Maximizing rewards while traveling with kids
We spent a weekend at the Waterfront Hotel in Oakland, CA a few weeks ago. The Waterfront Hotel is a boutique hotel located in the heart of the Jack London Square. A famous marina area on the Oakland Harbor and the Alameda Oakland Ferry Dock, the Jack London Square offers dining with water views, nestled with breweries and stores. It hosts special outdoor events and a Sunday morning Farmer’s Market.
This post is about our 4 night stay in Miami Beach, Florida at the oceanfront hotel The Confidante Miami Beach by Hyatt.
This Category 5 hotel is from the Unbound Collection by Hyatt, with 20,000 Hyatt Points per night on a standard night (17,000 Hyatt Points on off-peak nights, and 23,000 Hyatt Points on peak nights).
We were lucky enough to book our room before March 22, 2022 when it was still a Category 4 hotel, before Hyatt updated its award chart and bumped some of the properties to a higher category.
This early April, we spent three days in the Nation’s Capital – Washington D.C. To enhance our experience, we chose to stay at Park Hyatt Washington D.C.
We arrived at the Washington Dulles International Airport late evening and took a taxi to the hotel. If you are arriving at this airport, remember that it’s located more than 30 mi from Downtown Washington D.C. (in Virginia, to be exact); therefore, the ride could be relatively expensive.
Recently we spent a weekend at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel And Spa On Del Monte Golf Course in Monterey. So far, this was our fourth stay at this property, and we always enjoy it.
The hotel is a 22-acre property with two large outdoor pools, hot tubs, dining, a little outdoor area where you can play ping pong or a giant jenga, a gazebo with a fire pit for roasting marshmallows, and obviously a golf course.
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.
In April 2021, exhausted with covid fatigue, we decided to look for a vacation spot for our Thanksgiving break. We didn’t want to deal with the ambiguity of international travel during the pandemic and decided to go to Hawaii instead.
This was our first time in Honolulu (and Oahu) and our 4th in Hawaii (we’ve been to Maui twice and once to Kauai). Although we love nature, hiking, and sightseeing dearly, for this vacation, we only planned to spend time mostly on the beach and to enjoy good food. So, this post is more of a resort review rather than a story about a Hawaiian experience.
A couple of weeks ago, we spent a weekend at the luxurious ranch in the Carmel Valley, California — Carmel Valley Ranch.
We love Carmel-by-the-sea and usually go there to spend some time on the beach and walk around downtown, but we had never been to the Carmel Valley, which was only 20 minutes further inland.
We love road trips! You don’t have to stress out about plane tickets or packing too much, and you can stop whenever you feel like it.
However, having a new baby and the pandemic made things more difficult for traveling. When baby Zoe was seven months and Sophia was 6.5 years old, we decided to give it a try and planned our first little getaway. This was the first time we traveled as a family of four, and we agreed upon a little town on the Central Coast of California — San Luis Obispo. It was only a 2.5-hour drive from us and wasn’t that busy, given the time of the year (March) and all the restrictions.
