Where our points and miles took us: 2024 wrapped!

In 2024, the kids turned 9 & 11 and it seems they May have hit the golden ages for family travel. They can help pack, carry their own backpacks, walk for hours without getting exhausted (mostly) and food, history and culture are exciting to them. They soak up so much from the trips we take even if they complain. It all feels so worth it even on the days it’s questionable ;)

Here is a recap of our year with some loose details. I’ll be sharing more in depth detail on how we booked some of these trips in the new year for those who are paid subscribers so please consider supporting my work if you haven’t already (I so appreciate all of you!!).

How it started:

We opened a fair amount of credit cards this year to take advantage of welcome bonuses to leverage our everyday spending and earn more points. Reminder that in the points world, you do not have to spend beyond your means or spend a fortune on cards to accrue points. This is not about haves and have nots! It’s about strategically putting spending on particular cards in order to earn welcome bonuses. With a welcome bonus (as an example), spending $4k in 3 could get you 60k in points. In order to accrue 60k points on a card you already have, you’d likely need to spend $60k. That’s a lot! The welcome bonuses are key. Make sense?

Our credit scores ticked even higher this year (820+) and we do not carry balances! More on this in the new year but these are two questions I get a lot :)

To get our family of 4 where we went this year with points would have cost us over $150,000 if we had paid cash 🤯 Points are magical and unlock amazing opportunities.

Fill out this form for help strategically choosing your next card to get you on your way to earning more points for travel.

So, onwards! Let’s see how it all went down! Here’s 2024 WRAPPED…

New Years - Detroit

We rang in 2024 in Detroit on a vacation - staycation (a night at a hotel downtown while my parents watched the kids). We stayed at The Shinola hotel, one of my favorite boutique hotels. Since it wasn’t a hotel I could book with points, this was a great opportunity to use a hotel credit from one of my cards so it wouldn’t go to waste.

February - Cartagena

In February, the kids had a week off school and we swapped homes in Cartagena, Colombia. Such a magical place! We stayed in the walled city which is where I’d stay again on our next trip. It’s easy to walk everywhere and the architecture and history are so rich and interesting. For a budget trip, book the Hyatt in Cartagena on points (they transfer from a popular bank!) which is just outside the walled city and has a gorgeous infinity pool and amazing views.

For our last few days in Colombia, we took a relatively harrowing boat ride to the island of Baru (the water was rough and we arrived completely drenched!). We stayed at the Sofitel hotel, booked with cash using the benefits from a popular credit card - that gave us 5x points back on the purchase plus free breakfast, early check in and late check out and an upgrade. The property was gorgeous and not too pricey. The beach beautiful, restaurants good and amazing views. We had the most fantastic trip. Our flights were paid for with transferable points transferred to Jet Blue which made the trip nearly free aside from the Baru portion!

March - Mexico City

I moved to NYC 25 years ago (😳which makes me feel really old!) and while I love a lot of cities, no city has ever struck me as being quite as dynamic and cool as New York. Enter: Mexico City. The metropolitan area is home to 20 million people and some of the neighborhoods we visited (Condesa, Polanco, Roma, Coyouocan) felt like an extension of Brooklyn or another NY borough.

The food is amazing. Next level amazing. We went to some of the popular spots like Contromar and Rosetta but our favorite spots were breakfast places like Lalo, Largo and Amanda Manda. We walked everywhere, visited museum and markets, shops and architectural sites and saw the most unbelievable library I’ve ever seen in my life - with book shelves suspended from the walls and ceiling. We took a VW bus ride outside of the city to see the famous architect Luis Barragan’s towers and houses. It was memorable, picturesque and also the scene for a Brittney Spears and Elton John music video. Barragan’s properties were often built around his love for horses (one of the houses had a pool for his horses!) and it all resonated with me as a lifelong equestrian and lover of modern art ❤️ We swapped homes for most of the stay (with an incredible house in the Chapultepec neighborhood) and used points we had with Delta to fly there and back.

April - Budapest, Vienna & Prague

Spring break came and we had almost two weeks due to the school calendar (thanks NYC DOE!) and instead of sticking around and putting the kids in camp ($800ish per kid per week 😳) we used points and swaps to head to a few cities we had never been to.

Budapest - we stayed at one of my favorite Hyatts to date, the Udvari Parisi Budapest hotel all on points. After booking, we were upgraded to an incredible two bedroom, two bathroom suite. The hotel is a historic building that’s had many lives and we were lucky enough to join in on a tour of the building where we got to check out the massive presidential suite complete with a soundproof room for secret meetings 😳 Budapest was magical and unlike any place we’ve ever been. The architecture is like eye candy and I took a million photos. We visited the biggest synagogue in Europe and spent a lot of time in the Jewish Quarter. I love visiting flea markets in places we travel to, it’s a great way to really get to know a city and the Ecseri Flea Market was no exception.

From Budapest we took a train to Vienna and stayed in a house swap in the center of town. We expired the museum quarter, caught a schooling session for the Lipizanner stallions and ate a lot of schnitzel. One of my favorite travel tips with kids is to book one night at a hotel with a pool even when you have other stays planned. In the middle of our stay, we packed an overnight bag and checked in early at the Park Hyatt Vienna where the swimming pool is in the old bank vault (so cool). We explored the city from the hotel and checked out later the next day, giving the kids two days to swim for the (points!) price of one night at a hotel. I am a sucker for Park Hyatts and love checking them out wherever we travel.

From Vienna we visited Prague by train. We stayed at an airbnb in the center of town which was beautiful, big and super cheap. It was nice to be in such a central location and save some of our points. For the last couple of nights we stayed at the Andaz Prague which had beautiful rooms and excellent service. Next time we’d just book the Andaz for the whole time as we actually preferred being slightly outside the busy touristy area!

July - Italy

This was the trip that almost wasn’t (a story for another day!) and made me so grateful for our annual travel insurance policy which paid us out for every last cent we would have lost when our 9 year old Henry was hospitalized one hour before leaving for Italy.

One week later (and Henry well enough to travel) we were on our way to Florence picking up with our itinerary where we could catch up with it and making changes as we went along. It was a WHOLE THING to shift everything but the trip was even more special to all of us knowing how lucky we were to be there.

First was Florence:

Il Tornabuoni hotel on Hyatt points! Try to get room 321 — a full 2 bedroom/2 bathroom suite with a little balcony. Amazing.

Rome:

We stayed in a home swap in the Jewish quarter which was great (though a 4th floor walk up in a building with crazy high ceilings! As it turns out, I am not as in shape as I thought 🥵). My friend stayed at the St. Regis and was obsessed. It’s hard to get a lot of value out of Marriott points (which is why I choose Hyatt when I can!) but if you’re staying on cash, that’s a great option.

Puglia:

We swapped homes with a family in Ostuni, a white medieval city that looks like Gondor from Lord of the Rings (or so I’m told ;)). It was about 15 minutes from town and had a gorgeous pool and olive trees. From there we explored other towns and beaches in Puglia and got to vacation where the Italians vacation. It wasn’t super relaxing because we were constantly on the move (also, kids) but it was interesting and beautiful! Well worth a trip to Puglia if you’re otherwise in Italy over the summer.

Matera:

On a map, Matera, one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, appears to be half way between Ostuni and Sorrento but in practice it was pretty out of the way (oops!). It was a zillion degrees and everyone was exhausted but we walked around, took a tuk tuk tour, ate amazing food and slept in a cave hotel. We woke up early the next day, and headed out for our (long) drive to the coast.

Sorrento

We stayed at the Hilton Sorrento on points (a combo of Hilton points and transferred points) which was the best choice! Due to European occupancy rules (with fire code laws they usually allow no more than three in a room) we booked two connecting rooms. They were huge and there was a balcony off each room overlooking the 6 (!!) pools on the property, the ocean and mount Vesuvius. We took a day trip to Pompeii, another to Naples and a boat ride to Capri. This part of the trip was the most vacation like and the kids didn’t want to leave. But we had two more stops on our epic trip so off we went (by train/so easy!) to Venice.

Venice

The second we arrived we knew it was for us. I hadn’t been since I was 17 and this was the first time for the rest of the fam. After much back and forth with the trip changes, we ended up staying at the Hilton Stucky which was perfect. The hotel is huge, the suite was spacious and the rooftop pool had the very best 360 views. It’s a boat ride from the mainland but kind of like living in Brooklyn (not far from Manhattan) it was always a nice break from the crowds to head back to the hotel. It took us a little too long to get a handle on the water bus system but once we got 3 day passes, the world was our oyster. We were there during the Biennale and saw incredible art. We took a tour of the Jewish ghetto (a must!) and explored the city day in and day out by foot and by public boat. Venice, we will be back!

Milan:

Wrapping up our trip was a stay at the Park Hyatt Milan which is to date probably the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed at. It was pricey points wise and we had to get two rooms, but it felt like a bucket list stay and I’m so glad we did it. People say Milan is a disappointment after the rest of Italy but on the contrary, we loved it! The food was so good (we had one of the best dinners of our trip at NC) and we found it to be hip and interesting. The hotel was next to the Galleria and the Duomo and the location could not be beat.

We booked a bucket list flight home, Emirates business class on the A380 (double decker, largest commercial aircraft with impeccable food and service) all on points. With the business class seat, we had access to the lounge and to top it all off, the plane boarded from the lounge 🤯. While we were ready to go home, no one wanted that flight to end. They gave us the softest PJs on board and I still wear them around the house. The flight was the perfect end to an incredible trip.

October - New Orleans

We took a couple smaller trips to visit family throughout the years and over the Jewish holidays, without family in NYC to celebrate with, we took advantage of a couple days off of school to visit New Orleans! After discovering the room we booked on points had no windows (yikes!) we switched it up and used the fine hotels benefit from a credit card I have to book the Four Seasons. It wasn’t cheap but also not crazy pricey and we hadn’t really paid for any other accommodations all year. It more than worth it. We got free breakfast and other perks with that card benefit and spent a lot of time by the pool during the heat of the day. The history of New Orleans as home to the largest slave trade and Treme as the first neighborhood for free African Americans, is not to be missed and palpable as you walk the streets. We ate incredible food, explored neighborhoods, toured the Mardi Gras float storage and joined a second line. Seeing my Black boys run free in Congo Square (home to a drum circle that’s taken place every Sunday for 300 years through Slavery and beyond) was an image I won’t forget.

New Years:

I wrote this yesterday from 10,000 feet up with a broken toe (ouch) and the kids back with my parents in my hometown. Kamali and I headed to Mexico City (if you guessed we were going somewhere warm you were right and if you guessed cold you were also right because with its elevation it’s kind of both!) for a much needed break from everything for a few days.

We booked the hotel on points at Hyatt (notice a trend?) transferred from my favorite points credit card and booked the flight using delta miles I had on hand. With the gold status I have from a combination of flights and credit card “headstarts” (certain cards give you 2500MQDs towards status) we got bumped up to first class (thanks Delta!).

Note for delta people!: today is the last day to convert rollover MQMs (medallion qualification miles) to MQDs (medallion qualification dollars for status) or miles! Don’t miss it if they are in your sky miles account. It’s also the last day to apply for a card that can get you 2500 MQDs towards status if you’re approved today. Message me and I’ll help you figure out which card earns the 2500 MQDs and is the best to add to your wallet to maximize other point earning opportunities!

Anyway!! Back to CDMX!

We don’t typically go back to the same places so soon but with only 5 warmish destinations that fly direct from Detroit, this was the obvious answer. Wish me luck as I hobble around with my broken toe!

Thanks for following along on my family travels - it feels super special to share this with you — and I look forward to sharing more intricate details about how we booked some of these trips in newsletters to come.

If there’s something you’d love to read about, message me and I’m happy to turn your ideas into the next newsletter.

How Brooklyn Family Travelers can help YOU:

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If you read this far, THANK YOU!

For now, 2024, that’s a wrap!

Happy New Year!

With love,

Rachel

Founder, Brooklyn Family Travelers

Https://www.brooklynfamilytravelers.com

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