Greece! After three packed days exploring Ireland, I was more than ready for some rest and relaxation with eleven of my sorority sisters for four nights on Paros, with most of us aiming to arrive in Athens over a 2-day period. I landed in Athens super early Sunday morning, bleary-eyed and grumpy from a too-short overnight flight.Read More →
Choosing hotels was probably one of the harder tasks on our trip around the world. We wanted the bulk of the cost to be covered by hotel points, but we obviously weren’t working with unlimited amounts of points – especially with the one realistic Maldives option being 20,000 Starwood points per night – so we had to be as strategic as possible. Except for a bed & breakfast booked through Airbnb in Colombo, all the lodging was in fancy-ish hotels via loyalty program points or certificates. Read More →
Back in 2016, I realized that the next year would feature an optimal set of travel circumstances. 2017 would be the year in which I’d have Gold status* with Starwood Hotels, Silver status with United Airlines, and a huge (to me, anyway) stockpile of points/miles in both loyalty programs. On noticing this, I set out to find the perfect new vacation spot that had a beach and a cool town to explore.** This perfect place needed to have a Starwood property, and had to be reachable by United (or one of United’s Star Alliance partners). As it turned out, Bali represented the convergence of a solidRead More →
