We flew from Amsterdam Schipol Airport to London Heathrow on July 7 late evening. We met up with my parents at the airport who had flown in from Kolkata about 2 hours earlier and were going to be with us for the rest of the Europe trip. It was pretty late at night around 11 pm and we took a cab to the nearby Renaissance Heathrow Hotel where we were going to stay the night. I had researched about free public buses to the local hotels around Heathrow but it was very late at night (some buses don’t run this late) …
Destination Trip Reports EuropeJuly 2014: London Trip Report
Destination Trip Reports EuropeJuly 2014: Amsterdam Trip Report
We arrived at the Schiphol Airport around 9 PM from our flight from London. After immigration, we proceeded towards the train station which is located at the lower level of the Arrivals section. The fare from the airport to Amsterdam Centraal station is 4 Euro. I tried to purchase the tickets at automated kiosks at first but was unable to do so with my chip and signature card. I then went to the ticket booth and the same credit card worked fine this time. In my experience, the chip and signature cards work most of the time at the credit …
Destination Trip Reports EuropeJuly 2014: Our 2 Week Europe Trip – Introduction
Question:1.1 million miles and points !! What does it get you? Answer: A once in a lifetime two-week trip for four people to Europe !! 🙂 Yes, we are going on a 2 week Europe trip starting the 4th of July. We will visit 6 cities on this trip, starting with Amsterdam, then London, Lucerne, Venice, Rome and finally Paris. My parents will be skipping Amsterdam and will join us in London to travel with us for the rest of the trip. There will be no airline reviews on this trip as we are flying coach for the entire trip …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoMay 2014: Hawaii Trip – Day 5 and 6 – Hanauma Bay, Luau
Day 5: One of the most popular places in Oahu to go snorkeling is Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve. Wanting to beat the crowds, we headed out around 8 AM. There is a $1 per vehicle parking fee and a $7.50 per person entry fee. We didn’t wait long to get our tickets but were then ushered into a small waiting area (interesting reading) before going in to see a 15 minute video. The video explains the history and rules of Haunama Bay. Once that is done you are headed down the hill to the beach. There is a rental stand where you …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoMay 2014: Hawaii Trip – Day 3 and 4 – Dole Plantation, North Shore, Aloha Swap Meet
Day 3: Wanting to get an early start for this longer trek to North Shore, we checked out of the Hilton around 8 AM. We arrived at the Dole Plantation around 9 AM. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fully open until 9:30 AM. So we roamed around and looked at the Pineapple garden and took pictures. There are a few attractions available: the Pineapple Express (train ride through the plantation $8.50), a Garden Tour (guided tour through the garden so you can learn the history $5), and a Pineapple Maze (wandering through a plant maze $6). Keep in mind you can see …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoMay 2014: Hawaii Trip – Introduction
Disclaimer: The trip report and hotel reviews for 2014 May Hawaii trip are solely the work of my wife Karen. I was not a traveler on this trip. During the second week of May, Karen is going on a 6 day trip to Hawaii with her sister Danny. Since I am running low on vacation days especially with a mega-trip coming up in July and then again in December, I had to opt out of this one. Bummer !! Itinerary for the trip: Flights: Los Angeles – Honolulu – Los Angeles (American Airlines) Hotels stays and reviews for this trip …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoMarch 2013: Las Vegas Weekend Trip Report
Even though I have been to Vegas over two dozen times over the past decade or so, I still like to visit this city whenever I get a chance. I had some Southwest vouchers that were expiring in mid-March and this gave us the perfect excuse to plan a weekend trip. We had already attended the Celine Dion concert in our previous trip and this time we wanted to see a Britney concert at the Planet Hollywood. But a few visits to the Ticketmaster website put that notion to rest when we saw how expensive the tickets were !! Finally …
Asia Destination Trip ReportsJanuary 2014: Phuket, Thailand Trip Report
Day 1: I arrived at the Phuket Airport around noon and after looking at the various published fares for different taxi companies negotiated one down to 500 THB. I am not sure if I overpaid by a little or by a lot but I wasn’t going to let that ruin my vacation. 🙂 The cab ride is a short 15 minutes and after passing the other two Marriott properties (JW Marriott Phuket Resort & Spa and Marriott’s Phuket Beach Club) I arrived at the Renaissance property. Hotel Review: Renaissance Phuket Resort & Spa After getting to my room, I took a shower …
Asia Destination Trip ReportsDecember 2013: Vizag – Araku Trip Report
For the last 2 years my parents (and our extended family in India) have decided that we will take a short 3-4 day trip when I visit India each year in December. This is one trip where I don’t use any miles or hotel points. In fact my parents and rest of the gang don’t even let me take my wallet out for anything, not even meals. This year the plan was to take the night train from Kolkata (my home city in India) to Visakhapatnam (Vizag for short) on Christmas Eve and stay there till December 29 and then take another …
Asia Destination Trip ReportsDecember 2013 – January 2014: India – Thailand Trip Introduction
I will be traveling for about 3 weeks for my yearly family visit to India starting mid-December 2013. Towards the end of the trip I will stop by at Bangkok and Phuket for 4 days. I earned 2 Marriott Category 5 certificates during our Portland and Fort Lauderdale trips with the Marriott quarterly promotions. I will be using those to stay at the Renaissance Phuket Resort for 2 nights. I will be doing several reviews on both airlines and hotels during this trip. Airline Review – ANA Business Class – Los Angeles to Tokyo (Haneda) Airline Review – Singapore Airlines Business …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoSeptember 2013: Niagara Falls Trip Report
We reached Buffalo Airport from New York by a late night JetBlue flight. After picking up our rental car from the airport, we drove to our hotel in Niagara Falls (Holiday Inn Express) which was less than 20 miles from the airport. Since it was around midnight by the time we reached the hotel, we went straight to bed. Next morning, after waking up and having complimentary breakfast at the hotel, we checked out and drove to the Niagara falls (US side). We used the Niagara Falls official parking which was only $10. Niagara Falls is comprised of 3 separate falls, …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoSeptember 2013: New York City Trip Report
Day 1: We arrived by Amtrak in the afternoon at NYC Penn Station from Washington Union Station. As soon as you get out of the station (which is located below Madison Square Garden), all your senses are like assaulted (in a good way). Yep, you are in New York. Since we were staying close by at the DoubleTree Suites – Times Square, we decided to just walk there instead of taking a cab. We ended up walking a lot during this trip. I would definitely recommend this hotel for its convenient location. After having lunch and taking a couple of hours …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoSeptember 2013: Washington DC Trip Report
We arrived in DC on a Saturday evening after a long Southwest Airlines flight from Ontario, California. My parents had arrived from India a couple of hours earlier. Since we were all pretty tired by now, we headed straight for the hotel. We were staying at the Fairfield Inn & Suites, Dulles Airport. Day 1: After getting up early in the morning and having complimentary breakfast at the hotel, me and Karen went to the Dulles Airport to pick up our rental car. This was the only rental booked without points for this trip. We had booked an intermediate car …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoSeptember 2013: DC/NYC/Niagara Trip – Introduction
During the Labor Day week Me and Karen took time off of work and went on a trip covering Washington DC, New York and Niagara Falls. My parents were flying in from India and met us in Washington DC. Itinerary for the trip: Day 1: Ontario – Washington DC (Southwest Airlines) Day 2: Washington DC Sightseeing (Washington Monument, WW2 Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Capitol Building) Day 3: Washington DC Sightseeing (Museum of Natural History, Holocaust Museum) Day 4: Amtrak from Washington Union Station – New York Penn Station. NYC sightseeing (Top of the Rock, Times …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoAugust 2013: Las Vegas Weekend Trip
During the second weekend of August, we did a quick trip to Las Vegas. We had been wanting to see Celine Dion’s performance at the Colosseum in Caesar’s Palace Hotel for a while as we are both big fan of hers. The opportunity presented itself when I had about $165 of Southwest vouchers expiring by September and had to be used before that. Normally we would drive to Las Vegas as its only about 4 hours from our home but we flew instead. Our Itinerary: Fly ONT-LAS on Southwest Airlines Stay 2 nights at the Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites, …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoJuly 2013: Independence Day Weekend Florida Trip – Day 3
This was our last day of vacation and we wanted to spend the whole time………drumroll……. pretty much at the beach :). We wanted to check out the Hollywood Beach and the famous Boardwalk. We packed our lunches and icebox and drove there just past 11 AM. We forgot that it was a Saturday and the parking lot was already starting to get full. Parking entry fee is $8 for the day. The beach was pretty crowded by the time we got there. We were there to spend our day in the water and without much ado, jumped right in. The …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoJuly 2013: Independence Day Weekend Florida Trip – Day 2
We woke up early and decided to head out for the Keys after breakfast. The rental car agent had told us that it will take us about 5-6 hours to drive down to Key West. Since we were staying the next two nights in Fort Lauderdale, we didn’t know if we would go all the way there because the round-trip drive alone would take the whole day. We decided to get to some point midway, spend the day and return back. The drive is pretty interesting. You get through many stretches of single lane road where there is water on …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoJuly 2013: Independence Day Weekend Florida Trip – Day 1
We arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport just before 9 AM after an American Airlines non-stop red-eye flight from Los Angeles. I had 2 AVIS Free-rental-day paper certificates and only after arrival at the airport did I realize that I had left them at home. Bummer !! I knew that the rental rates were pretty expensive here, but remembered seeing better rates at carrentalsavers.com compared to Kayak/Southwest/Hotwire and all the individual car rental sites. So using the phone, I booked a 2 day rental with Budget through that website. After arrival at the Budget Fastbreak counter, we got a complimentary upgrade …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoJuly 2013: Independence Day Weekend Florida Trip – Introduction
When life gives you lemons, make some hard lemonade !! We had originally planned on a trip to the Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands for the July 4th weekend this year. I was planning on staying at the Comfort Suites, Seven Mile Beach using Choice Privileges Points. Since the booking window for award stay in Caribbean properties for US residents opens 90 days out, by the time the booking window opened, the award flight availability using British Airways Avios points (MIA – GCM route operated by American Airlines) had completely vanished. That meant that we were going to spend our weekend …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoJune 2013 – San Diego Zoo Safari Park Trip Report
Last month we went on a day trip to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. We had never been to this safari park but had heard good reviews about it. There was an Amazon-Local deal where the regular entry tickets of 44$ were on sale for 20$. Obviously Karen jumped on the deal right away and got 3 tickets for us and her sister Danny. The park is near Escondido, which is around 30 miles from San Diego. The park opens at 9 AM and closes at 5 PM – 7 PM depending on the time of the year. After entering the …