Author Archives: Justin

Napa – March 2016

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Back to wine country…Yet again.  Fortunately (at least for Alyce), she was not pregnant this time.  Also, we were finally able to work it out so that some friends could join us.  Patrick, who grew up with Alyce and I, along with his wife Stephanie met us late the first night from Houston.

This trip was a Wednesday through Sunday.  That timing worked out for a couple reasons.  First, I used award miles and that was when flights were available within Alyce’s possible vacation time.  Second, I booked the hotel using the 4th night free benefit of the Citi Prestige card.  With that, they give you a credit for the 4th night’s room rate + taxes.  And it is the actual 4th night – not an average of the 4.  So having that be a Saturday got us a much bigger credit.

This was our first trip to wine country in Winter (even though it was a week or two from Spring).  The temperatures weren’t bad, but we had rain every day.  And not misty light rain…We had legitimate hard rain.  We must have heard the following line 10 times over the trip – “Sorry y’all had rain the whole trip…well actually, not really because we can use it.”

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That is the downside of traveling December through March to wine country – rain.  It’s not that it’s a guarantee you’ll get rain (the weekend before and after ours were beautiful), but you are far more likely to get rained on than the other times of the year.  The plus side is that room rates are less and things are generally less crowded. Continue reading →

Italy 2015 Wrap Up

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[So uhh…Disclaimer.  This post is long.  Like makes previous posts that I’ve had a disclaimer on look short.  It’s just shy of 20,000 words.  A professional typist typing at 80 wpm would take 4 hours just to retype this post.  I don’t blame anyone if you don’t want to read through it entirely.  You can search the area/town you might be interested in or skip down to the concluding thoughts where I give more opinions/advice based on our experience.  The day by day portion is more of a travel journal.  Also, Alyce has a talent for saying more than I do in much fewer words, so you can read her posts too.  Good luck.]

 

Italy…Finally.  This one had been on both of our wish lists for a while.

Me – I’ve always been fascinated with Roman history.  The Romans were an incredible society and were more advanced than any other that would show up for quite some time.  My engineering side has always been impressed by what they were able to accomplish 2000 years ago.  My law side is similarly impressed with Rome.  The Louisiana Civil Code that we use today is a direct descendant from Roman law – one of the few things I took from the Legal Traditions class we had to take at LSU.  It equally influenced just about all of the Western legal systems.

Alyce – She has a strong Italian heritage on her mom’s side.  Her Nonna (the Italian word for grandmother) cooked all sorts of delicious Italian meals, many of which I was fortunate enough to get eat too.  Pasta, Pizza, Italian meats and cheeses are many of her favorite foods.  She loves the history too, just as I enjoy the food, markets, etc. as well.

As is usually the case, Alyce had to rein me in on the planning/scope of the trip.  I wanted 3 weeks.  Alyce shut that down being as we had never even traveled with James when she was submitting her vacation request.  Also, she had only been at her new job a couple weeks when vacation requests were due.  Going right for a 3 weeker would have been a little bold.  In fact, she just submitted her vacation requests for 2016, and the same situation played out.  I wanted three weeks; she settled at two.  I’ll get the three weeker in 2017… [Editors note: Since writing this, we have changed our 2016 fall vacation to 3 weeks.  Persistence pays off.]

Two weeks sounds like a lot – and it is for US vacations – but it really isn’t that long to see a country.  You lose one night to travel, so you’re down to 13 nights before you even get started.  Plus, we had a 15 month old with us.  We don’t quite see/do as much as we used to…

Speaking of which, I planned about half of what I usually would (in terms of meals/activities/wine/etc.), and we still ended up skipping half of what we had planned.  And that is fine and somewhat expected.  No one wins if we wake up a baby and have him scream through a lunch because we wanted to go to a particular place.  That’s not enjoyable for us or the others around us.

Similarly, I probably planned our stops a little differently in the past.  I definitely would have stopped a lot more along the way during our transits.  We drove right through the heart of the Chianti wine region and didn’t stop at a single place.  As it was, we stayed at 5 different spots over the 13 days…That’s moving when travelling with a one year old.

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Life is Fragile

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This post is a little different than our typical post.  The title says it all:

Life is fragile.

That is something I’ve always believed.  We are on this planet for an unbelievably short time.  Even if you live to be 100, it is just a fraction of a blink in the grand scheme of things.  You must make the most of the time you have.  This belief has led me to making several work/life decisions that others considered odd or out of the ordinary.

On our big trip, we stayed with our friends Tommy and Mallory on our final stop of the trip in Abu Dhabi, where Tommy was stationed for his job with Exxon.  I went to high school with Tommy, and Alyce went to high school with Mallory.  They got a bit of a head start on family life on us and had two beautiful daughters when we visited.  Mallory was also newly pregnant with a son when we stayed with them in Abu Dhabi.

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Fast forward a couple years…We have our own son and are wrapping up our trip to Italy.  Alyce tells me that something sounds bad on facebook our last night in Venice.  Mallory is asking for prayers for their son (something we knew was serious based on the people/circumstances involved).  Two days later, we are back in New Orleans.  Alyce filled me in on the news – Tommy and Mallory’s son, Austin, had passed.

We were both devastated.  We know that accidents happen and are a part of life, but that fact doesn’t make it any more palatable when it happens to someone you know.  Plus, it hit really close to home considering we have a son just a little bit younger than Austin.

Today we went to Austin’s service, and it was every bit as sad as you would expect.  There is really not much you can say in such a circumstance, but I think just being there and giving a hug helps.

So hug your loved ones tight.  Don’t put off things for the future that are important to you.  You never know what will happen.  And keep Austin, Tommy, Mallory, and their girls in your thoughts/prayers.

Austin

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Italy 2015 Itinerary

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We’re here in Italy after a rough journey over (new plane, new seats on the plane, unhappy baby, etc.), but we made it and are glad to be here.  We’re going to try to keep up with blog – hopefully we do.  Chasing around a 15 month old occupies a lot of our time.

Alyce will follow up with more on our flights.  I just wanted to get a post in with out itinerary.  We fly into Rome and out of Venice, and this is where we’ll be stopping along the way:

Rome – 3 nights

Florence – 3 nights

Montalcino – 2 Nights

Castiglione Falletto (Barolo area in Piedmont) – 3 nights

Venice – 2 nights

That makes it 13 nights total, plus one night spent on the flight on the way over.  Here is the itinerary on Google Maps – though we are taking the train from Rome to Florence.

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Chicago May 2015

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As previously mentioned, the California trip did not exactly go as planned.  We still were facing a trans-Atlantic flight to Italy in September and did not want that to be James’s first time on a plane.  Chicago was the perfect solution.

Several airlines fly non-stop to Chicago, and the flight is only about two hours.  Plus, flights were dirt cheap in May.  We booked on American for $105 round trip all in.  United had some flights even cheaper than that, but we missed them by the time we had plans nailed down.  This time, we went with three economy seats because first class was a lot more expensive.

James did pretty well on the flights.  He got a little antsy, but we broke out something he doesn’t really get at home – the Ipad.  That settled him.  He eventually fell asleep in both directions for about half of the flight.  The turbulence seemed to help with sleep; we were probably the only people on the plane hoping for turbulence.

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California March 2015

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This was to be our first family trip with James, as well as our first trip in over a year.  But thing did not go exactly as planned…

Alyce had a week off in early March.  In planning, we knew we wanted to take James somewhere to test out flying/travelling with him prior to our planned Italy trip (in fall 2015).  It is still pretty cool in lots of places in March, so that led us back to one of our favorite destinations because we were confident that we would have good weather.  California.  And the weather was great.

The plan was to fly into San Francisco and rent a car.  Then drive to Carmel and spend three nights there.  Then spend a night in San Francisco in route to Napa, where we would spend the final three nights.  All hotels, flights, wine tastings, etc. were booked.

But that is when things went awry.  A couple days before we were set to leave, James came down with an ear infection—and that came with a strong recommendation against flying.  We weighed our options, which ranged from completely canceling the trip to Alyce staying behind and meeting me with James if he got better…to any other conceivable option.

Ultimately, we decided to go ahead and go alone for an abbreviated trip and leave James with his grandparents for a couple days.  Alyce would travel the first three days then head back, and I’d spend one night in San Francisco since we had used an award night that we could not get back.

This ended up working out well.  While I wish James would have been able to make the trip with us, the few days Alyce and I had alone were very relaxing.

On to the actual trip…As mentioned, the weather was fantastic.  Sunshine and spring time temperatures.  If anything, it was a little warm in the middle of the day.  Renting a car worked out great – driving is pretty easy in California.

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Updated Points/Miles Strategy

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It’s been one year since I wrote my initial post on miles and points, and a good bit has changed in the last year – such as:

*Delta has switched to a revenue based mileage earning system.  That is, you earn miles based on what your ticket costs, not how far you travel.  This is a much bigger difference than it may sound like for frequent flyers.  There is also much speculation that they will change to a revenue based redemption system in the not too distant future (e.g., every Delta mile is worth 1 cent).

*United gutted its award chart for all of its partners and increased the prices of United award flights as well.  United used to be one of my favorite miles, but they’re right in the middle of the pack now.

*United also followed Delta’s lead in changing to a revenue based mileage earning system.  This leaves only American Airlines as the sole major airline on which you earn miles based on how far you fly.  Many speculate AA will follow the other two majors at some point.

*Speaking of American, AA and US Airways have merged.  This places US Airways in the One World alliance.

*Hyatt added a new top award category for its best properties and increased prices across all categories.  This resulted in a 50% increase in award prices for most of Hyatt’s nicest properties.  That said, Hyatt was due for an adjustment.  Overall, it was not awful (see Hilton for an awful hotel point devaluation).

*Citi’s Thank You Points now transfer to several airlines (previously, they were just cash equivalent points).

So with all of that combined with questions I’ve received over e-mail, I figured it was time to update my take on points miles.  My original post still has lots of good info I will not cover here, so be sure to read that in combination with this post.

Takeaways from all the changes:

*Transferrable points are generally the best.  If a program devalues its award chart, you just avoid transferring points to that hotel/airline.

*Don’t hoard your points and miles.  Use them.  Points/miles will always decrease in value.  This can be true even in the case of cash equivalent points (Southwest airlines and Citi both reduced the cash equivalent value of points.)

*Speaking of cashback equivalent points – they can be a compelling option for many people.

In terms of my favorite points, Starwood Preferred Guest (“SPG”) points are still my favorite.  SPG points transfer to my two favorite airlines at the moment.  Chase Ultimate Rewards have gone down a notch with the United and Hyatt devaluations.  Now I probably place them on par (or slightly below) AMEX Membership Rewards points.  Citi Thank You points have improved with the addition of airline transfer partners, but they are still behind the other major transferrable points.

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