Last summer we took a short trip to Houston, Texas to take care of some family business.
We booked this trip with Southwest Airlines and paid with cash which of course went towards the minimum spend requirement for a credit card signup bonus (at that time we were working on the Hilton Honors Aspire card, to learn how we spent the signup bonus, read about our Hawaiian vacation here). We had the A-List status with Southwest Airlines so we got our seats in the front of the plane.
It was Zoe’s first time ever on an airplane and she was very excited to play with all the booklets tucked in the seat in front of her! Luckily the flight wasn’t too long, just about 3.5 hours.
We booked a small SUV with Avis and got a nice upgrade to a new red Toyota 4Runner by just being an Avis Preferred member.
The nice thing about Avis Preferred that it’s free to join and there’s no minimum activity requirement. With Avis Preferred you can earn Avis points but you can also switch to a different loyalty program on their website, so you can earn your favorite loyalty program points by just renting a car which you would do anyway. We usually stay at Hyatt properties so we selected it as our points earning loyalty program with Avis. This short trip earned us 500 World of Hyatt points.
Since we had some family business to take care of in a particular part of the city we booked a spacious suite at Hyatt House Houston/Galleria for 3 nights using Hyatt points (10,000 points per night, 30,000 points total).
It was a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom suite with a full kitchen, and it was perfect for 2 adults and 2 kids. It’s especially convenient to have some extra space when you’re sharing it with an infant who takes 2 naps and goes to bed early.
The hotel had a large outdoor pool, and served free hot breakfast.
After indulging ourselves in the pool in the morning, we ventured out to explore the Houston downtown area.
Houston was hot and humid, as you would expect it in summer. To our surprise, the streets were quite empty, well that was probably because it was in the high nighties outside coupled with humid air.
We stumbled upon a very nice park in the downtown called Discovery Green filled with ponds, water fountains, trails, and benches — kids loved it.
For dinner, we headed out to Dish Society and had some tacos, poke and a watermelon salad! They served breakfast all day so kids could have their pancakes for dinner. It was on Sophia’s bucket list — “I would rather eat breakfast for dinner than dinner for breakfast”.
When you think of Houston, you immediately think of NASA Johnson Space Center. So, if you love space as much as we do you ought to visit the NASA Space Center Museum which has tons of things to see, from Moon rocks to rockets such as Saturn V and SpaceX Falcon 9.
So, the next day, we drove down the Johnson Space Center. We spent there a few hours exploring the grounds, had lunch at the cafe and took a NASA tram tour to visit George W.S. Abbey Rocket Park (included in your admission) to see Saturn V — the tallest, heaviest and most powerful rocket ever flown.
For dinner, we made a reservation at the Caracol restaurant. We cannot recommend this place enough! We scored an outside table, as it just stopped raining the air was still fresh and not hot.
It’s a Mexican coastal kitchen with seafood and oyster bar. The food and service were outstanding! We tried oysters, mussels, prawns, fish and octopus and topped it off with the perfect tres leches cake!
On Points With Kids Summary:
3 nights spent at Hyatt House Houston/Galleria, 10,000 points each. Cash rate was $183.59 per night which equals to 1.84 cents per point, pretty decent redemption even if it’s a little less than average value!
You can apply for the following credit cards to earn Hyatt points:
- Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card application
- Chase Sapphire Preferred Credit Card application (Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred to the World of Hyatt program)
