Mendocino Coast, Southwest Fare Sale and Burning Club Carlson BOGO: My Week in Travel for June 6

Last updated on November 20th, 2017 at 04:14 am

Let’s start a new segment where we talk about all of the travel activities we have completed over the past week. This is something I have been meaning to do for months, and now I am finally getting around to it.

As we move to full time travel, hotel promotions and smart burning of points becomes a very important part of our daily lives. This means more time spent researching travel, and more frequent bookings. This segment probably would have been really boring a year ago, but now it is becoming very exciting each and every week.

So here we have it, my first attempt at sharing our travel research and redemptions for our upcoming travels. You’ll notice that we are all over the place – several continents, plans anywhere from 30 to 180 days in the future, earning miles and spending them as well.

You need to be constantly earning miles in order to have redemption options in the future. We need to burn many of these miles for redemptions just to stay on our set budget. I won’t be sharing exact dates of travel, because that is creepy. Then again, you could probably say that all of the existing detail is creepy too.

On to the recap.

Hotel Bookings

As I mentioned yesterday, we corrected the dates for our hotel booking in Bend, Oregon for July.

While not technically last week, I booked a night on IHG PointBreaks at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites Portland – Jantzen Beach. This cost 5,000 IHG points instead of the $194.64 (with taxes included) they were asking for on the site.

I also made a speculative booking in Eureka, CA for 20,000 IHG Points to save $190.39 on a hotel. I call this speculative, because at some point I may find a better deal and cancel.

As you can probably tell from these hotel bookings, we are driving up the Pacific Coast from San Francisco to Seattle. We will be in Seattle for a conference before heading to Maui for our “official” start to our big trip.

I also booked two suites at the Park Hyatt Dubai for two nights using cash and points + a diamond suite upgrade.

Last, I booked my final BOGO offer for Club Carlson at a the Radisson Blu Edwardian Vanderbilt hotel in London using the 44k points (saving $267/night). I will be in London to speak at a conference this fall, and I chose this hotel because it was right next to the venue.

Hotel Research

Our friend Javier told us about a great Bed and Breakfast in the Piedmont region in Italy that we are considering for later this year.

Looking to book the Hyatt Regency Aruba in the next few weeks.

Still indecisive on where to stay on Oahu.

Hotel Stays

We stayed two nights at the wonderful Heritage House inn on the Mendocino coast of California. This place was gorgeous and very spacious! We booked this place on a Jetsetter flash sale a few months ago and it was our celebration of Amanda’s early retirement. Here is our view from the balcony:

The Mendocino coast is gorgeous – I took over 1,000 pictures during our 3 day adventure and look forward to sharing them in the future once I can post-process everything. Here is a quick preview – a photo I took from the beaches north of Fort Bragg.

Points Earning

We met minimum spend requirements for the Citi AAdvantage card bonus (50k points) for Amanda and the Citi ThankYou Premier card bonus (50k points) for Jeff. I have been meaning to sign up for a Citi checking account for miles bonuses, but haven’t had the time to get this done.

Note these links are direct to the credit card company (not affiliate), but I give a custom URL to track them just for my own personal reference, and potential future bargaining power. 

Flight Bookings

This week we booked one flight, a speculative Southwest flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix well in the future. Southwest had a great fare sale going on this week, and I booked a MSP-PHX flight for 7,091 Rapid Rewards points for a direct flight.

That flight will be our first booking since earning the Southwest companion pass last month through 50k + 60k point credit card signup bonuses. If we can continue to get flights for ~10k points, I am going to really enjoy Southwest for our domestic and tropical-international travel needs.

Flight Research

Fight research has been light lately. I have pretty much given up on the AKL-TBU-NAN-VLI-NOU route on points, and may have to settle for just AKL-NOU and spend more time on New Zealand. I guess that is a perfectly acceptable option as well.

On the other hand, I did see that LAN flights to Easter Island from PPT are now showing up on the BA website again, which has me thinking about ways to make it there during our travels. I love once a week flights to Pacific islands, what can I say!

We are eyeing an Etihad flight from Abu Dhabi to Milan using American Miles. Just waiting for the miles from the signup bonus to post. The 10% miles rebate on American redemptions with the Citi AAdvantage personal card is such an underrated benefit! We will be able to do Sydney to Milan in Etihad first class for 90k miles each.

Now that we have the Southwest companion pass, I spend a lot of time looking at their interactive route map and dreaming of possibilities. I may need help :).

Do you like this feature?

This weekly recap was fun to write – was it fun to read for you? I am trying to balance the aspirational part of our travel with the practical parts on how to get it done. This site is not a general travel news site, but I do take news from the points and miles world and incorporate it into my own personal travel.

By writing weekly about what we are doing to earn/redeem travel, I am hoping it gives you ideas for your own travel. If you have a question about any particular promotion, feel free to ask in the comments.