spain,

00:15:02.320 | and it was so familiar because a listener named Camden had emailed me almost two years ago

00:15:07.680 | about going there for his honeymoon. And I remember at the time looking up the hotel,

00:15:12.080 | and I was like, "This is incredible. The entire property is built inside of an ancient fortress

00:15:17.600 | carved from sandstone. It's part of the SLH, or Small Luxury Hotel Program, which at the time I

00:15:23.520 | think was partnered with Hyatt and is now partnered with Hilton. And it's an all-suites hotel with

00:15:28.720 | only 30 rooms. And fortunately, because it's now partnered with Hilton, you can use your Points

00:15:34.320 | and free night certificates to stay there." And I was surprised that the four nights we wanted to

00:15:39.680 | go were wildly available. And I say that I was fortunate because this is not a cheap hotel.

00:15:45.280 | The room rate, the four nights we went, was about $2,900 a night after taxes. And we were looking

00:15:51.200 | to stay for four nights. So that's a total of almost $12,000, which was something that I just

00:15:56.720 | never would be able to pull the trigger on myself. However, we were able to use two free night

00:16:02.080 | certificates and 260,000 Hilton Points to bring the total down to $0. I'm not kidding. When we

00:16:09.120 | checked out, there was no taxes or fees or anything. We just paid for the food we consumed

00:16:13.680 | and the taxes and fees on those food. And the whole bill we had after four days was about $500.

00:16:19.920 | And that was mostly food activities and whatnot. How did we get those points? So we got them from

00:16:26.560 | two welcome offers, one from the Hilton Aspire Card and one from the Hilton Surpass Card.

00:16:31.440 | The Hilton Aspire Card every year comes with a free annual night certificate. The Surpass Card

00:16:37.840 | did have a promotional period where it came with a free night as a welcome bonus,

00:16:41.280 | but it doesn't anymore. However, after spending $15,000 on the card, you get a free night every

00:16:46.480 | year also. The welcome bonus on both those cards also was 130,000 points or more. So just from

00:16:52.480 | opening those two cards, we were able to get together enough points and free night certificates

00:16:58.560 | to book the entire four-night stay. So when you think about the value of a welcome bonus, very

00:17:03.920 | unoften do you find a welcome bonus worth almost $6,000, which in this case was what it was worth.

00:17:09.920 | Now, if we had just done this on Hilton points and we didn't have any free night certificates,

00:17:13.680 | it would have been 520,000 Hilton points, which is still a great value. Most sites value Hilton

00:17:20.160 | points at about half a cent, which is fair because you can buy them at half a cent also,

00:17:25.120 | but this booking valued them at 2.2 cents per point. Now, that's pretty interesting because

00:17:31.920 | not everyone has that many points, but if you can buy points at half a cent and redeem them at 2.2

00:17:37.600 | cents, that means that even without Hilton cards, even without Hilton points in your balance,

00:17:42.160 | you could have just spent $2,600, bought the points you needed for this trip,

00:17:46.640 | and saved yourself $9,000 on the cost of the hotel. Now, the only catch here is Hilton does

00:17:51.360 | have a cap of how many points you can buy a year, but they do let you combine and transfer points

00:17:56.400 | with your family and friends. So the easy workaround is to buy them separately and combine

00:18:01.200 | them together. Even better, if you booked this all with points, you get a fifth night free.

00:18:06.800 | So the value would have gone up by another 25%. Now, I was really struggling with this because

00:18:11.360 | the idea that we were going to stay four nights and not get our fifth night free kind of made

00:18:15.360 | the optimizer side of me frustrated, but we were only going to be there four nights. We didn't have

00:18:20.480 | any use. We weren't even staying late enough that it would make sense to try to get the fifth night

00:18:24.160 | free. And when you mix a reservation with free night certificates and points, it actually doesn't

00:18:29.520 | qualify. So I actually felt a little bit better. But for a moment, I was like, "How do I optimize

00:18:34.240 | this a little bit more?" And then I said, "You know what? It doesn't matter." So I'm excited

00:18:37.600 | to share more about the property. And like I said, Amy's going to join me and we're going to run

00:18:41.600 | through that. But I want to wrap up the rest of this booking process because it's not just one

00:18:46.960 | hotel and two flights. There's a lot of things that go into this, finding a place to stay in

00:18:51.040 | Paris. We wanted to buy tickets to the Olympics, make some reservations, get a rental car, get

00:18:55.600 | those flights within Europe. And I think walking you through all of those processes and decisions

00:19:00.160 | would be super valuable because the tactics I use are ones that you can use as well.

00:19:04.720 | Maybe not the Olympics tickets. Who knows? If you do want to go to Italy in '26 or LA in '28,

00:19:10.720 | maybe they're relevant. So now that we got all that out of the way, we needed to book the hotel

00:19:15.120 | in Paris. That was kind of my process was let's put up all this scaffolding and we've got the

00:19:19.440 | flights, we've got the hotel in Mallorca, let's get the hotel in Paris. And despite my worry about

00:19:24.560 | prices during the Olympics, there were actually a ton of options. And when I was doing research,

00:19:29.040 | I read that similar thing happened in London as well for the Olympics there. And I think

00:19:34.240 | there's a window where it's far enough out that no one knows how crowded it's going to be and

00:19:38.160 | prices are really expensive. But actually, as you get closer, they seem to come down a bit.

00:19:42.720 | So first off, if you're ever booking some big event, I'd encourage everyone to make a refundable

00:19:46.880 | reservation early so you have it just in case things are expensive. I was actually able to find

00:19:52.080 | a couple options on Marriott where you could book something refundable with points just to have it

00:19:57.360 | while I was searching for what I really wanted. So that's one piece of advice.

00:20:00.880 | And so we looked at a lot of things. This is where the hotel search tools also really,

00:20:05.920 | really shine because we knew exactly where we wanted to go. So I could hop on any of those

00:20:10.560 | tools. I could dial in Paris, put in the exact two nights we needed and see all of the options.

00:20:16.160 | And it was really, really helpful to be able to do that. And you could do that on any of these tools

00:20:20.800 | and get a great experience. And while we found over a dozen decent options, there was one that

00:20:26.640 | actually stood out to me. And that was the Hyatt Madeline. It was super central. And despite being

00:20:32.400 | pretty expensive at 35,000 Hyatt points a night, which might sound like not that many if you're

00:20:38.880 | used to other hotel programs, but Hyatt points are just so much more valuable. But the cash rate was

00:20:44.560 | actually $1,200. So that was still a value over 3 cents per point. So great redemption value.

00:20:50.480 | But what stood out the most was that I had seen this Reddit post a day or two before,

00:20:54.800 | and I can put a link to it in the show notes, but a traveler who'd stayed at a hundred plus Hyatts

00:20:59.200 | made this tier list of every single one. And in the A+ category at the very top in bright green

00:21:05.280 | was the Hyatt Madeline. So I was like, wow, someone who stayed at a lot of Hyatt said this

00:21:09.200 | one is at the top. It was really central. It looked great. And the redemption value was awesome.

00:21:15.520 | And we had a bunch of Hyatt points from opening a Hyatt card recently. So despite that it was a

00:21:20.240 | non-refundable rate. We decided to go for it. Now, unfortunately I only have Hyatt discover

00:21:25.600 | a status, which means you don't get free breakfast. You need to be a globalist for that.

00:21:29.440 | Globalist takes 60 nights. I think I'm at four nights for the year. So that wasn't an option,

00:21:35.280 | but Hyatt actually has this thing called a guest of honor certificate where other globalists can

00:21:41.360 | transfer those certificates to you and you get globalist status for your reservation up to,

00:21:47.280 | I think seven days. And even if you have no Hyatt status at all. Now, someone who reaches globalist

00:21:53.600 | has probably picked up a handful of these through different milestone awards that you get as you

00:21:58.400 | earn more and more nights and being a globalist, they don't need it for themselves. So if you just

00:22:02.960 | ask around and have a friend that's got globalist status with Hyatt, I found that people are pretty

00:22:07.840 | generally willing to offer these to friends and family for free. However, there are a handful of

00:22:12.880 | communities online where people trade them and the going rate is about $50, which is a good example

00:22:19.120 | of a topic I can't really go deep on on the podcast publicly. But if you search around online,

00:22:25.040 | I'm confident you'll find something, or if you want, I'm probably going to share more details

00:22:29.120 | about stuff like that in the All The Hacks membership, which we've linked to on the website.

00:22:33.440 | So I managed to find a guest of honor certificate. I got that added. So now we got free breakfast

00:22:39.680 | lined up, which by the way, breakfast for two is a meaningful value, right? Well more than $50

00:22:45.840 | across two days and two people. And so also that globalist status that would be applied through

00:22:51.440 | that guest of honor certificate made us eligible for a free room upgrade. And if we needed free

00:22:56.480 | parking, it would be included, though we definitely didn't. So we've got our two hotel stays booked.

00:23:02.400 | Now I needed to book our European flights. And fun fact, they are called intra-European flights,

00:23:08.000 | not inter-European flights, which would be between Europe and another continent and which I have

00:23:12.400 | gotten mistaken in the past. And when we looked at our options, there were really two options for

00:23:18.080 | both legs. And this is something that I often find when booking flights domestically and in Europe.

00:23:24.080 | And you can usually save a bit when you book the discount airline, but, or pay a premium to book

00:23:30.640 | kind of the national airline. So in the US it would be a United, Delta, Southwest, a bigger

00:23:36.080 | non-budget airline versus a Spirit, a Frontier. In this case, the Air France option was like $500

00:23:44.080 | and the discount options were all about $150 to $200. Normally, I would love to book on Air France

00:23:51.200 | or Swiss Air because one, when things go wrong, they typically are better at taking care of people.

00:23:57.520 | And two, they just run more frequent flights. So if the morning flight on Air France was canceled,

00:24:03.200 | they'd probably be able to put us on the midday flight. But a lot of times, budget and discount

00:24:07.200 | airlines, they only have one flight a day from certain airlines. And so you're probably going

00:24:11.760 | to be stuck to the next day. I'm also familiar with the fact that when you book a flight for $150

00:24:18.480 | on a really discounted airline, by the time you add in the fees for your bags, even a carry-on,

00:24:23.920 | by the time you order some food or pick your seats or anything like that, the price is actually

00:24:29.440 | potentially going up quite a bit. So all things being equal, I would always prefer to book on

00:24:34.640 | the Air France or the Swiss Air. But in this case, it was just significantly more expensive even

00:24:40.880 | after adding all those things up. And if you actually looked, there were a handful of flights

00:24:46.400 | on different discount carriers from the Paris airport. We were looking at Paris Orly airport,

00:24:51.840 | which was a breeze to get to. I'd never actually flown out of that airport. And both on the airline

00:24:57.680 | we looked at, which was Transavia, and on a few others. So I felt pretty optimistic that if there

00:25:03.920 | was an issue, if someone canceled, I'd probably get a notification very quickly on TripIt or

00:25:09.280 | Flighty, and I'd be able to jump on and book something and be able to get out the same day.

00:25:13.600 | Now, I was really frustrated though, going through the booking process, because when you go through

00:25:19.200 | a booking on Transavia, you have to decide, do I want the basic flight, the plus flight,

00:25:23.600 | the max flight, which are really just like bundles of other things, or you can choose the basic

00:25:29.280 | flight and then go add on things. And depending on what you pick, the amount of changes you're

00:25:35.040 | allowed to make, the cost of those changes, the seat selection, the cabin luggage, the checked

00:25:40.160 | luggage, the number of points you earn on flying blue, because it turns out Transavia is a

00:25:44.400 | subsidiary of Air France. All those things change. And they don't make it easy to find out, okay,

00:25:50.240 | well, what would this thing be if I wait? So you end up having to go pick basic, add on a few things,

00:25:58.000 | go back, check it out. And honestly, it was a little bit of a stressful process.

00:26:03.200 | And the thing that really pushed me over the edge of how we ended up deciding what to do and

00:26:07.840 | ultimately creating a new money rule was the fact that I looked at the measurements for our carry-on,

00:26:13.200 | which is an away carry-on. And it was a one centimeter over the European dimensions. Now,

00:26:19.040 | one centimeter is not that much. So I wasn't sure how much that really mattered,

00:26:22.480 | but also all of the limits for these discount airline carry-ons was 10 kilograms, which is

00:26:29.280 | about, I think, 22 pounds. And I weighed my carry-on and it was probably about 26 pounds.

00:26:34.880 | And so I had no idea how strict they'd be enforcing these rules. And the last thing I want to do is

00:26:41.600 | pay for my carry-on, get to the gate, find out I have to check my bag. Now I have to pay a check

00:26:46.320 | bag fee, but that check bag fee is now twice as expensive because I didn't do it in advance.

00:26:50.720 | And so I did something that you all might find pretty surprising because I really would rather

00:26:56.320 | carry on a bag. I don't want to lose a bag on such a short trip. So what I did was I actually

00:27:01.600 | just booked the fancy version of the flight. So on Transavia's case, I booked the max flight,

00:27:08.400 | which includes fast track security, priority boarding, extra miles for your flight,

00:27:13.760 | and all of those different things. It ended up being more expensive. I want to say it was like

00:27:18.400 | 30, 40, $50 more than if I had optimally booked what I wanted. But had I booked a carry-on and

00:27:26.880 | needed to then pay for a checked bag, it was actually going to be a lot more expensive than

00:27:31.840 | that. I can't tell you how great it was to just be like, "I booked this one thing. Now I don't

00:27:36.640 | have to think about it." And that felt really good. On Condor, I'm actually going to go as

00:27:41.360 | far as to say, I'm not even sure it is a discount airline having now flown on it, but in my mind,

00:27:46.160 | it was because it was much, much cheaper than the Swissair flight. And they really only have

00:27:50.480 | economy or business, but that's what it looks like on the surface. Once you click economy,

00:27:54.480 | they have economy light, economy class, economy class flex, economy class flex plus, business,

00:28:00.400 | business flex, and business flex plus. And I'm just looking at one flight here. And the range

00:28:05.200 | is economy light at 113 all the way to business flex plus at 367. So first off, super annoying

00:28:14.240 | that it's just so difficult to see this. Kudos to them for at least showing on economy light,

00:28:20.320 | if you want to check in at the airport, it costs $30. If you want to do something, some of those

00:28:25.440 | fees are there. Some of them aren't. It says 8kg of hand baggage for a fee. So after a little bit

00:28:32.640 | of back and forth on their website, I realized same about $30, $40, $50 more if I wanted to book

00:28:39.760 | the business class version of the ticket, which included expedited security, lounge access,

00:28:46.560 | and all this stuff. Condor, I had never actually heard of Condor, even though I learned later that

00:28:51.440 | they fly direct from San Francisco to either Frankfurt or Munich. It turns out it used to

00:28:56.960 | be a subsidiary of Lufthansa. It is then later a subsidiary of Thomas Cook, the travel company,

00:29:01.280 | but now is independent. And so we ended up booking that. That meant that our total flights round trip

00:29:07.360 | from Paris to Mallorca, Mallorca to Zurich were about $500. But it also meant that we got to pick

00:29:14.480 | our seats. We got to sit in the front of the plane. We got priority boarding. We actually

00:29:17.680 | got a meal on the Condor flight. And we knew that no matter what we wanted to do with our bags,

00:29:21.840 | we wouldn't have to pay anything extra. Could I have saved $100 a person if we didn't do all that?

00:29:27.920 | Absolutely. Was it all worth it? 100,000% over and over. In fact, in the spirit of having these

00:29:34.880 | money rules in our lives, Amy and I added one to our list, which was that if we're ever taking

00:29:40.000 | a discounted carrier to save money, we are always going to spend whatever it costs to just make that

00:29:46.080 | experience better. That means being able to not wait in the long line. That means not having to

00:29:50.400 | decide whether you're going to carry your bag on and check it or anything else. And it was totally

00:29:55.440 | worth it to us. I'll talk about the experience flying both airlines, but that is a new rule for

00:30:00.720 | us. Finally, last thing to book was our rental car in Mallorca. And wow, it was very cheap.

00:30:05.840 | So it didn't matter where I looked. For four days, it was going to be somewhere between $100

00:30:10.080 | and $200. So as I always do, I looked on AutoSlash first because it's just a great comparison site.

00:30:16.720 | And then I went to the individual rental car company websites because sometimes AutoSlash

00:30:21.840 | won't search any special kind of discounts you have. And so with Hertz and National,

00:30:27.440 | there's a discount associated with having an Amex Platinum card. With Sixth, I had a discount from

00:30:32.080 | Founder's Card. Surprisingly, those discounts were all much better than the AutoSlash rates.

00:30:37.200 | And I'd heard some horror stories when I was looking online for renting cars in Mallorca

00:30:42.480 | that during the summer, it can be crazy and you show up and your car's not there. You have to

00:30:46.080 | wait a few hours. And all these reservations were pay at the counter. You didn't have to

00:30:50.240 | prepay anything. So I booked a car at Hertz, and then I booked a backup car at Sixth half an hour

00:30:55.760 | later. They're both around $150 for four days. And for both of them, I booked an automatic Mini Cooper,

00:31:01.680 | which we thought would be kind of fun. I really wanted to book a convertible for the summer,

00:31:05.600 | but I really didn't want to spend an extra $300 to do that, given that we didn't really have a

00:31:10.720 | lot of plans to be in the car. Now, despite using the Platinum card discount, you can actually put

00:31:16.320 | in whatever travel card gives you the best rental car protection. And then you could decline the

00:31:21.280 | collision insurance, which is exactly what we did. Last thing to book was our tickets to the Olympics.

00:31:26.240 | And I was wildly surprised at how easy it was to get tickets. Thanks probably in part to the fact

00:31:32.160 | that France has very strict regulations that pretty much prevent all reselling of tickets

00:31:37.120 | above face value, which actually meant that you could buy tickets for all the events we wanted

00:31:42.080 | to go to, which in our case were beach volleyball and track and field at face value. They had two

00:31:48.800 | options for how you book it. And hopefully this is similar to the future because obviously none

00:31:53.600 | of you are going to be going to France, so I'll keep it quick. But you could basically book tickets

00:31:59.120 | purchased directly from the Olympics, which were at face value. And you could pick a section. There

00:32:05.520 | was like an A, B, C, D level, but you didn't know what seats you got. Or you could buy them on the

00:32:10.160 | resale platform, but also at face value, plus a 10% fee. But there you could actually pick which

00:32:17.120 | seats you got. And so naturally I was like, "Well, let's go look at the seat maps. Let's try to get

00:32:22.400 | seats at track and field that are on the side of the finish line. Let's get beach volleyball seats

00:32:26.880 | that have a great view of the Eiffel Tower." And so that's what we did. And all in all,

00:32:31.760 | we ended up getting amazing seats. It ended up being about $300 a ticket, which I thought was

00:32:36.880 | a great deal. But given that we were booking this a few weeks before and I had just mentally

00:32:41.520 | prepared myself to pay astronomical prices, which we didn't, I'm not sure how this will work when

00:32:47.440 | we're in LA in four years trying to book Olympics tickets and there aren't these rules on resales.

00:32:53.920 | Maybe the Olympics committee will force some rules like that. Either way, I would highly

00:32:58.400 | recommend entering the ticket lottery in advance where you can pick some events and hopefully get

00:33:03.840 | drawn. That's what we're going to do. Unfortunately, there was no good way to buy these tickets on

00:33:08.880 | points. So we just paid. Of course, we paid with a card to earn the most points. Absolutely,

00:33:14.000 | we did that. But there was no secret there. But with those tickets purchased, we knew we were

00:33:20.880 | going to have two great days in Paris to do the Olympics, four days in Mallorca to kind of relax.

00:33:26.480 | And it was going to be an amazing trip. So that's all the booking we did. Amy made one

00:33:32.240 | dinner reservation at an awesome restaurant that we'll talk about. So I'm going to actually have

00:33:35.920 | her join me and we'll share a little bit more about the entire experience. Amy, thanks for

00:33:40.880 | joining me. Thanks for having me. Cheers. We're having a little glass of wine here. Kids are

00:33:45.360 | almost asleep, in bed. So overall, what did you think of the trip? I would say 10 out of 10

00:33:51.040 | amazing. It was really incredible. I think the combination of going to the Olympics in Paris,

00:34:00.320 | it was very fast paced, very energized, combined with then going to Mallorca, which was felt a lot

00:34:06.720 | more relaxing and just a bit a better opportunity to decompress was a really nice combination.

00:34:13.360 | I would recommend it. Not that people can repeat the Olympics in Paris, but I would

00:34:18.400 | highly recommend the combo. Okay, so let's start with where we started. We went to SFO,

00:34:25.600 | we got there a little bit early, and we stopped at a brand new lounge, the Club Lounge at SFO,

00:34:31.760 | Terminal 1. We've been to lots of lounges. What did you think of that one?

00:34:36.560 | I think this lounge was particularly great because it felt very spacious. And it was just

00:34:43.360 | beautiful, especially because so many lounges nowadays are overly crowded, in my opinion.

00:34:48.480 | I think that the food from the lounge, it was fine. Interesting. So I thought the food was great.

00:34:55.200 | They had pretzels with cheese. They had those shrimp were really good. They had a couple made

00:34:59.600 | to order, like where they were serving small plates. That red pepper soup, you didn't even

00:35:04.240 | want to try it. I didn't try that. I guess it sounds like if you go for the made to order stuff,

00:35:08.240 | it's pretty good. Yeah, it was great. We didn't really spend a ton of time. We didn't have

00:35:14.560 | drinks because we were like, as soon as we get on this plane, we want to go to sleep.

00:35:17.760 | And so we didn't want to have too much dehydration, too much alcohol and sleep poorly.

00:35:23.120 | I will say one shout out to Rebecca, who listener of the podcast was in the lounge also

00:35:29.680 | noticed me came over and said, Hi, awesome experience. Good to meet a listener in real life.

00:35:34.720 | It's been a while since we did that event in San Francisco. I think we're overdue for one,

00:35:39.040 | though. We've got about 14 people coming to Iceland, so we're going to get our share

00:35:44.240 | of hanging out with listeners soon. Okay, so after the lounge, walked over international,

00:35:50.480 | got on Air France. We took a really nice Air France flight to Paris. It was not outfitted

00:35:58.560 | with first class. So La Primaire, Air France is like marquee first class. This didn't have it.

00:36:03.520 | It just had business. But it was a really nice business class. What did you think?

00:36:08.160 | Yeah, the plane felt really nice and new. I really... I particularly enjoyed the doors.

00:36:15.440 | The ability to close off my seat felt amazing, especially because when you get on a flight where

00:36:22.640 | you know you're going to be on the go right when you land, it just felt really nice knowing I could

00:36:26.960 | close my door, sleep for six, seven hours, and not be interrupted with food choices or any other

00:36:33.520 | kind of service. So I thought that was wonderful. Yeah, the deal seeker in me couldn't do it. Well,

00:36:38.240 | two problems. One, my door was broken. So I couldn't close it just practically. The deal

00:36:42.960 | seeker in me, though, was like, "Gosh, this meal looks really good. I'm really excited."

00:36:47.200 | And Amy asked, "Could I get the meal if I wake up in a few hours?" And they were like, "Not all of

00:36:51.440 | it. We're only going to serve fresh food when it's fresh." So I stayed up. I ate the meal.

00:36:56.480 | It was delicious. Honestly, I don't remember exactly what I ate. So maybe it wasn't as

00:37:00.320 | memorable as I think. But overall, a great experience, except that our goal was to sleep.

00:37:06.160 | So you went straight to sleep. I ate, went straight to sleep. We slept most of the flight,

00:37:11.680 | I think. Yeah. Had a nice little breakfast before we got there.

00:37:15.200 | Didn't get to enjoy the in-flight entertainment as much as I wanted. The screen was big. It did

00:37:21.840 | have wireless charging, which was pretty cool. You could just set your phone on a little table,

00:37:25.520 | and it charged. I like that. Overall, Air France, 50,000 miles, one-way business class,

00:37:33.040 | and a couple hundred dollars in taxes and fees. I thought it was great.

00:37:36.240 | Agree. The other thing I would call out that was really nice is sometimes in business class seats,

00:37:42.080 | in the middle, the divider is relatively small. But in the seats we had, it was huge. And so it

00:37:49.680 | just opened up a lot more space for the two of us to hang out, talk. We ended up sleeping. So

00:37:56.160 | I guess it's irrelevant. But I thought that was nice.

00:37:58.640 | Yeah. I will say if you're flying with two people, take a look at photos when you're picking...

00:38:03.360 | If you're in business class, because sometimes the middle two seats are always the same. And

00:38:07.520 | sometimes they switch, which actually happened on our flight home. And there's one version where

00:38:12.800 | they face inward. And it's a less optimal experience for two people traveling together.

00:38:18.560 | And there's one where they're a little bit more facing outwards. And there's a lot more space

00:38:21.920 | between. Way better experience than sitting across the aisle from each other. So that was great.

00:38:27.280 | So landed in Paris, went straight to the hotel to check in the Hyatt Paris Madeline, which

00:38:34.560 | I mentioned that we booked because it just had stunning reviews from someone on Reddit.

00:38:39.440 | My quick take was almost no complaints, but nothing that really stood out. We got an

00:38:47.760 | upgrade, which was amazing. We use the guest of honor certificate. Breakfast was fantastic,

00:38:53.440 | but nothing was wildly exceeding expectations, other than that it was just a very solid,

00:38:59.360 | good hotel. More spacious than a lot of European hotels often are.

00:39:03.600 | Yeah, I would agree with that. It was solid.

00:39:07.440 | Yeah.

00:39:07.940 | The few things they did that stood out to me. One, it's called Hotel Madeline. And so they

00:39:17.040 | would put out little Madeline cookies in the afternoon. So I thought that was a cute little

00:39:21.120 | touch. The other thing they did is when the forecast called for rain, they set out umbrellas,

00:39:27.040 | which I thought was also kind of a nice thing. It felt like the service was there. But you're right,

00:39:31.840 | there wasn't anything particularly special about it. It was just a nice quality hotel

00:39:36.560 | that was also very spacious for being Paris.

00:39:38.880 | Yep. Obviously, we weren't there to stay in the hotel. That was the next trip. So for us,

00:39:43.920 | it was about location. Location was amazing. I think we walked pretty much everywhere we

00:39:48.800 | went in Paris. We might have taken one or two subways only to get up to the Stade de France,

00:39:53.760 | and to and from the airport, of course. Other than that, that's it. And for anyone going to

00:39:59.040 | Paris that's never been, getting on the RER B from Paris into the city couldn't be easier.

00:40:05.200 | Riding the Paris subway couldn't be easier. Surprisingly less crowded than we were expecting.

00:40:10.480 | We thought Paris was going to be wild and crazy, and there were a lot of people there,

00:40:14.880 | but it never felt like there were a lot of people there.

00:40:17.200 | Yeah, it was relatively relaxed. I think Paris does tourism so well already that

00:40:23.600 | accommodating the influx of people there for the Olympics just felt very natural. I think it's just

00:40:29.040 | a great city to just put on your shoes and get out there and explore by walking. There's so many cool

00:40:34.480 | neighborhoods and bars and restaurants and all of that. I wish I would have brought better walking

00:40:41.280 | shoes. We walked maybe 15 to 20 miles in one day, and my feet were killing me by the end of it.

00:40:49.760 | That's my only complaint. That was on me, but it was amazing.

00:40:53.040 | Yeah. The first day that we didn't put in that many steps, I wore a pair of shoes that I hadn't

00:40:57.520 | worn in a while. And I also was like, "That was a mistake." I had to ask the waiter at the

00:41:02.080 | restaurant we went to if they had a Band-Aid because I was like, "I don't think I can make

00:41:06.560 | the walk home." Other than that, great. That dinner was at a restaurant. You booked it,

00:41:13.040 | Arnaud Nicolas. Yes. What did you think?

00:41:16.000 | I thought it was fantastic. Amy was like, "I want to find a place that's near where we're going,"

00:41:20.240 | which turns out was very necessary because we almost didn't make it in time. It was a one

00:41:26.160 | Michelin star, but it wasn't that expensive. It was a reasonable, casual Michelin star restaurant

00:41:30.640 | with amazing meats, all kinds of different pâtés and all... Just amazing. I thought it was fantastic.

00:41:39.360 | We split a wine pairing between us, so we got to do the wine pairing, but we didn't have to drink

00:41:44.240 | four glasses of wine, which neither one of us wanted to do. And I would definitely go back.

00:41:49.120 | It wasn't... It didn't feel... The staff was awesome. Highly recommend. Usually, when you're

00:41:54.480 | near a major tourist hub, there aren't a lot of great restaurants. But we had tickets to go to

00:42:00.640 | beach volleyball that night. And beach volleyball, as many of you know, was right at the base of the

00:42:04.880 | Eiffel Tower. So we were like, "How do we find a restaurant that's not too touristy, with good food,

00:42:10.000 | within a five-minute walk of the Eiffel Tower?" And you nailed that one.

00:42:13.680 | Love it. Sometimes, chat GPT and Google help. Yeah, it was good. I think the restaurant itself,

00:42:21.680 | the service was amazing. The wine... We're in France, so it's great. And the food was just

00:42:28.960 | excellent. So that was awesome.

00:42:31.040 | We barely made it. We walked over to the beach volleyball event and had great seats. I talked

00:42:38.880 | about how I bought secondhand seats so we could find the right things. You'd been talking and

00:42:44.480 | excited about the Olympics for months. Now we're here. What did you think of the first event?

00:42:50.160 | It was electric. The energy was like nothing I've experienced before. There were people

00:42:58.560 | from all over the world, all these different countries coming together, faces painted,

00:43:04.000 | jerseys on... Sometimes jerseys off.

00:43:06.240 | As we experienced, sometimes jerseys off. It was incredible. Again, didn't feel overly crowded,

00:43:17.520 | considering it was the Olympics.

00:43:19.280 | Yeah. I think if you had asked us whether there was any chance we would try to go to the Olympics

00:43:24.160 | in LA, given how close we are, I think going into Paris, we were like, "No, it's just going

00:43:29.280 | to be a mess. Too many crowds. Not fun." Coming out of Paris, I'm like, "We should probably go."

00:43:33.760 | Yeah. I think the one difference is Paris has great public transportation.

00:43:40.480 | LA is a big question mark for me.

00:43:44.000 | Well, they've got 4 years to figure it out. We'll have a better sense then.

00:43:47.120 | Next morning, we just did a walkabout. That was the 15-20 mile day,

00:43:53.280 | picked up some cute gifts for the girls, stopped at a coffee shop, got a great matcha.

00:43:59.040 | Don't even remember the name of it. I think it was Tokyo Coffee. It was great.

00:44:02.080 | It might have actually been called The Coffee Shop.

00:44:04.560 | Oh, yeah. It had a Japanese vibe and the logo was in Japanese. It was great. We

00:44:09.600 | tried to find some Olympic souvenirs. We went to a couple places with massive, just insane lines.

00:44:16.160 | Finally, we were like, "Well, if we're going to wait in a line, let's at least go to the

00:44:20.000 | main HQ." We probably honestly should have just bought the souvenirs online. But we wanted to

00:44:24.640 | bring back the girls a little stuffed frige, the little mascot of the Olympics. And I'm glad we

00:44:30.240 | did. They loved it. It's been in their beds. They each have one. They've been in their beds since

00:44:34.400 | we got home. So glad we did that. There was actually one other thing we did,

00:44:38.560 | which was really cool. So I'd sent an email out about how a very popular bank that a lot

00:44:43.520 | of people listening now know that we can't call by name. But very popular bank, really popular

00:44:49.760 | travel rewards card with three points on dining, three points on travel. They set up a boat on the

00:44:55.520 | Seine where you could go as a private lounge. And by going there, you got free food, free drinks,

00:45:03.200 | free ice cream, free cocktails. It was really awesome. And it felt kind of like an airport

00:45:08.960 | lounge in the city with the exception of one experience. What did you think of that little

00:45:12.480 | surprise that purely by luck, we randomed into? It was so magical. I'm a huge Olympics nerd,

00:45:21.680 | for those who don't know. And we were having to leave. We were about to leave to go

00:45:30.800 | to the athletics event. And the athletics event was 30 minutes away.

00:45:34.960 | And so we were near running late. And we're about to leave. And Chris somehow befriends

00:45:42.720 | this big bank woman responsible for all of the athletes to come and do meet and greets.

00:45:51.440 | And he ends up getting us into this meet and greet with Katie Ledecky, which to me was just

00:46:00.000 | insane. I don't really get starstruck outside of maybe a few athletes, but she is just a powerhouse.

00:46:07.840 | And so it was really, really cool to be able to meet her.

00:46:11.280 | Yeah, it was totally by luck. I was at the right place in the right time. So it was really cool.

00:46:15.920 | We rushed up to the Stade de France. I think the highlight of going to the Olympics,

00:46:20.400 | and I say this as someone who's really only gone to two events ever in my whole life.

00:46:24.080 | But I think the highlight for Summer Olympics has to be athletics, going and seeing the track.

00:46:29.360 | We showed up. It's really cool when you show up a couple minutes early. They do all of the

00:46:34.240 | medal ceremonies for the night before they play the anthems of the winning teams.

00:46:37.840 | Really cool kind of special moment. But wow, when the races are on, and people are just running as

00:46:47.520 | fast as they can. It was incredible. I never actually ran track. You did. What was that like?

00:46:53.440 | It felt very personal for me, which maybe it's because I spent a lot of time and energy

00:47:00.560 | running track in my earlier years. But it was really incredible to see these athletes

00:47:07.040 | run as fast as they run in person. You just can't even comprehend the athletic

00:47:13.200 | abilities in this one specific arena. So that was really incredible.

00:47:18.320 | Yeah, I totally agree. One of my favorite parts was that everyone was cheering. There was someone

00:47:25.520 | from every country there, even though I remember there was one Irish runner the entire night. Just

00:47:31.280 | one across all the events. And there were like 100 people with Irish flags there for 3 hours

00:47:38.560 | just to cheer on this person. Obviously, to also watch all these other events, but it was really

00:47:42.400 | cool. The French were so excited. Every single time a French runner passed us, the crowd went

00:47:50.160 | crazy. It was really fun watching the US take gold in the women's 4x100. Men's 4x100 didn't go so

00:47:58.800 | well. But that was really awesome. I want to go to LA just to go watch more track and field events.

00:48:07.600 | The one other thing I would call out that I noticed by going to the Olympics, especially

00:48:13.600 | the athletic events, was the world is still a very good united place. And what I mean by this is

00:48:21.760 | there were athletes competing from all over the world. And people would cheer for all of the

00:48:29.680 | athletes regardless of which country they represented. And that to me, even if their

00:48:35.680 | athlete came in dead last, everyone else was cheering for the athlete that came in dead last.

00:48:42.320 | And I think that's really... It was something that I will never forget because I think

00:48:48.160 | we hear a lot of news sometimes and it feels like a downer. But experiencing that was really...

00:48:54.640 | It just made me feel really positive about the world. People are good. People want to be united

00:49:00.320 | and cheer each other on and see people be successful. So that was cool.

00:49:04.560 | Yeah, it's funny. Unlike some sports where there's 2 soccer teams and everyone's like,

00:49:08.960 | "I hope the other team loses. I want my team to win." Obviously, everyone had their person they

00:49:12.880 | want to win. But it was cool that no matter who won, everyone was still excited to be there.

00:49:17.440 | Yeah.

00:49:17.920 | So after that, we headed back. We got some sleep. We had an early flight the next morning.

00:49:24.400 | We headed out to the Orly Airport, which I'm only sharing because we've never actually been there.

00:49:28.880 | Incredibly easy to get to. We were fortunate. I don't even think I planned this. But

00:49:33.840 | we were on one metro line, got to the airport. Surprisingly large. I kind of thought it was

00:49:38.400 | going to be like this small airport in Paris. It had like four terminals. I think we were like,

00:49:43.040 | "Oh, there's a lounge there. We should check it out." Well, it turns out it wasn't even anywhere

00:49:46.480 | close to the lounge we were in. The few tips that I will share from our experience at the Orly

00:49:51.680 | Airport. One, we were flying Transavia. And I've never seen this in America or Europe or anywhere

00:49:59.040 | in the world. But the airline divided their check-in counters by destination. So we went

00:50:05.360 | to a Transavia counter and we waited for like 10 minutes, got to the front and they're like, "Sorry,

00:50:10.640 | this set of counters are for these 10 flights. And then that set of counters are for these other 10

00:50:15.520 | flights." And we had to go wait in line again, which was a little bit of a frustrating experience.

00:50:19.760 | But other than that, pretty easy, pretty straightforward. The microphone I'm holding

00:50:25.520 | right now was something that we brought on the trip just in case. I did not take it out of my

00:50:30.640 | bag and that led to some extra security screening, which I regret because I will say there are a lot

00:50:37.440 | of things that go just great in France. And every time we're at the airport, if your bag gets pulled

00:50:43.520 | for secondary screening, it's a very slow process. If it doesn't, it's a great process. So take your

00:50:50.240 | microphones, take your laptops, take your liquids, take everything out. You don't want to be stuck in

00:50:54.560 | a long line of bags to be screened. But other than that, it was great.

00:50:59.120 | Yeah. I think Orly, to me, felt chaotic. And maybe it was our check-in experience.

00:51:07.760 | Maybe it was also Transavia, where even the boarding experience felt

00:51:12.160 | delayed and long. And we were essentially routed onto the jet bridge and then just

00:51:21.840 | sitting there like cattle for some time. So the whole thing just felt pretty chaotic to me.

00:51:27.200 | I think my hypothesis... So I don't know why they did this. They lined us all up.

00:51:31.360 | They checked everyone in and we went down the jet bridge. But then 100% of the passengers

00:51:39.840 | stood waiting on the jet bridge. My hypothesis is that given it's a budget airline, they wanted to

00:51:45.600 | use fewer crew. So they had a crew to check everyone in, then they could close the door to

00:51:52.160 | the jet bridge. And then that same crew could help board the plane. That's my only hypothesis because

00:51:56.400 | we were all standing in this line. Instead of boarding the one person who needed a wheelchair

00:52:01.760 | first, they boarded them last. And they tried to wheel them down the jet bridge where there

00:52:05.760 | was like 175 people. That part of the process, not great. I'm gonna blame Transavia, not the

00:52:11.840 | Orly Airport. But yeah, that was a bit of a mess.

00:52:14.720 | Yeah.

00:52:15.040 | Once we're on the plane...

00:52:15.920 | It was great.

00:52:17.040 | It was great. Transavia, good flight, easy flight, bright green seats like you've never seen.

00:52:22.400 | That's the one thing I'll remember. But otherwise, very uneventful flight to

00:52:28.720 | Mallorca would totally fly. Transavia again, would check in in the right place.

00:52:32.800 | Correct.

00:52:34.020 | Landed at Mallorca. Only really noticeable thing is, gosh, there's so many stickers.

00:52:39.680 | You pointed this out. There are stickers everywhere in that airport as if like the

00:52:43.040 | theme of Mallorca is stickers.

00:52:44.720 | And a majority of the stickers were German.

00:52:50.000 | Yes.

00:52:50.720 | Which was quite interesting also.

00:52:52.400 | Yeah. I'm not sure why. Either the Germans love stickers, Mallorca loves stickers,

00:52:56.080 | or it's like two concentric circles. Only Germans who go to Mallorca love stickers. I'm not sure.

00:53:00.480 | We rented a car. And I wasn't sure if we would need a car, whether we'd want to just relax the

00:53:06.880 | whole time. But there were a couple cool places that it looked like it'd be fun to go to in

00:53:10.880 | Mallorca. And the rental car was super cheap. So we did. And great choice, by the way. We'll

00:53:17.280 | get to that. But picking up the car was so easy. We rented from Hertz. It was very clear that

00:53:23.120 | Mallorca was a sixth rental car airport. There were six signs everywhere. They had priority

00:53:28.560 | in every possible way. But Hertz experience was great.

00:53:31.440 | One note for European cars. I know that there have been a lot of people that have problems

00:53:36.160 | with damage. So I would say we did this and I'd recommend everyone do it. When you get there,

00:53:41.600 | do a very thorough walk around the car, take lots of pictures. If you have dents,

00:53:46.720 | if you have dings, even if they're pretty small. In the US, I find that unless there's something

00:53:51.600 | major, nobody cares. Abroad, if there's a little ding, someone cares. And when we were leaving,

00:53:58.240 | whenever you leave a rental car in the US, you usually go through a gate and someone looks at

00:54:02.480 | your paperwork. Here, that wasn't the case. So if there was something wrong, make sure you go

00:54:06.800 | back to the desk and say, "Hey, we noticed this thing that was wrong. Can we just note it down?"

00:54:11.200 | We took the pictures. We didn't realize when we were leaving that there wouldn't be a person to

00:54:15.040 | tell. And so we drove out and we thought, "Well, I guess we will have the pictures."

00:54:18.800 | And there was one scratch on the car that wasn't noted down in advance. And it wasn't a problem.

00:54:25.440 | But just note for everyone else, it was a little mini Cooper. It was great.

00:54:29.760 | Definitely recommend if you go to Mallorca, rent a car, because there are so many different places

00:54:35.520 | around the island to see. And it's a little bit bigger than I expected. So renting a car

00:54:40.960 | was the right move. Easy to drive, easy to park, easy to figure things out.

00:54:44.640 | So we go straight to our hotel. And I had done a lot of research. I'd heard about this hotel for

00:54:51.440 | 2 years. I showed you a couple pictures, but you didn't really have a lot of context before we got

00:54:56.080 | there. So what was your overall experience, not just of check-in, but Capricot?

00:55:01.600 | Okay. So I'm going to start by sharing my initial reaction when you shared

00:55:08.960 | where we were staying. So it's in this old, cool fortress kind of

00:55:15.920 | castle. And to me, it just looked very cold. And I was like, "We're going to sleep in a stone

00:55:25.920 | room that just feels not very ideal, but it has great reviews. Okay, people rave."

00:55:32.160 | And when we arrived there, it couldn't have been more different than what I expected in my head.

00:55:39.840 | It was very warm, very inviting. It just felt like this pristine, beautiful,

00:55:45.360 | high-touch kind of experience where the number of rooms are so limited at the property that you

00:55:54.640 | really don't see guests that often. They almost have more on-site staff to support you than they

00:56:01.920 | do other guests. Yeah, they do. They said they had 100 people working there and 30 rooms.

00:56:07.680 | Which is just incredible. I think we experienced that with the amount of service we got and how

00:56:12.960 | few people we ended up meeting who are also staying there. But it was incredible.

00:56:18.880 | Yeah. I'll try to put a link in the show notes to a couple things just to give you an idea.

00:56:23.600 | You can obviously go to the website, but I was surprised at how hard it was to get a good feel

00:56:28.080 | of the property on the website. A few highlights. Room, amazing. We booked the basic room that was

00:56:36.480 | free with Hilton Points. Still was like $3,000 for the night. And I would say I was kind of

00:56:43.040 | hoping that because you have Hilton Diamond status, they were going to give us a better room.

00:56:47.200 | They did not. It was also the peak of summer and we paid with points. So I understand.

00:56:52.000 | So I think we got one of the least desirable rooms. I can't say that for certain, but

00:56:58.160 | it was awesome. Beautiful room, massive bathroom. I think the bathroom is the size of our room in

00:57:05.680 | Paris. And then every room has a balcony or a deck or a roof or something with a daybed,

00:57:14.240 | a place to eat that overlook the ocean. And I don't know what we were doing wrong the first

00:57:19.600 | day because they bring you breakfast to your room every day. There might be a restaurant that has

00:57:23.440 | breakfast, but they made it clear that breakfast is included and everyone does in the room.

00:57:28.000 | And once we caught on, we're like, "We should be eating all of our meals upstairs on the balcony,

00:57:32.560 | overlooking the ocean." It was beautiful. Yeah, it was a really amazing property.

00:57:39.440 | They had an ocean, a pool, outdoors, and then this really weird indoor pool that was...

00:57:46.480 | I actually saw a picture of it and thought it was just part of the lobby, but it turns out it was a

00:57:50.160 | swimming pool down near the spa. All the other standard things you'd want. They have a gym,

00:57:55.520 | they have a restaurant, they have a bar, they have live music at night, an amazing restaurant.

00:58:00.080 | They have actually a Michelin star restaurant that we didn't go to because it was full,

00:58:03.840 | but we were actually really happy. They have a restaurant called C Club. We went there twice.

00:58:08.800 | It was amazing. The food was so good. I don't even know what to say. The resort was pretty

00:58:12.960 | much perfect. I can't think of anything that they let us down on, anything that they messed up on,

00:58:17.760 | anything that I would critique them on. I would give them a solid, perfect score.

00:58:22.400 | I would agree. I think the few things to note, one, it is about 20 minutes

00:58:32.240 | from Palma, which is the closest main downtown area. And so again, if you want to go out and

00:58:41.120 | explore and walk around, you have to drive or take a car if you stay at Capricot. The other thing

00:58:48.800 | that I would note is, would we have paid full price? For us, it's difficult because we are

00:58:55.280 | points and miles junkies. So it's difficult to say that. But I will say it was such an incredible

00:59:03.120 | use. Maybe some of the best use we've gotten out of these free night certificates. Would you agree?

00:59:09.360 | Absolutely the best use out of free night certificates because we've only been playing

00:59:12.400 | that game for two years on Hilton. But when I think of all the places we've booked with points

00:59:18.560 | and miles and been able to stay, I think Capricot and any hotel in Bora Bora probably are just right

00:59:29.360 | up there. And the one thing that I think makes Mallorca maybe slightly more special than Bora

00:59:36.160 | Bora, and I know how special Bora Bora is to you. So I already see in your eyes what you're saying

00:59:41.440 | is, Palma is a really cool city with amazing restaurants and cafes. And so it felt like

00:59:49.440 | we could have that relaxing vibe. We probably only left the hotel twice in 4 days or 5 days.

00:59:56.960 | But when we did, we were able to go and explore a little bit more. When you're on Bora Bora,

01:00:02.560 | you have this amazing, amazing experience. But outside of the resort, there's not really

01:00:06.880 | anything there. So when we were there, hung out at the pool, took out a kayak, relaxed on the beach,

01:00:15.280 | swam inside, relaxed in our room. The breakfasts were unbelievable. I remember the guy told us the

01:00:22.000 | first day when we checked in, he said, "Okay, you can have 2 choices. You can say, 'Just give me

01:00:26.320 | everything,' or you can pick what you want. I suggest you say, 'Give me everything,' the first

01:00:30.080 | day. And we'll just bring you everything in the morning. And then on subsequent days, you can

01:00:34.160 | decide what you want." I think we had more food there than at the Michelin star dinner in Paris.

01:00:39.840 | There was so much food. I almost felt bad. Actually, I did feel bad that we didn't eat at all.

01:00:44.560 | But amazing breakfast. I think about that breakfast regularly. I wish someone woke me up

01:00:51.200 | with that breakfast every day. Boy, would that be nice. Quite the opposite right now.

01:00:57.200 | We instead wake up and make that breakfast for our kids, but nothing near it. It was great.

01:01:01.440 | Agree. So that was Capricot.

01:01:05.360 | Highly recommend. Absolutely amazing use of Hilton certificates, Hilton points.

01:01:10.480 | Few other things on Majorca. We did do one day trip. We went up to Soler. We went to the old

01:01:16.160 | town and the port town. I enjoyed walking around. It felt like you got a little bit more of a vibe

01:01:22.480 | of Majorca. I don't know. Anything else to add from our little day trip?

01:01:27.280 | The towns in Majorca are probably like this where the streets are very small and the buildings just

01:01:33.440 | look really magical. And you just kind of get lost in these alleyways of cute shops and homes.

01:01:41.840 | It's definitely worth just getting out and walking around.

01:01:46.640 | Yeah. I think the really cool thing when we walked around the port town,

01:01:49.760 | it was very clear because I think it was just a weekend. Families were out. People were playing.

01:01:55.520 | They're all hanging out. It's really nice to see all these playgrounds. It actually made

01:01:58.960 | us a little bit sad. We're like, "I think the girls would love this. There's an ocean. There's

01:02:02.000 | a playground. The water's warm." They had these awesome little paddle boats, which everyone's

01:02:06.800 | seen a paddle boat. But for some reason, every paddle boat at this marina had a water slide on

01:02:12.160 | it, which I'd never seen in my whole life. So that was really cool. Only other thing that I'll add

01:02:17.520 | in Palma... So we went down to Palma twice, once for dinner at a restaurant called Vandal.

01:02:22.240 | We didn't go to other restaurants, so I can't speak to them. I thought it was incredible.

01:02:28.320 | What did you think? The food was so good. I loved that it almost had this punk rock vibe

01:02:34.240 | where they weren't there to cater to you. And they did. But in a way that felt very much like

01:02:44.160 | we're all friends just here to sit down, eat, and have a good time.

01:02:49.200 | So it was a really cool, laid-back vibe. Yes. We sat at the bar. All their plates have

01:02:57.200 | somewhat offensive phrases on them. Provocative phrases. Yeah. And I loved it. I loved the vibe

01:03:05.520 | of that restaurant. There were a lot of other restaurants that seemingly had white table

01:03:09.120 | claws and looked nice. I think our style is like, "Let's sit at the bar. Let's get a great cocktail.

01:03:14.880 | Let's have some really good food." But you get no extra points for fine dining for us.

01:03:21.040 | Good food and casual at the bar is better than fine dining. So that was exactly what I wanted

01:03:27.760 | to do. We walked around a bit, got some ensimadas, which is like a classic Mallorcan pastry.

01:03:35.040 | We also walked around the palace, the cathedral. Pretty impressive. I can't remember. I looked it

01:03:40.320 | up. It took like 3 or 400 years. 400.

01:03:43.280 | 400 years to build this cathedral. It's massive. We'll put a link in the show notes. It's just

01:03:49.280 | wild. A lot of Palma felt really modern and cool. And this was very old and really fun to walk

01:03:56.400 | around. I think that if we were maybe younger, we would have enjoyed some of the nightlife of Palma,

01:04:03.440 | which we've heard about. We've watched on our many nights binging Below Deck Mediterranean,

01:04:09.040 | which has got a little guilty pleasure. But we instead went back early and got some sleep.

01:04:14.000 | Yep. I'm okay with that. Yes. This was not a trip to go out and party. At one point,

01:04:18.640 | I was like, "Should we do it? Should we do it?" No, no, no. We definitely should.

01:04:21.040 | That was Paris for us. Yes. Paris, we were out late. Shout out to Whitney and Carl,

01:04:25.840 | friends from back home, who dragged us out one night till, I don't know, past midnight at least.

01:04:31.920 | And eventually, we're like, "We got to go." And they're like, "Well, we have a flight in

01:04:34.480 | eight hours. Why do you have to go? You don't have anything to do tomorrow." But that was a

01:04:38.080 | fun night. I love Paris. I feel like we've had many nights in Paris where you just end up somewhere

01:04:43.040 | at one or two in the morning. And it's always a good time. Yep. By the way, the bikes in Paris,

01:04:49.520 | Lime bikes and things like that, you can pick up so easily. And aside from me cutting you off and

01:04:57.280 | almost knocking you off the road, which was not intentional, I just realized I was driving the

01:05:02.240 | wrong way in a particular road. Other than that, it was great. Okay, trip home. Pretty straightforward.

01:05:09.840 | I mentioned how we booked Condor Business Class to get to Zurich. And that got us into the lounge

01:05:16.000 | at the Mallorca Airport. Mallorca Airport is fine. Lots of options to buy things to take home.

01:05:23.600 | Lounge was empty. It was a very strange lounge because they had a massive boardroom. It looked

01:05:29.840 | like I was walking through an office, but quite a lot of food, drinks, everything.

01:05:34.720 | So if you have access to that lounge... I didn't check if it was priority pass or not because we

01:05:39.200 | had access from our boarding passes. But if it is worth... I wouldn't say worth spending time in,

01:05:45.840 | but if you have time, worth stopping by. Yeah, I would agree. It was definitely large

01:05:51.200 | and somewhat sterile from a feeling perspective, but it wasn't crowded. And there was a really

01:05:57.920 | pretty wide assortment of food and drinks. So if you need to load up before your flight,

01:06:02.960 | it's a good place to do it. Yeah. So quick review of Condor Airlines.

01:06:07.440 | I think I thought it was a budget airline. I'm not convinced it's a budget airline.

01:06:10.800 | It actually felt like a pretty legit airline. We got a meal on our short flight to Zurich.

01:06:18.000 | It was not a chaotic boarding process. Big fan. Would fly Condor again. And Condor flies

01:06:24.240 | from San Francisco to Europe. So maybe we'll fly Condor again using Alaska Points. I didn't realize

01:06:31.200 | they're a part of Alaska, but you can use Alaska Points to fly Condor. Maybe we'll be back on

01:06:36.320 | Condor. Zurich Airport. It's funny. Our au pair is en route to New York right now and her parents

01:06:43.680 | are transiting through the Zurich Airport. And she was like, "They only have an hour. Are they

01:06:47.520 | going to make it?" I was like, "Well, everything in the Zurich Airport seemed really efficient."

01:06:52.000 | You couldn't possibly miss where you need to go. It was very straightforward. Everything was clear.

01:06:57.120 | People say things run like a Swiss clock. Things in Switzerland just run really well.

01:07:02.160 | We had a couple hours in the airport. It was very easy. We stopped at the Swiss Air Business

01:07:10.720 | Lounge. We were flying United back, which got us into the Swiss Air Business Lounge.

01:07:16.000 | Notably, it did not get us into the Senator Lounge. And so I told Amy,

01:07:20.720 | "This might be one of the few times that there was a better lounge that we didn't have access to."

01:07:26.720 | Now, were we Star Alliance Gold, we would have had access. Were we flying first class,

01:07:31.600 | we would have had access. Maybe business on Swiss would have had access, but we didn't have access.

01:07:36.800 | Best I understood from reading online, the only thing we missed was a gigantic whiskey library,

01:07:43.280 | which I think would have been cooler for photos because I was about to get on a plane. I didn't

01:07:46.720 | really need a lot of whiskey. I don't think you wanted a lot of whiskey.

01:07:49.760 | But that Swiss Lounge was fantastic. Yeah, it was amazing. All of Zurich,

01:07:56.960 | the airport is clean, highly efficient, and everything seemed to work. Typically,

01:08:04.240 | most airports you see certain bathrooms not working, water fountains not working, escalators

01:08:11.120 | not working. Zurich was dialed in. So the airport itself was great. The lounge was phenomenal.

01:08:17.600 | I thought it offered an assortment of food and drinks. There was a really cool outdoor patio.

01:08:24.400 | You could sit and work or hang out, watch the planes take off. So that was pretty cool.

01:08:28.080 | With free binoculars, if you wanted a plane spot.

01:08:30.480 | I did not know that. Cool.

01:08:32.640 | They had an ice cream station, which neither one of us ventured into, but...

01:08:36.960 | I would have hit that if it was later, but...

01:08:39.360 | But a 10am ice cream, maybe not on the cards. They did have prepared foods. They had a chef

01:08:44.080 | making pastas and chicken and that kind of stuff. So many dessert selections. They had a basket of

01:08:50.080 | Swiss chocolate, little Swiss Air Swiss chocolate. We brought those home for the kids. It was great.

01:08:55.520 | I would not mind spending a couple hours in that lounge. They had a cool relaxation room where you

01:09:01.280 | could kind of maybe get a little nap if you wanted. So definitely layover in Switzerland

01:09:06.400 | with access to that lounge. Awesome. To wrap it all up, United Polaris on the way home.

01:09:11.680 | Have flown United Polaris a lot. Was just like every other time. Solid experience, good food,

01:09:21.200 | good seat, good entertainment. Nothing special, but nothing wrong. And I say this from a place

01:09:27.680 | of privilege, being able to use points and miles to fly in business class.

01:09:32.480 | It was a fully lie flat bed. I am six feet tall. I had room to stretch out on. I got some sleep.

01:09:40.400 | It makes flying so much better. That said, I think I pointed out on this flight,

01:09:46.560 | because it was a day flight, I didn't really need to sleep. Maybe an hour. But I wasn't trying to

01:09:52.800 | get five, six hours of sleep like we were on the way to Paris. And if I'm trying to stretch my

01:09:59.280 | miles, I am okay thinking, "Let's prioritize the overnight flight. Use the points for business

01:10:06.720 | there." Flying back, what I really wanted was the space to be able to get work done.

01:10:11.840 | I probably sent 250 emails. If you'd sent me an email in the last seven months, you probably got

01:10:18.080 | a response from me on that flight because I just cranked. And so I appreciated having a little bit

01:10:22.640 | of space, but we would have had that in premium economy. So I'm not sure if you're trying to

01:10:28.560 | figure out how to prioritize your miles, it's worth it to spend money on business class.

01:10:32.400 | If you're flying something standard and it's not once in a lifetime, Emirates, Qatar Q Suites

01:10:40.080 | kind of thing. And if it's on a direction where you're not really expected to get some sleep.

01:10:45.840 | That said, we've been fortunate to earn a lot of miles. Happy to do it.

01:10:49.920 | Yeah. I would agree with that assessment though.

01:10:52.400 | Any overall takeaways?

01:10:54.080 | I have a takeaway, which is Europe, particularly France, Italy, Spain, to an extent,

01:11:01.680 | does this really well, which is the afternoon break where they really just enjoy slowing down,

01:11:11.120 | sitting down for a spritz or a wine or something and just hanging out with friends or family.

01:11:17.680 | Aperitivo is kind of like that hour in Italy. And I think that was really

01:11:24.480 | noticeable to me as something that I wish the US did a better job of. I think we can all slow down

01:11:31.760 | and really just stop and enjoy and really savor these moments of togetherness and the calmness

01:11:39.600 | of just connection. We don't do that so well here. So that was one thing that I really enjoyed about

01:11:46.000 | our trip and just the way that a lot of these European countries operate.

01:11:51.200 | Yeah. I love that. I think it's probably not in our DNA, but I've been doing some thinking about

01:11:58.640 | why has the US economy done so well? It's like, "Well, there's this trade-off. The US economy has

01:12:02.320 | done really well because we don't have it in us to just sit around and do nothing. We just grind."

01:12:06.000 | And I don't know. I need to find a good balance between the two though.

01:12:10.720 | Well, maybe it's just we go on vacation, we do as the locals do, and then we come back and grind.

01:12:17.440 | Exactly. I think one takeaway was it was a little sad to not have the girls there part of the time.

01:12:23.840 | And it was really nice to just not have to deal with children for a few days, to just be able to

01:12:29.920 | wake up whenever we want, to not have to rush home for nap time. And so shout out to my parents,

01:12:36.320 | shout out to Elsa Arroper for helping watch the girls and make this possible.

01:12:40.720 | Being able to spend our 40th birthday together going to the Olympics, relaxing with you was

01:12:48.880 | awesome. So thank you for always entertaining my two, three weeks before departure ideas.

01:12:54.400 | I am striving to give more notice because there's some real value in being able to savor an upcoming

01:13:02.320 | vacation. And when I throw them on us with weeks to spare, it's not that they're not great. It's

01:13:08.400 | just, man, if we had planned that trip six months out, we would have been able to look forward to

01:13:12.080 | it. When you plan it three weeks out, you only have three weeks to look forward to it. And then

01:13:16.240 | it's a frantic three weeks to get everything organized. So... It's a bit of a rush.

01:13:20.560 | I look forward to a nap-free time when we could take the girls on this kind of trip.

01:13:25.600 | I look forward... People always say, "Don't look forward to the future. You don't want your kids

01:13:30.080 | to grow up that fast." I both really want to savor the time we have, but I'm also excited for the day

01:13:35.280 | when they're old enough that they're like, "We're going to run down to the pool. Why don't you guys

01:13:38.560 | just hang out and relax?" So all that to say, I'm excited to travel with you and the girls and the

01:13:44.720 | family for the next, I don't know, many, many years to come. I agree. It was definitely a trip

01:13:51.120 | of a lifetime. And next trip, let's plan further out. All right. This was awesome. I told Amy,

01:13:57.200 | I was like, "This is going to be interesting. We're going to experiment. We're going to do an

01:13:59.600 | episode together on the couch. Have a glass of wine at night." Curious what you think.

01:14:04.480 | I promise neither my nor Amy's feelings will be hurt if you'd rather us go back to a little bit

01:14:10.080 | more condensed, a little bit more tactical. But if this is interesting, if it wasn't,

01:14:15.520 | go ahead and shoot us a note. You guys all have the email podcast@allthathacks.com.

01:14:19.600 | Thank you so much for listening. We will see you next week. See you next week.

How We Saved $20,000 On a Luxury European Trip (Points, Perks & Miles Guide)

Chapters