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Getting back to my European summer adventure – after ten days throughout Ireland and Greece, it was time to wind down my summer vacation and move on to the France and Austria portions of my itinerary. It just so happened that the last day of the Greece group trip was the day before the final match of the Women’s World Cup in Lyon, France. In order to get to Lyon with enough lead time to allow for delays, I spent a little extra to fly from Paros back to Athens early Saturday morning.Read More →

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Two years ago my sorority sisters and I decided to organize a European summer vacation, and this year eleven college friends were able to meet up in Greece over the July 4th holiday! Because I can never just go somewhere and come back, I took a short pre-group-vacation trip to Ireland.Read More →

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About three days before embarking on the luckiest vacation ever, I checked my Marriott app and saw that the Le Méridien Bora Bora had already processed an advanced upgrade to an overwater bungalow at the end of the pontoon (like a dock) – one of the most desirable rooms at the property which would have cost an extra $500 per day for an upgrade from the base points reservation for a Classic room.Read More →

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If you follow my Instagram – and let’s be honest there are few good reasons not to – you’ll have seen that I was living my best #luxelife in Bora Bora last month. Given that I was furloughed for most of January (#IdiocyInAction), the primary question from most of my friends was HOW?! Welp, in the interest of transparency and full disclosure and all that jazz, that trip was about as close to free as it was probably going to get. I went with my mom, and for my portion of the trip, the flight, lodging, and daily breakfast came to about $500. That’s travelingRead More →

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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 →

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ONLY FOUR MORE DAYS (!!!) until my round-the-world summer vacation with my friend Rosio! We’re heading to 8 countries in two weeks (gotta maximize that annual leave), and booked our flights and accommodations using a mix of loyalty points and money. We ended up with a nearly $37,000 trip for 2 that was booked with about 600,000 points and roughly $2,000. I’m so excited, and I want to share bit about the plan and how we booked it.Read More →