The Confidante Miami Beach by Hyatt, the Hotel Review

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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.

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Park Hyatt Washington D.C., the Hotel Review

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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.

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Washington D.C. in 3 days with kids

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The United States Capitol Building

Our spring break in Washington, D.C., was a success. The Nation’s capital is beautiful this time of the year; although we wished it would have been a little warmer, we still enjoyed our stay very much.

We were actually surprised that this city offers a lot of kid-friendly activities. When we told Sophia we were going to Washington, D.C., the first thing she asked was if we were going to see the White House. For 7-8-year-olds, it’s an adventure to visit the places they talked about in school and see the historical monuments themselves.

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A day trip to the Exuma Cays, the Bahamas

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A few years ago, we went on our Caribbean vacation to the Bahamas. Although it had been quite some time ago, and we hadn’t even started our “onpoints” journey at that time (it was only “withkids”), some of our friends (a post for you, Alex) were asking for a Bahamian story. We decided to feature the most memorable part of our adventure (and one of the most memorable vacations we have ever taken!) — a day trip to the Exuma Cays!

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How to keep your miles from expiring (domestic airlines)

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Unlike many international airlines, most of domestic airlines have a generous mileage expiration policy. In the recent years many (but not all) of domestic airlines switched from their award charts to dynamic pricing but silver lining is that by doing so they updated their mileage programs so that miles no longer expire.

In this article, we put together a list of domestic airlines, and major facts about their programs such as alliance attribution, miles expiration policy and easy ways of earning more miles or extending them if they expire.

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A winter weekend getaway: top activities in Murphys, California

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Last Christmas break, we had planned a short getaway to the winter wonderland (as Sophia says). We had booked three nights at the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa And Casino and were very excited about our trip.

The weather in the Sierras is very unpredictable in winter, it can be dry and sunny, or it can snow for days and wreak havoc on the traffic. December 2021 turned out to be the snowiest December on record for the Sierra Nevada, breaking all the previous records. Central Sierra Snow Lab recorded 214 inches (544 cm) of snow that month!

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Airline miles expiration and transfer partners

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When you decide to transfer your hard earned credit card points to one of the airline mileage programs, it’s important to know their expiration policies. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people had their miles stranded with various airline mileage programs due to overall disruption in travel and even though some programs extended or paused miles expiration, it was still unfortunate to have your miles and points locked with a program that has a harsh miles expiration policy.

We decided to put this article together to have a quick and up to date reference to domestic and international airline mileage programs and their miles expiration policies.

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Favorite things from our travel checklist with kids

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Traveling as a family, especially with the little ones, is always challenging; you want it to be as comfortable as possible, and you want to be ready for any imaginable scenario.

You constantly adapt and develop your own traveling habits. Like this one — pack in your carry-on 1 set of underwear/socks/T-shirts for each person. You never know if your luggage will arrive on time, and you obviously don’t want to end up with no change of clothes for the next day or two.

Here we wanted to share with you the list of our favorite things we take with us on our trips.

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Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel And Spa On Del Monte Golf Course, the Hotel Review

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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.

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A summer trip to Houston, Texas, June 2021

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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.

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