Average Guy Travels

 Hey Everybody! Just back from a fantastic 17 day trip to Europe, so over the next few weeks we will break down the trip and the lessons learned! I employed all of the strategies we discussed in previous articles on this trip! Lets start from the beginning!  You have all heard me say this before, if you want to travel cheap....let the vacation choose you. While searching my normal travel reward sites, I found a business class fare from JFK to Madrid for 42,000 miles one way. The fare was on Air Europa (Spains #2 Airline in size).  This meant that for 84,000 miles , my wife and I were flying business class to Madrid from NY. Ive never been to Madrid so BAM! my vacation just found me.......I planned a route from Madrid to Barcelona and then from Barcelona to Bordeaux, France.....I would have been willing to return to NY from any of those locations. But, by chance...I found the same fare from Madrid back to JFK in business class. I was able to book two people rountrip busine...

 Exciting news!!!!! At some point in the last few months Capital One has modified their shopping experience to include miles multipliers! This can be a game changer for people who are wondering how to accumulate miles at a faster pace. For years, Capital One has been pushing its shopping ap at me and of course I not only downloaded it but I added the popup to my computer browser. Its not uncommon for me to make an online purchase at Walmart and by using the Capital One shopping ap I receive 3% of my purchase price back , not terrible. But now!!!!! by logging into my account in my card ap or on my computer I am presented with a link that adds miles multipliers to my purchase..... Just an example I've already used......I purchased a pair of reading glasses from Walgreens online for $30 to be picked up at my local Walgreens two hours later. The miles multiplier was 16X. For one pair of $30 reading glasses i received my standard 2x for using my Cap1 VX 60 miles and a bonus award of 480...

Today was a perfect example of what I am doing my best to teach…….   Scenario….My son, daughter in law and grandson are coming to Ohio from Texas on January 30 th and returning to Texas on Sunday February 2. The cheapest flights we were able to find was San Antonio to Lexington for $385 each or $780. When I searched this Delta flight as a rewards flight I was able to find the very same flight for 44,000 miles or at base 1/1 redemption…..$440 total….that’s a win!       Today we realized that my son did not book the exact return flight that I had recommended, he booked a return flight leaving Lexington at 5 AM!!!!! After a discussion with my in laws we decided neither of us wanted to drive them to Lexington at 2AM so how do we fix this ?   The Delta Fare was a basic economy so cannot be changed and they will only allow cancellation of entire reservation. The in laws did a quick search and found that a one way ticket at a decent time returning to San A...

 Those of you who know me, absolutely know that since retirement and maybe even a little before that....travel is my thing.  I consider myself lucky to live 15 minutes away from CVG (Greater Cincinnati Airport) as it allows me to be ontime for my departures. Now, CVG is not JFK, IAD, or ORD, you will not get the super cheap transatlantic flight you could find from those three major airports. You can however, find great flights and plenty of them on low cost carriers if you are not too picky about your travel. Many of them nonstop.  CVG is blessed with plenty of low cost flights from the likes of Allegiant, Breeze, Frontier, Southwest and I've just started seeing Sun Country flights leaving Terminal 1 at CVG. Im pretty experienced with Allegiant , Frontier and Southwest. Most low cost carriers have been pretty good to me as long as I follow a few cheap flight rules.....  I will only fly these airlines if its a nonstop flight. I dont give them the opportunity to lose m...

 If you've been following along on this trip, we just drove across Ireland from Galway to Dublin. It took about 2.5 hours and we had plenty of time to turn in the rental car, ride the tram to the airport and spend two hours waiting in the Priority Pass lounge for our 2.5 huour one way flight to Milan arriving at 9:40 PM. The cost of the flight was $86 each. This is where the trip gets a little more interesting so pay attention. Im a pretty experienced traveller so my plan was to arrive in Milan, walk outside to the cab stand, show the driver the address of my Airbnb and be tucked in by 11 PM.  Turns out Milan is a much larger city than I had expected. While we were waiting for our bags at the baggage claim, I happened to look up and see a sign that advertised cab rides to Milan City Center for 122 EUR....what??????? thats abour $140 . This was not in my plans! I quickly pulled up the maps on my phone to check the distance to our Airbnb and it was 25 miles away! This was a clea...

  Lets take a quick trip to Ireland!   So, you have been following the blog, reading the tips, saving your miles and you are thinking about your first trip to Europe! Maybe its not your first trip but Ireland is an easy fun trip with lots to see and do.  Ireland can be a budget trip and we will talk about how and why Ireland should be on your list. I always kind of wanted to visit Ireland but the actual reason I ended up there was a little more involved. When I was a young man, my grandfather told me about my family history. My family was from the Isle Of Man, a small island in the North Irish sea surrounded by Ireland, Scotland and England. He told me our family cam to America in the 1700’s and no one had ever gone back. For years I joked with him that I was going back!  In November 2022, I made that happen! While researching my trip and searching for flights to IOM, I found the average cost of that flight was between $1800 and $3600. I did not know then wha...