David Cox

Maximize Savings for Sports Parents with Bilt Cards

Posted on July 17, 2026July 17, 2026 by David Cox

In the Points and Miles community, most of the discussions are based around how you can use points and miles to maximize epic trips. This can be done by redeeming those points and miles for luxury hotels and business-class lie-flat seats to exotic destinations. But what if you travel mostly by staying in exotic hotels like the Comfort Inn in Kokomo, Indiana, or the Holiday Inn Express in Bettendorf, Iowa?

I’m talking about travel sports parents, the utterly exhausted parents who drove hours to sit in the sun all day and watch game after game at some regional youth sports tournament. I remember when my daughter played on a club basketball team, and while their team didn’t travel too much, I was constantly having conversations with other team parents whose kids were in other sports and were traveling seemingly every weekend. They were exhausted and broke.

How could using points and miles save them money on all of those hotel stays? Typically, I would suggest getting a Hyatt or Marriott credit card, which could give you free nights through points or free night certificates. The problem with that is, travel sports parents don’t get to choose the hotel, well, at least if you don’t want your kid to hate you. Usually, the team stays at the same hotel since the kids want to hang out together after the games. This means you are probably going to need to be more flexible, and this could mean earning points that can be used in a travel portal as well as using hotel credits in those portals.

Bilt has three credit cards that not only earn Bilt Points that can be used in their travel portal but also Bilt Cash, which can be used for hotel credits (although it’s limited). You can use Bilt Cash and Bilt Points in combination to book hotel rooms on the Bilt Travel Portal. Using Bilt Cash for long stays isn’t too exciting because, depending on your Bilt Status, you can only use $50 or $100 per month. However, if you’re only staying two nights, which is the minimum stay to use those credits, they really cut down on your hotel bill. The Bilt system works best for people who have a lot of short hotel stays, like travel sports parents.

Here is how it works: the 2-night stay shown below runs $362.50. Because I have the Bilt Palladium Card, I have an available semi-annual $200 hotel credit. Since I have Gold Status, I can use $100 in Bilt Cash. I can also use points at 1.25 cents per point or pay with cash. I can also use multiple options together. For example, I could use the $200 hotel credit, $100 in Bilt Cash, and 5,000 Bilt Points to wipe out the hotel bill.

I’m going to run some scenarios that show how much a travel sports parent can save on hotel stays, using the various Bilt credit cards, and I will compare it to another good option, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. But to understand the scenarios, I need to explain a few things about Bilt.

Bilt Status Matters

There are 4 tiers of Bilt Status: Blue, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. While you can earn your status by earning Bilt points, the easiest way is by spending on a Bilt Card. Each tier of status has different benefits, but for this discussion, I’m focusing on the fact that Blue and Silver status members can use $50 in Bilt Cash per month for hotel credits, and Gold and Platinum status members can use $100 in Bilt Cash for hotel credits. Since Gold Status is the tier where the hotel credit jumps from $50 to $100 per month, it is the important tier for this discussion. That status is earned by spending $25,000 in a year on a Bilt credit card and is good for the rest of the year and the next calendar year. Also, as part of the signup bonus for the Bilt Palladium card, Gold Status is automatically given to the new cardholder for the rest of the year and the next year.

What Bilt Cards Earn

Between the three Bilt credit cards, each has a different earning structure. Each has elevated earnings for some travel categories, but for this discussion, we will ignore that. The only bonus category worth mentioning is the 3X on either groceries or dining on the Bilt Obsidian Card. For the comparisons below, I assumed that, since we are talking about parents with athletes, they will spend $1,000 per month on groceries, and they will choose the grocery option on that card. The Bilt Obsidian Card earns 1X on everything else. The Bilt Blue card earns 1X on everything, and the Bilt Palladium Card earns 2X on everything.

Using Bilt Cash to Boost Points Earning

On each of these credit cards, the cardholder will earn 4 cents of Bilt Cash per dollar spent (in addition to Bilt Points earned). That means that if, in a month, the cardholder spends $2,000 on the card, they will earn $80 in Bilt Cash. If the cardholder has only Blue or Silver Status, they can use only $50 of Bilt Cash toward a hotel credit. That leaves an extra $30. But if you use the Bilt ACH to pay your rent or mortgage, you can earn points on your housing payments as well. You can earn points on rent or mortgage payments by paying a 3% fee in Bilt Cash. In other words, $30 in Bilt Cash can unlock points for $1,000 in rent or mortgage, which is 1,000 Bilt Points.

So in the above example with the Bilt Blue Card, the cardholder spends $2,000 and earns 2,000 Bilt Points and $80 in Bilt Cash. They use $50 in Bilt Cash for a $50 hotel credit and the other $30 in Bilt Cash to unlock an additional 1,000 Bilt Points by running their rent or mortgage through the Bilt ACH. The cardholder ends up with 3,000 Bilt Points and $50 in hotel credit.

If you still have additional Bilt Cash after using the Bilt ACH for housing credits with the Bilt Obsidian or Palladium Cards, you can use $200 in Bilt Cash on the Points Accelerator to earn an additional 1X on all purchases for the next $5,000 in spend. In other words, you can convert $200 in Bilt Cash to 5,000 Bilt Points by spending on the card.

On all of the below examples, I assume that the example person has a rent or mortgage of $2,000 per month, so they use the ACH for up to that amount and then use the points accelerator on any Bilt Cash left over after that.

Card Benefits and Annual Fees

Any signup bonuses or perks of the cards also have to be taken into consideration. The annual fee is subtracted from the amount saved, since that is an expense. Here are a few other things listed below that will affect the analysis of these cards:

Bilt Blue Card has $100 Bilt Cash Signup Bonus
Bilt Obsidian Card has $200 Bilt Cash Signup Bonus
Bilt Obsidian Card has $100 in Bilt Travel Credit ($50 every 6 months, min 2-night stay)
Bilt Obsidian Card has a $95 annual fee
Bilt Palladium Card signup bonus includes Gold Status for rest of this year and all of the next year
Bilt Palladium Card signup bonus has 50,000 points and $300 in Bilt Cash
Bilt Palladium Card has $400 annual hotel credits ($200 every 6 months, min 2-night stay)
Bilt Palladium Card has $200 Bilt Cash annually on the anniversary date
Bilt Palladium Card has a $495 annual fee
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card has 100,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Bonus (elevated offer, limited time)
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card has $100 hotel benefit
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card has a $95 annual fee

Chase Travel Portal vs Bilt Travel Portal

In the Chase Travel Portal, you can redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards points for 1 cent per point toward a hotel stay. Sometimes, Chase does have a points boost that can make those points worth up to 1.5 cents per point, but you can’t really count on that. For this discussion we will assume a 1 cent per point redemption on the Chase Travel Portal.

For the Bilt Travel Portal, points can be used at 1.25 cents per Bilt point. Bilt allows you to combine credits and points as well, which means that if you had a $225 hotel stay, you could combine $100 in Bilt Cash and 10,000 Bilt points to pay for the room.

Scenario 1 – Cardholder Spends $25,000 per Year

For most parents who have kids in travel sports, $2,100 per month on a card will be a little on the light side, especially if you are using your credit card for utilities, insurance, gas, etc. I can’t imagine that any parent with children in youth sports isn’t spending at least $1,000 per month on groceries. So, for the comparison below, I’m assuming that $1,000 is on groceries and the rest is in other categories. Since the Chase Sapphire Preferred card has 3X categories such as gas, dining, and streaming services, but is only 1X on groceries, I’m going to assume the average will be 1.5X on everything.

The reason I chose $25,000 per year is that if you spend that amount on a Bilt card, you will earn Bilt Gold status, which will bump the amount of Bilt Cash that can be used for hotel credits from $50 per month to $100 per month. Having that dramatically changes the amount that you can save on hotel stays.

The examples below are based on the assumption that the cardholder will have hotel stays in 9 different months a year. The number of months affects how much Bilt Cash can be used for the analysis, since it’s $50 or $100 per month, depending on Bilt Status.

Card	Points Earned	Bilt Cash for Hotel Credit	Hotel Credit as Benefit	Annual Fee	Total Saved on Hotel Stays
Bilt Blue Yr 1	43,330	$450	$0	($0)	$991
Bilt Blue Yr 2	28,330	$900	$0	($0)	$1,254
Bilt Obsidian Yr 1	67,330	$450	$100	($95)	$1,296
Bilt Obsidian Yr 2	52,330	$900	$100	($95)	$1,559
Bilt Palladium Yr 1	103,330	$900	$400	($495)	$2,096
Bilt Palladium Yr 2	53,330	$900	$400	($495)	$1,471
Chase Sapphire Preferred Yr 1	137,500	$0	$100	($95)	$1,380
Chase Sapphire Preferred Yr 2	37,500	$0	$100	($95)	$380

This shocked me; I was honestly surprised by how much better the Bilt cards were for booking repeated short stays than the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. First of all, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card is really good, and it currently has a huge 100,000-point sign-up bonus. However, even the Bilt Blue card outperforms it for the first two years, with the Bilt Blue card saving $2,245 and the Sapphire Preferred only saving $1,760.

The Bilt Obsidian and Palladium cards really show how well the Bilt program can work for repeated short stays. The Obsidian Card saves $2,855 over two years and the Palladium Card saves a whopping $3,567 over two years.

Scenerio 2 – $40K Annual Spend Example

Most travel sports parents will spend much more than $25,000 per year on things like groceries, gas, utilities, dining, etc. It’s expensive being a parent in general, but when you add in the cost of those basketball shoes or that bat they just had to have, let’s face it, you’re swiping that card more than that. Below is a more realistic example of $40,000 per year or a little above $3,300 per month. This still assumes a $1,000 per month spent on groceries, for the 3X points on groceries for the Bilt Obsidian card.

Card	Points Earned	Bilt Cash for Hotel Credit	Hotel Credit as Benefit	Annual Fee	Total Saved on Hotel Stays
Bilt Blue Yr 1	74,000	$450	$0	($0)	$1,375
Bilt Blue Yr 2	63,330	$900	$0	($0)	$1,691
Bilt Obsidian Yr 1	106,000	$450	$100	($95)	$1,780
Bilt Obsidian Yr 2	95,330	$900	$100	($95)	$2,186
Bilt Palladium Yr 1	153,330	$900	$400	($495)	$3,121
Bilt Palladium Yr 2	103,330	$900	$400	($495)	$2,096
Chase Sapphire Preferred Yr 1	160,000	$0	$100	($95)	$1,605
Chase Sapphire Preferred Yr 2	60,000	$0	$100	($95)	$605

In this example, the Bilt Blue starts to look way better than the Chase Sapphire Preferred. In two years the Chase Sapphire saves travel parents $2,210 on hotel stays while the Bilt Blue card saves $3,066 on hotel stays. This is crazy to me, since the Bilt Blue card was almost universally hated by critics when it came out and the Sapphire card is well regarded. Obviously, the reason why is the use of Bilt Cash for hotel credits.

What I was truly surprised by in this analysis was the Bilt Obsidian and Palladium cards. The Obsidian card saves the travel sports family $3,966 over two years, and the Palladium card saves $5,217 over two years! Typically in the points and miles space, you need to maximize multiple cards to get this kind of savings.

Scenario 3 – Supermarket Madness

There is a third method here for people who like to really maximize point earning. It occurred to me that by getting a Bilt Obsidian Card, choosing the 3x on grocery option, and spending $25,000 per year on groceries, you can maximize that card. This involves spending at least $333 at grocery stores on the first of the month, to earn double points up to a maximum of 1,000 bonus points and spending over $2,000 per month total at grocery stores. That sounds like a lot, but child athletes eat a lot, and groceries aren’t exactly cheap. Our family of four spends close to $15,000 a year, and we shop at Aldi. A larger family that shops at more traditional grocery stores should get close to that number. Also, keep in mind that many grocery stores also sell gift cards for things like Amazon or restaurants, if you want to extend those 3x categories to online shopping or dining. Any excess Bilt Cash, not used for hotel credit is used to unlock points earned by running housing payments through the Bilt ACH.

Card	Points Earned	Bilt Cash for Hotel Credit	Hotel Credit as Benefit	Annual Fee	Total Saved on Hotel Stays
Bilt Obsidian Yr 1	111,000	$450	$100	($95)	$1,842
Bilt Obsidian Yr 2	90,330	$900	$100	($95)	$2,146

In the above example, the Bilt Obsidian Card saves a total of $3,988 over two years. That beats the Bilt Obsidian card in the first example by $1,133 and the Bilt Palladium in Scenario #1 by $421. It also works out to an incredible 8% back on that spend. That sure beats a 1% or 2% cash back card. Also, since this example only uses grocery store spend, there’s really nothing stopping you from adding on the Chase Sapphire Preferred for additional points in other categories.

The Sweet Spot is Short Inexpensive Stays

A sweet spot is any unintended great deal in a loyalty program. My favorite example of this was when Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles put together a partner award chart for Star Alliance flights. To keep things simple, they made all economy-class domestic flights 7,500 miles one-way. That’s a pretty good deal for Chicago to New York, but it’s an insanely good deal on a flight from New York to Honolulu. Unfortunately, that deal doesn’t exist anymore.

What Bilt wanted was to give people an incentive to book through their travel portal, where they earn a nice commission based on a percentage of the sale. That works great for them on expensive stays, but it’s probably not great for them when people book cheap hotels for short stays – the kind of thing you would book for a youth sports tournament. These types of stays are a sweet spot in the Bilt program.

It also doesn’t necessarily need to be just for sports travel. This also works well for couples who like to go on weekend getaways where a two-night stay is perfect. Regardless of why you stay in hotels, if you do it frequently and for short stays of at least two nights, using Bilt credit cards, and the Bilt Travel portal will save you a lot of money.

A Tale of Two Madrids

Posted on July 10, 2026July 10, 2026 by David Cox

For two consecutive years, we found ourselves in Madrid on the last day of our spring break trip. Both times, Madrid was an afterthought. The main purpose of the visits was that we needed to fly home, and Madrid has a lot of flights that go to Chicago. What we learned in those two visits is that our enjoyment of the city was highly dependent on the neighborhood where we were staying.

The first trip took place in March of 2025, after spending six days on the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago. We had just gotten off the train from Santiago de Compostela and were staying at the Intercontinental Hotel. I thought that, having spent most of the week in hostels, a stay at a highly rated hotel would be a great way to cap the week.

We showed up in the lobby in our Camino backpacks and dusty shoes and stood in the lobby waiting to get into our hotel. We were out of place. Most of the other guests were dressed in suits and dresses, and we were clearly the riff-raff who stumbled in off the trail. Our rooms were not ready yet, but we were allowed to leave our backpacks, so we left to go explore the area and get some lunch.

The area around the hotel was modern and noisy. There was considerable traffic from Paseo de la Castellana, an 8-lane road, with adjoining frontage roads. We walked west of the main road and found a string of white-tablecloth restaurants. I really wanted a beer and some tapas, but after looking at about a dozen restaurants, I realized that the food here was going to be expensive and the atmosphere formal.

We did manage to find a place, quite a way away from the hotel, that had some sandwiches and that, at least, got us fed. The prices were a bit of a shock, compared to what we had been paying on the Camino; however, pretty much in line with what you would expect to pay in a modern city. On the walk back to the hotel, I thought, we need to get out of this area. It’s not that Castellana was a dangerous or ugly part of Madrid; it’s just that it’s similar to any American city. Noisy, modern, lots of cars. Frankly, this just isn’t how I envisioned Madrid.

By the time we got back to the hotel, they were not quite ready to get us our rooms. The kids were able to get their room, but we ended up waiting until around 4:30 to get ours. By the time we had checked in, the evening was already setting in, and we decided to go out and find some dinner.

Thin crust, excellent toppings. The pizza at Brew Wild Pizza Bar was delicious.

After a week of drinking Galicia Estrella, I was in the mood to try some craft beer. We took a cab to a little pizza place called Brew Wild Pizza Bar. They had a nice selection of beer and some really great, unique pizzas. The bar itself is small, but it has a really cool brick cellar in the basement. It would have been great to hang out in the basement, but someone was throwing a party down there, so we took a table by the bar. Luckily, we managed to get there before the rush, because this place filled up to standing room only by the time we left.

Congreso de los Diputados houses the lower house of the Spanish Parliament. Construction of the neoclassical building was completed in 1850.

Even though we took a cab out to Brew Wild Pizza Bar, we decided to walk back to the hotel. In the evening, the city was quite beautiful. We walked past a lot of the administrative buildings in the city, illuminated by the lights of the city. On the way back, we stopped for a drink inside a plastic tent along the route. The tent was actually a restaurant’s outdoor seating, which was covered to protect it from the weather. I guess that was smart, because it began to rain hard while we were there, and we ended up taking a cab back to the hotel.

At night, especially, Madrid was beautiful, but we didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped. We had only spent a small amount of time there, but I was expecting something livelier, more vibrant. This wasn’t what I hoped for, and frankly, I think it was the location of the hotel. The Castellana neighborhood was something for bankers and businessmen to enjoy. I was disappointed, not necessarily in Madrid itself, but rather that I hadn’t chosen a neighborhood that matched our travel style.

When we decided to go to Tenerife for our spring break trip the next year, once again, it made sense to fly out of Madrid. This was our opportunity to see if we weren’t thrilled with Madrid itself, or if it was just that we chose the wrong neighborhood. We went looking for a hotel in the area around Plaza Mayor. The prices of hotels weren’t exactly low in that area, so we ended up settling for a hostel with private rooms. It was the Live It Gran Via hostel.

Checking in at the hostel, we realized we weren’t getting five-star accommodations. There wasn’t any air conditioning, as expected, but there also wasn’t a fan in our room, and the window didn’t produce any air movement either, because it opened onto the atrium rather than the street. The bathrooms were shared and down the hall. Being diplomatic, I would say the accommodations were modest; however, when we walked outside, the streets were packed full of pedestrians, and there were restaurants and shops everywhere. This was a great location.

I wanted to go to Plaza Mayor, so we immediately walked in that direction. The route took us along Calle de Bordadores, a narrow road filled with 4 and 5-story buildings. Shops dominated the ground floor, and above were apartments with Juliet balconies. While there was some traffic, this road was a single lane and mostly pedestrian, a welcome contrast to the busy multi-lane roads in the Castellana neighborhood.

There were a ton of people on bikes at Plaza Mayor.

We reached Plaza Mayor, and it was full of life. A lot of it seemed to be dominated by tourist groups, but there were plenty of people stopping for lunch or a drink and sitting, enjoying a coffee or beer. We looked around for a while, but we had something else in mind – a little treat for our son Alex.

Gambas al Ajillo (Garlic Shrimp) at La Casa Del Abuelo just outside of Plaza Mayor

Part of my plan was to stop at a variety of places and get some tapas. While we were in Tenerife, we turned on Somebody Feed Phil one night. We rewatched the Madrid episode, and he tried the shrimp at La Casa del Abuelo. He was gushing about how good it was (in all fairness, Phil Rosenthal emphatically loves everything). Alex said he wanted to try it, and it happened to be just outside of Plaza Mayor. We did try the shrimp and another dish, and while it was good, I think Phil might’ve oversold it a little bit.

We then headed to the street in Madrid known for a high concentration of tapas bars. Calle de la Cava Baja, over the course of a couple of blocks, has dozens of tapas bars. The problem for us was that it was around 2 in the afternoon, and most of these bars hadn’t yet opened. There were enough for us to get a sample of tapas from a few bars, which was plenty. While it would have been fun to be there in the middle of the rush, it was nice to know that the servers had plenty of time to deal with us when we were confused about what to order and how.

We tried a variety of bocadillos (sandwiches), including a calamari bocadillo, croquettes, and some kind of cold shredded whitefish on toast. It was a great way to get a quick sampling of Spanish cuisine. With our bellies full, we went out to explore more of the city. We did a little bit of shopping, because Alex wanted to visit the Uniqlo, since we don’t have that in Iowa.

We then headed across town to Bee Beer, a brewery in the Chueca neighborhood. Microbreweries aren’t common in Madrid, but we managed to find one that was pretty interesting. I had a pint of Coronel Mostaza, an IPA with Mustard seeds, named after a character in a board game, if that’s enough of a clue for you. The atmosphere was fun, the bartender was engaging, and the beer was very good. We had a great time there.

Leaving Bee Beer, we started our walk back toward our hotel. Over the course of the day, the streets had been filling up with pedestrians. Now it was dusk, and the streets were filling up with people who were eating, drinking, and returning home from work. There was an electricity to the crowds in this area of Madrid. This really isn’t that different from a similar time of the day in most cities in the US, but instead of traffic noise from cars, it was the more pleasant sound of footsteps and people chatting.

Pedestrians crowd the street at Calle de la Montera

We needed some food and decided to stop at Divorare, a sandwich shop using focaccia as the bread. All of the sandwiches on the menu at Divorare were interesting. I got a Diavola sandwich, and Jenn got a sandwich with Mortadella, Pesto, and Stracciatella. Diavore has a funky vibe, and the food is fast casual. It’s perfect for a day of exploring the city. Our sandwiches were delicious, and after our meal, we headed back to the hotel to go to bed and prepare for our flight home the next day.

Two different days, two different locations, and two completely different impressions of the city. Having visited London for two days at the beginning of the trip, it’s easy to see that when you visit cities that are as large as London, Madrid, Paris, etc., choosing a neighborhood that fits your travel style is important. If you are someone who likes 5-star accommodations and 5-star dining, then maybe you want to stay in that city’s financial district. We like to stay where average everyday citizens eat, work, and play. That’s where the energy is; that’s where you’ll get a great sense of that city’s culture.

When we planned the trip to Tenerife, I was actively trying to avoid Madrid, because I didn’t enjoy our first visit. I’m glad that we got a second chance to explore the city. The fact of the matter is, it’s one of the few cities with a lot of direct flights back to Chicago, so chances are we will find our way back here again. The difference is that now, I’m looking forward to it.

Stop Transferring Points to Hotel Programs

Posted on June 20, 2026 by David Cox

Coming off the recent devaluation of the World of Hyatt program and a change to the transfer ratio from Chase Ultimate Rewards to the World of Hyatt program, I think it’s time to ask a pointed question. Does it make sense to transfer points from any transferable points program to any hotel program?

In 2023, we stayed two nights at the Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos for a total of 43,000. For the same dates in 2027, it’s now 100,000 Hyatt points.

I’m not talking about situations where you need some points to top off your Marriott account to use the rest of your Marriott Bonvoy points on a hotel stay. I’m talking about situations where all of the points that you need to book a hotel stay are coming from a transferable points program. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that the person booking the hotel never flies, since, generally, the best use of those points would be for airline tickets. In other words, they have points, and they are going to use them to book hotel rooms.

For each of these transferable programs, there is an option to use points on the travel portal to book a stay, rather than transferring those points to the hotel program and booking directly with the hotel.

American Express Membership Reward Points

According to The Points Guy, the value of an American Express Membership Rewards point is 2 cents. The chances of getting 2 cents per point value on a hotel stay using Amex points are extremely low, however. Amex has a laughably low redemption rate of 0.7 cents per point for hotels through their Amex travel portal. That becomes the baseline that you would have to beat to make a transfer make sense.

Program	Transfer From	Points Worth (TPC Valuations) in CPP	Transfer Value
Choice Privileges	Amex MR (1:1)	0.6	0.6
Hilton Honors	Amex MR (1:2)	0.35	0.7
Marriott Bonvoy	Amex MR (1:1)	0.8	0.8

In the case of Amex, I would probably transfer to Hilton or Marriott, simply because I would prefer to book with the hotel itself, because if something were to go wrong, you’d be better off having to deal with the hotel program itself, instead of dealing with the customer service from the Amex travel portal. But still, none of these options would even get you 1 cent per point. At these rates, if I’m not ever going to fly, I don’t think I’m even considering earning Amex points.

Bilt Rewards

Bilt Rewards is still a fairly new program, but they have grown to be, in my opinion, the best points program. One great aspect of the program is that, if you book a hotel through the Bilt Travel Portal, your points are redeemed at a 1.25 cents per point rate. In other words, a hotel that costs $125 per night would be bookable for 10,000 Bilt points. That is actually a really good rate by itself, but they also have six hotel transfer partners: All Accor, IHG Rewards, Hilton Honors, World of Hyatt, Marriott Bonvoy, and Wyndham.

Program	Transfer From	Points Worth (TPC Valuations) in CPP	Transfer Value
All Accor	Bilt (3:2)	2	1.5
IHG Rewards	Bilt (1:1)	0.55	0.55
Hilton Honors	Bilt (1:1)	0.35	0.35
World of Hyatt	Bilt (1:1)	1.55	1.55
Marriott Bonvoy	Bilt (1:1)	0.8	0.8
Wyndham	Bilt (1:1)	0.7	0.7

Of the six transfer partners, only two, All Accor and World of Hyatt, redeem at an average rate higher than the 1.25 cents per point that you can get through the travel portal. Points transferred to IHG, Hilton, Marriott, and Wyndham would essentially be burning those points, compared to just booking those hotels through the travel portal. The only good reason to transfer to one of those programs is to top off an account to use points that are already in one of those programs.

Capital One

Using Capital One Travel, Capital One Venture Miles are worth 1 cent per point when redeemed for hotels. Aside from booking on Capital One Travel, Venture Miles can be transferred to ALL Accor, Choice Privileges, I Prefer, and Wyndham.

Program	Transfer From	Points Worth (TPC Valuations) in CPP	Transfer Value
ALL Accor	Capital One (2:1)	2	1
Choice Privileges	Capital One (1:1)	0.6	0.6
I Prefer	Capital One (1:2)	0.5	1
Wyndham	Capital One (1:1)	0.7	0.7

All Accor and I Prefer end up with a value of 1 cent per point when transferring from Capital One Venture Miles. That’s the same value as booking through the travel portal, so it’s really just a matter of how you prefer to book the hotel. Wyndham and Choice provide very low value when transferring Venture Miles.

Citi Thank You Points

Citi Thank You Points are worth 1 cent per point for hotels through the Citi Travel Portal. Besides, what they are worth through the travel portal, Thank You Points can be transferred to several hotel programs. There are two different rates, but to get the highest transfer ratio, you will need to be a cardholder of either Citi Strata Premier or Citi Strata Elite. You can transfer if you are a cardholder of the Citi Custom Cash, Citi Strata, or Citi Double Cash, but the transfer ratios are so bad that I wouldn’t consider it. Below are the transfer rates if you hold a Strata Premier or Strata Elite card.

Program	Transfer From	Points Worth (TPC Valuations) in CPP	Transfer Value
Accor Live Limited	Citi Thank You (2:1)	2.0	1.0
Choice Privileges	Citi Thank You (2:3)	0.6	0.9
Leading Hotels of the World	Citi Thank You (5:1)	8	1.6
I Prefer	Citi Thank You (1:2)	0.5	1
Wyndham	Citi Thank You (1:1)	0.7	0.7

Actually with Citi, the transfer ratios are decent. With Accor and I Prefer, points transferred are worth a cent per point. With Leading Hotels of the World the value you get from a transferred Thank You point is 1.6 cents. That’s pretty good, unfortunately, it’s a small program with really expensive hotel rooms. If you want a really unique hotel stay, this is a good use of Citi Thank You Points.

Chase Ultimate Rewards

On the Chase Travel Portal, Chase Ultimate Rewards are worth 1 cent per point for hotels. On the portal, a points boost can yield up to 2x on hotels, however, that is up to Chase to determine what multiple you receive. For this discussion, we will assume no points boost.

Chase Ultimate Rewards has four transfer partners: Hyatt, IHG, Marriott Bonvoy, and Wyndham. Thanks to a new change in the Chase Sapphire Preferred, points are transferred at different rates depending on which card you hold.

Program	Transfer From	Points Worth (TPC Valuations) in CPP	Transfer Value
Wyndham	Chase Ultimate Rewards (1:1)	0.7	0.7
Marriott Bonvoy	Chase Ultimate Rewards (1:1)	0.8	0.8
IHG Rewards	Chase UR (1:1)	0.55	0.55
World of Hyatt	Chase UR w Sapphire Preferred (4:3)	1.55	1.16
World of Hyatt	Chase UR w/ Sapphire Reserve (1:1)	1.55	1.55

When transferring to Wyndham, Marriott Bonvoy, or IHG, you will get, on average, less than one cent per point. If you have the Sapphire Preferred, you will get slightly above 1 cent per point and with the Sapphire Reserve you will get over 1.5 cents per point, on average.

Always Check the Hotel Program First

The value of these points, with the exception of ALL Accor, are not set. Accor points are worth 2 Euro cents per point, meaning that a €200 per night hotel will always be 10,000 ALL Accor points. For the other hotel programs, the number of points per night to book a hotel could vary wildly. If you have a hotel in mind, check the hotel program’s website or app and see how many points they are charging. Then compare it with a travel portal and see which one will cost less in points.

Check for Transfer Bonuses

All of the math that I’ve included above does not include transfer bonuses. Hotel programs frequently offer transfer bonuses, that allow you to move points at a higher transfer rate and boost the value of your transferrable points. They change constantly, but a great resources is to use Frequent Miler’s Current Transfer Bonus page to quickly check for a transfer bonus before you book that hotel.

Where to Earn Points

If we ignore transfer partners for a second and assume you will only redeem your points through the travel portal for hotels, then it does become important where you earn them. At 0.7 cents per point for hotels through the American Express Travel Portal, I wouldn’t even bother earning Amex points for hotel stays. Capital One, Citibank, and Chase all offer redemptions at 1 cent per point, which isn’t too bad; however, Chase occasionally offers a points boost, and I would lean toward earning Chase points because of that. Bilt has them all beat with a redemption rate of 1.25 cents per point, so all things being equal, I would lean toward earning Bilt points when possible.

Conclusion

By default, I always lean toward transferring points to a hotel or airline program. I always assumed that I would get a better deal when doing it that way. Over time, I started to really narrow down that focus, and I found myself only looking at Hyatt properties when I was trying to transfer points from a transferable points program, because most other programs provided such weak value for those points.

Unfortunately, Hyatt appears to be hell-bent on devaluing their points, and since their changes to their award chart earlier this year, the value of Hyatt points has fallen from 1.7 cents per point to 1.55. I actually think it will continue to fall for the rest of this year, and then level off. To make matters worse, the transfer ratio from the popular Chase Sapphire Preferred card has fallen from 1:1 to 4:3. This makes these points barely better than going through the Chase Travel Portal.

Of the examples that I went through here, American Express Membership Rewards points are the worst for using on hotels. Their portal only gets 0.7 cents per point for hotels, and transferring points to their partners is a bad value as well.

Capital One, Citibank, and Chase all allow 1 cent per point redemptions on their travel portal, but other than a few examples, you can’t do much better than that. Capital One and Citibank get 1 cent per point to All Accor and I Prefer. Citi Thank You Points does better at 1.6 cents per point to Leading Hotels of the World, and Chase gets either 1.16 cents per point or 1.55 cents per point to Hyatt. Of those, Hyatt is the only one of those programs that isn’t pretty niche.

Bilt is slightly different. They offer 1.25 cents per point through their travel portal, and they only beat that with 1.5 cents per point to All Accor (again, pretty niche) and 1.55 cents per point to Hyatt. Bilt, in my opinion, is the clearly the best way to earn points for hotel programs, and if that’s your goal, I would earn as many Bilt points as possible.

At the end of the day, with only a few exceptions, you’ll do better booking through the transfer portals than transferring points. There is an advantage to booking directly through the hotel programs, in that if you do, it should be easier to deal with any issues that arise, since you will be dealing directly with that hotel program and not a third-party booking site. Also, not all programs will allow you to earn elite nights or use your elite benefits when you book through a third-party platform. If that is important to you, you may wish to use more points and transfer your points to the hotel program to book there.

But all things being equal, if you are someone who doesn’t stay enough in hotels to earn elite benefits or status and you just want the most economical way to book hotels using points, you’re probably better off booking through a travel portal. That is unfortunate, in my opinion. I would really like to see these banks work with hotel programs to boost the value of these points, because the value of transferrable points when transferring to hotel programs is laughably low.

Impact of the Chase Sapphire Preferred Refresh on Travel Rewards

Posted on June 11, 2026 by David Cox

On June 10th, 2026, Chase announced changes to the Chase Sapphire Preferred card that will go into effect on June 15th. Some of these changes were positive, improving earning rates on the card and increasing the value of the annual hotel credit. Unfortunately, one negative change could affect how people view Chase Ultimate Rewards and ultimately Chase Bank as a whole.

Chase Ultimate Rewards was the Standard

Chase has a special place in the hearts and minds of travel hackers. Starting in 2009, Chase launched the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which introduced Ultimate Rewards points and allowed the transfer of those points to airline and hotel partners. Chase became a favorite because the earning rates on Chase Cards were lucrative and the transfer partners were great.

Before Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex had Membership Rewards points. Later, Citibank introduced its own transferable points program, Citi Thank You Points, and Capital One created Venture Miles. Competition in the travel rewards space was fierce, but Chase kept one major advantage: 1-to-1 transfers to the most valuable hotel point program, World of Hyatt. It was such a strong partnership that people often referred to their Chase points as Hyatt points.

World of Hyatt Devalues and Transfer Ratio Changes

Earlier this year, Hyatt announced changes to its award chart that went from a 3-tier system to a 5-tier system. Essentially, each hotel now has 5 different prices they can charge in points for a stay, depending on the date. It allows the hotel more flexibility for what they can charge, in points, for award nights. On the surface, that seems reasonable, but the fear was that this would reduce the value of points because hotels would begin increasing the number of points required to book an award night.

These changes haven’t been in effect very long, but in the short amount of time it has been in effect, The Points Guy has dropped the value of Hyatt points from 1.7 cents per point to 1.55 cents per point, based on data collected from Gondola. It’s likely, in my opinion, that the value will continue to drop for a few more months before it levels off. How low it goes is really up to Hyatt at this point.

To complicate the issue with Hyatt’s devaluation, Chase has decided, with the new Sapphire Preferred changes, to change the transfer ratio from 1-to-1 to 4-to-3. What this means is that if you transferred 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards before the changes, you would end up with 100,000 Hyatt points. After the change, 100,000 Ultimate Reward points become 75,000 Hyatt points.

With the value of the points going down, what would have been $1,700 of Hyatt points (100,000 Hyatt points @ 1.7 cents per point) now is only $1,162.50 in Hyatt points (75,000 Hyatt points @ 1.55 cents per point). That’s basically like getting 1.16 cents per point on your Chase Ultimate Rewards points, which is barely better than just booking directly with the Chase Travel portal. If the value of Hyatt points falls further, there would be no reason to transfer at all.

Earning Rates Increase

One of the bright spots with the changes is that the earning rates in a couple of categories increased. The earnings at gas and EV charging stations rose from 1X to 3X. That can be significant if you spend a lot in those categories.

Another change is that you will now earn 3X on vacation rentals like VRBO and Airbnb. I really like this, because we prefer to stay in vacation rentals when we travel, and they can be a significant expense. Earning 3X would be a nice boost to our point totals.

Hotel Credit Increase

The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card had a $50 per year credit when booking a hotel through the Chase Travel Portal. Starting on June 15th, that credit will be $100. We’ve actually never used this credit, mainly because it was so small that we never considered using it. A $100 credit makes it something I might actually use, especially considering that you can combine the $100 credit with Ultimate Reward points at checkout. That means that a $200 hotel stay could be only 10,000 Ultimate Reward points after the credit, perhaps less if a points boost is attached.

Other Changes

Travel protections now include Emergency Evacuation and Transportation coverage. In addition, a $120, once every 4-year Global Entry, TSA PreCheck, or NEXUS credit has been added. A promotional complimentary 1-year Apple TV credit has been added as well. On the negative side, the 10% Anniversary Bonus benefit is being discontinued, which, frankly, never generated many points anyway.

Bottom Line

For me, this actually looks like a significant improvement. I think I might actually switch my gas charges to this card, as well as my Airbnb charges. I was using the Wyndham Business Earner card for 8X on gas, but I’m just not seeing tremendous uses for Wyndham points, so I think I’d rather earn Ultimate Reward points.

The change in the hotel credit from $50 to $100 means that I might actually use it. We’ve held at least one Sapphire Preferred card for years, and we’ve never actually used the credit. Knowing that I can use the credit for a short stay, especially if it’s a one-night hotel stay on a positioning flight or on a road trip, makes this extremely worthwhile.

Where this hurts is for people who racked up a ton of Chase Ultimate Reward points, transferred all of them to Hyatt, and redeemed those points for high-end hotels and all-inclusive resorts. This almost forces those people to pay the $795 annual fee for the Chase Sapphire Reserve, because that card maintains a 1-to-1 transfer ratio to Hyatt. Unfortunately, even that doesn’t guarantee that Hyatt points won’t continue to devalue.

In the end, I think a lot of people will look at this and think that maybe they’re better off focusing on other hotel programs. If you were someone who put significant spending on Chase cards to earn points to transfer to Hyatt, you might give up on Chase altogether, after all, it’s not clear what the value of Hyatt points will be in 6 months to a year.

For people who love Hyatt, they might choose, instead, to get a Bilt card. Bilt still transfers its points 1-to-1 to Hyatt. Depending on which card they get and what categories they spend their money in, people might be better off earning points in Bilt and transferring to Hyatt.

All in all, while the changes to the Chase Sapphire Preferred will work better for me, I think it’s a significant risk that Chase is taking. The transfer partnership with Hyatt was a major selling point for Chase, and now, it just looks rather ordinary. For those people who loved the Hyatt program and its relationship with Chase, this is a huge disappointment and is likely to change the spending behavior of those Chase customers.

Points Check May 2026

Posted on June 10, 2026June 10, 2026 by David Cox

For the first time in about four years, we aren’t doing any traveling, and we’re not really planning any trips either. It’s a bit of a strange feeling. I’ve been at least partially focused on travel for a long time, but it’s just not important right now. Instead, we have been helping our daughter look for a house, and our son look for a college. In addition, I’ve been working on a house project that has been taking way more time than it should.

That being said, it’s not lost on us that once Alex leaves for college and Emma moves out of the house, Jenn and I will have more freedom to travel, because we won’t have to work around their schedules nearly as much. That means that right now, we should be accumulating and hoarding points while our lives are not focused on traveling.

Next summer, we will be taking Alex’s graduation trip. We did this for Emma when she graduated, and while she didn’t really plan the trip, we did allow her to guide where we went. Alex has suggested Iceland and Finland, and frankly, it’s likely to be Iceland OR Finland, with some time in Southern Europe, depending on what works with points. Finland and Iceland aren’t exactly cheap, so 10 or so days in hotels or Airbnbs in Northern Europe could get pretty expensive, not to mention the cost of food. Spending some time in Southern Europe could really cut down on the price of food and lodging.

Programs to Focus On

When thinking of traveling to Europe, I normally think of a few programs. In the few trips we’ve made to Europe, we’ve used Aer Lingus, Iberia, and British Airways with Avios, as well as KLM using Flying Blue miles. We’ve also used American Airlines AAdvantage, United Miles, and Delta Skymiles. In addition, we’ve flown on United using Singapore Airlines miles and SAS using Avianca Lifemiles. Basically, I’ll use anything if it makes sense.

The thing is, when I look at our points totals, I see a lot of programs without a ton of points in any specific program. Considering where we currently have the most points, it probably makes sense to beef up point totals where we already have a decent number of points to make sure that we have enough points to book everyone at the same time.

One choice is to book with Aer Lingus, Iberia, or British Airways with Avios. We only have a little over 80,000 points. That can be bumped up with our Amex Membership Rewards points, Chase Membership Rewards Points, Citi Thank You points, Bilt Points, or Capital One Venture Miles. We’ve had good luck with American Airlines, so earning American Airlines miles would be great, but we can only transfer from Citi Thank You points. United might also work, and we can transfer from Chase or Bilt to add to our United points total. Alaska Airlines Atmos miles has some inexpensive partner awards to Europe, but they only transfer from Bilt.

Because we would most likely be using Avios miles, Atmos miles, AAdvantage Miles, or United Miles, it makes sense to try our best to gain miles with signup bonuses that are either with one of those airlines or with Bilt, Chase, or Citi Thank You. Bilt doesn’t have many good opportunities to earn signup bonuses, so focusing on Chase or Citi makes sense.

In reality, my plan is to try to jump on any elevated signup bonuses that align with these programs. Unfortunately, right now, I’m not seeing anything that seems to be elevated, so I’m waiting for something to change. I can’t be patient forever, though. Right now, we aren’t working on a signup bonus on anything, and that does feel a little like we’re wasting time, so the longer we wait, the less patient I’ll probably be.

Schrodinger’s Wyndham Points

Jenn’s Wyndham Business Earner card has renewed again, which essentially means that we got 15,000 Wyndham points in exchange for paying the $95 annual fee. 15,000 Wyndham points are worth around $105, so that’s not terrible, but with Wyndham not partnering with Vacasa anymore, I’m not nearly as excited to use those points. It’s possible to book a Wyndham Vacation Club stay with points, but the availability is greatly limited, and the locations don’t thrill me.

Most likely, we will try to use Wyndham points on one of their all-inclusive properties, which look okay, but not spectacular. Typically, at all-inclusives, we just want to hang out at the beach and the pool and have a few drinks, so they’ll probably be fine for us. We’re going to have to book one and find out. Until we try out their all-inclusive resorts, I won’t have any idea whether we want Wyndham points going forward.

On to the Points Check

We earned a whopping 9.2% back on our spending not devoted to a signup bonus. Some of that was due to a 3,000 Membership Rewards Points bonus that was an Amex offer on my Amex Green card, which said that we would earn 1,000 points for a $40 order with Amazon. We needed to order something that was $150, and shockingly, they gave us 3,000 points. Apparently, I didn’t read the offer properly because they seemed to give me 1,000 points for each $40, and I’m not sure what the maximum was.

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Ink Cash	$744	3,724	$76.34	5.0	10.3%
Bilt Palladium	$483	2,477	$54.49	5.1	11.3%
Custom Cash	$481	2,338	$44.42	4.9	9.2%
Wyndham Business Earner	$396	1,981	$13.87	5.0	3.3%
Amex Gold	$311	475	$9.50	1.5	3.1%
Blue Business Plus	$186	372	$7.44	2.0	4.0%
Ink Unlimited	$183	275	$5.50	1.5	3.0%
Amex Green	$150	3,150	$63	21.0	42.0%
Chase Sapphire	$146	438	$9.45	3.0	6.2%
Total	$3,080	15,230	$283.54	4.9	9.2%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Besides the money spent on the above cards, Jenn spent a little over $2,700 on her Atmos Ascent card and earned a little less than 2,800 Atmos points. She also completed the required spend to collect the 70,000 Atmos point bonus on that card. That leaves us with:

260,300 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points
230,400 IHG Points
156,600 Alaska/Hawaiian Airlines Atmos Miles
121,700 Wyndham Points
93,800 Amex Membership Rewards Points
92,600 American Airlines Miles
81,800 Avios
75,200 Bilt Points
24,700 Citi Thank You Points
19,300 United Miles
15,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
1,500 Delta Miles
300 Hyatt Points
$133 Cash Back

According to the valuations published by The Points Guy, these points are worth a total of just under $16,800. That is an all-time high for us. Without any plans coming up, I expect that we should be able to pad these numbers for a few months, until we need to start booking Alex’s graduation trip. Until then, I have a project to finish and a kid to get to some college visits.

Visiting Tenerife During Tropical Storm Therese

Posted on May 30, 2026May 31, 2026 by David Cox

Tenerife was high on my bucket list. It checks so many boxes for a great vacation destination. Tenerife has beautiful natural areas with amazing hiking trails. There are also great beaches, some with black volcanic sand and others with more typical golden sand. In addition, Tenerife has dramatic coastlines with cliffs that overlook the waves as they crash into the black volcanic rock below.

The island itself is basically part of Mount Teide, a cone that rose out of the Atlantic Ocean to a height of 12,000 feet above sea level millions of years ago. The height of Mount Teide has a significant effect on storms as they roll across the island. Because of that, Tenerife has multiple microclimates where some areas are lush forests, and others are arid deserts.

Snow covers the peak of Mount Teide, view from Costa del Silencio

The climate of Tenerife is warm but mild, with winter temperatures in the low 70s and summer highs in the mid-80s. With its temperatures and natural beauty, Tenerife is an ideal vacation spot and has become a favorite destination for Europeans. This means a variety of bars and restaurants that are built to appeal to the tastes of European visitors, not American visitors (ie, Doner Kabab instead of McDonald’s, British pubs instead of Margaritaville, Neopolitan pizza instead of Domino’s)

In other words, we would have the opportunity to hike in a variety of landscapes, lie in the sun on the beach, and enjoy some great food we don’t normally get to eat. Because of this, I was really excited about the opportunity to visit, and I had made an impossibly long list of places to hike, beaches to visit, and restaurants to try. I was pretty jazzed.

We were checking the weather before the trip, and I kept seeing rain in the forecast. I assumed that meant that there would be a little rain each day and the rest of each day would be sunny. After all, we chose an Airbnb in Costa del Silencio, a town on the south end of the island in the desert. There is no way that it’s going to rain for the entire time we are there, right? Honestly, I didn’t even give it a second thought.

When we landed in Tenerife, Jenn checked the weather as we approached the gate and said that it looked like it was going to rain all day and for the next few days. What? We’re in the desert, how is this possible? I opened up Instagram, and there was a post from UTMB, an ultra-marathon organization that had a race on the island while we were there, which said they had canceled the event due to blizzard conditions on Mount Teide. Wait – what is going on?

Volcanic stones trap water left from crashing waves along the coast by Las Galletas

What was happening was Tropical Storm Therese. This storm was a typical tropical storm, with an eye and galaxy-like spiral arms protruding from the center. Therese had parked itself in the Atlantic off the coast of Spain and Morocco and was rotating counterclockwise. What that meant for us was a bunch of heavy storms hitting the island from the south with high winds and heavy rain. On Mount Teide, that rain turned to snow that was heavy enough to shut off all roads up to the peak.

By the time we landed, made it through passport control, picked up our rental car, and made it to our Airbnb, it was late afternoon, and the rain had become fairly spotty. We picked up some groceries, went for a walk along the coast, and then went on to eat dinner at a little restaurant in Costa del Silencio called El Bojito. Later in the evening, we went for a couple of drinks at Black Sheep, a bar with a great selection of Belgian beers. On the walk home, the skies opened up, and it downpoured. We got completely soaked.

Black Sheep always serves their Belgian Ales in the correct glasses.

The next morning, we woke up to heavy storms and winds. Looking over the list of things I wanted to do on this trip, so much of it was out of the question – Playa de los Americas – rainy, hiking trails – soaked, Mt Teide – unreachable due to snow. I checked to see what the weather was like in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which was only an hour drive from Costa del Silencio. It was going to be partly cloudy with a chance of showers. That sounded much better, so we drove up the coast to Santa Cruz.

We spent the early part of the day walking along the waterfront in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. We checked out the Auditorio de Tenerife, an auditorium designed by famed architect Santiago Calatrava, with a sweeping, concrete wave-like structure over the roof. Nearby the Auditorio was the Castillo de San Juan Bautista, a 17th-century fort, as well as the Casa de la Polvora, a former gunpowder warehouse dating to the 18th century.

Following our walk around the waterfront, we moved to Playa de las Teresitas, where we sat on the beach for a little while. The wind from the storms was blowing hard along the beach, and many people picked up their beach towels and headed to their cars. The weather was uncomfortable enough to thin out the crowds, but we stayed a little while, enjoying some refreshments from the snack bar. Our patience paid off, and we were able to enjoy some relatively sunny, albeit windy, conditions on the beach.

We decided to leave the beach and head to a 100 Montaditos in Candelaria. 100 Montaditos is a chain restaurant serving tiny sandwiches for low prices. I’m under no illusion that this is five-star food; it’s just a fun place where you can order a whole bunch of different mini-sandwiches and a couple of beers, and it’s not going to cost a lot of money. It’s a lot of fun, as long as you don’t take it too seriously. The best part, however, was that across from 100 Montaditos was Playa del Punta Larga, a gorgeous black sand (and pebble) beach. We wandered around it after dinner for a while and made a mental note to return when it was midday.

Playa del Punta Larga, Candelaria, Tenerife

The next day we woke up and checked the weather, and sure enough, rain on the south side of the island. At this point, I looked at a weather map and noticed something – as the rain approached from the south, the rain made it to Mount Teide, dumped its rain and then, for the most part, had dry weather on the north side.

This was typical of what we saw – rain coming from the southwest and the storms unable to cross Mt Teide, in the center of the island, keeping the northeast part of the island mostly dry.

I said that we should go hiking in Parque Rural de Anaga. It was in the north and should be dry all day. This was something I was really looking forward to. After an hour and 15 minutes of driving, the last bit was stressful, with narrow roads, we came to a lot and found out that all of the trails were closed due to muddy conditions.

View of San Cristobal de la Laguna and Mount Teide from Mirador Cruz de Carmen in Parque Rural de Anaya.

I was pissed. I definitely should have checked a website or made a phone call, but I didn’t. I just saw that the weather called for dry conditions, but it didn’t occur to me that it might have rained overnight. I realized I needed to give up my dreams of what I wanted this trip to be and just enjoy what we could. There would be no hiking on this trip, we were only going to be able to visit certain beaches that weren’t going to get soaked daily, and we were going to have to spend most of our time in the dry part of the island.

The Barraquito is a coffee drink originating in the Canary Islands

We did stay long enough for some coffee and for Jenn and Emma to try a barraquito, a coffee drink with licor 43, espresso, condensed milk, cinnamon, and lemon peel. We left Anaga Park and had lunch in Santa Cruz de Tenerife before heading to Playa del Punta Larga, which we had discovered the previous day, for a few hours of sunbathing and enjoying the ocean breeze. It was a lovely afternoon of relaxing and just enjoying a black sand beach.

Red Flag and Jellyfish Warnings over Playa de las Vistas

The rest of the trip worked out the same way, with us doing what we could to stay away from the bad weather and enjoying what we could. On our final day, we were finally able to go to Playa de las Americas, the touristy part of Tenerife. Even on the calmest day of the trip in Playa de las Americas, the water was basically closed due to Jellyfish and heavy wind and waves. The weather, however, had finally broken to the point where that area was mostly sunny. While we were there, we talked to a shopowner who said that he had never seen more than two days in a row of rain in the twenty years he had lived in Tenerife, and this was the sixth straight day. We had been incredibly unlucky.

Walk along rocky waters edge, Costa del Silencio

Out of the 20-30 items on my list of things to do in Tenerife, we had done maybe a half dozen. Most of them were made impossible by the weather. It was unfortunate. The thing was, we had just spent 5 days on an amazingly beautiful island, and while it wasn’t what I had hoped for, it was a great trip. Emma turned 21 on this trip, and Alex was a Junior in high school. They’re getting older, and I’m not sure how many more of these trips I can squeeze out of them, but I’m grateful for each one.

Our lives are always a little too full, a little too busy, a little too full of digital distractions. Somehow, when we are on vacation, like magic, we slow down, especially when we are eating or having a drink, to talk about our lives. We observe the differences between the culture we’re visiting and the culture at home. We learn about ourselves and gain insight into our lives. But most of all, we spend real, quality time with each other in a way that, for some reason, seems impossible at home.

So yes, I was disappointed. I was disappointed that we couldn’t hike the amazing trails in Parque Rural de Anaga. I was disappointed that I couldn’t take the cable car to the top of Mount Teide. I was disappointed that we didn’t get to spend an afternoon lying on the beach at Playa de las Americas. It was a great trip, though. I got to go to one of the most beautiful places on Earth with my three favorite people. You can’t beat that.

Points Check April 2026

Posted on May 23, 2026June 7, 2026 by David Cox

April was a month of us getting back into our lives after our Spring Break trip. It felt like a whirlwind of trying to catch up on work, getting our house back in order, and just getting back into the routine of our normal lives. Our son Alex is a Junior in High School, and I swear, between tennis, his two orchestras, and the musical he was involved in, we were exhausted from attending his meets and concerts. I’m not sure how he survived, to be honest. On top of that, our daughter Emma is looking to buy a house and has a ton of questions for us. In addition, I think it rained nonstop for the entire month. Ugh, I need another vacation, that’s for sure.

We’ve decided to take it a little easy for a while on travel. We don’t have any trips outside of the country planned for the rest of the year. That feels like a bummer, but honestly, we have a lot of college visits to go on for Alex, and Jenn is planning a girls’ trip to Portland to celebrate Emma turning 21 earlier this year. I’m sure we will also take a camping trip here or there during the summer, so really, us taking it easy isn’t really taking it easy.

Wyndham Devalued?

When preparing for this point check, I came across something that surprised me. I use The Points Guy’s valuations to do the analysis of how much our points are worth, and suddenly, the value of Wyndham points fell from 1.1 cents per point to .65 cents per point. This change happened because they now use data from Gondola (a hotel search and booking platform) to determine the average value of those points.

Wyndham is a little weird in that it only really has three pricing levels: 7,500, 15,000, and 30,000 points per night. Obviously, their cash prices are quite a bit more variable than that, so the value per point will vary wildly. In addition, if you have a Wyndham Business Earner card, which Jenn does have, you get a 10% discount on points bookings, making those points 10% more valuable.

In all fairness, this seemed inevitable. The greatest use of Wyndham points was to book Vacasa vacation rentals, where you could easily get 1.5 to 2.5 cents per point value. That partnership is no longer available, so the value of the points needed to come down eventually. I’m just not sure why The Points Guy waited so long to do it.

It does change the math of whether the Wyndham Business Earner card is worth it. We get 8x on Gas and 5x on utilities, which is how we use this card. Prior to the value going down, it was like getting a 8.8% return on gas and a 5.5% return on utilities. Now it calculates out at 5.2% back on gas and 3.25% back on utilities. Just switching those to the Bilt Palladium card at 2x points worth 2.2 cents per point means 4.4% back on gas and utilities. With the point accelerator, it’s 6.6% back on both. It really feels like we would be better off switching that spend to the Bilt Palladium instead.

Building Clarity About Bilt

Bilt Rewards is a difficult program to understand. We have the Bilt Palladium Card, which is 2x Bilt Points and 4x Bilt Cash on everything. Sounds simple-ish, but the Bilt Cash can be used for a variety of things, like discounts on experiences, hotel credits, or as a point accelerator. You can also earn points on your rent or mortgage by paying through the Bilt ACH process and paying a fee using the Bilt Cash you earn on each transaction. In addition, on Rent Day (the first of the month), all transactions on the card get double points, or 4x Bilt Points.

All of these complications have made the Bilt Palladium card a controversial card. Some people find value in using the Bilt Cash for discounts, others use it to boost their point earnings. Many people find it to be annoying and complicated. We’ve decided to use most of the Bilt Cash to boost our points earnings by running our mortgage payments through the Bilt ACH and using the Points Accelerator. Doing that resulted in us earning 3.3x on all spending on this card last month, and I assume going forward, it will be around that amount.

The Bilt Palladium card has a $495 annual fee, and honestly, if you had a credit card that earned 3.3x on everything in Bilt Points, I would probably be willing to pay around $250 per year for that card without any premium benefits. This is primarily because Bilt Points are so valuable. What this means to me is that I would want to get an additional $245 worth of use from its benefits to make up for the elevated annual fee. There are two $200 hotel coupons that we hope to use, but to us, the unlimited Priority Pass for three people is a great perk. We don’t have any of the premium travel credit cards that come with unlimited lounge visits, and they are definitely cracking down on lounge visits for those holding mid-range cards, so it’s getting harder and harder to get into lounges. We travel often enough that I think I would pay $245 for this version of the Priority Pass – it would definitely save us $245 in food and drinks in airports throughout the year. If we use the hotel credits, that’s great, but the card is still worth it for us if we don’t.

On to the Point Check!

Because I do these points checks based on when the statement for each of these credit cards ends, some of the spending from April actually includes spending that occurred on our vacation in March. Our spending is a little elevated because of that. Looking at the points earned on cards that we aren’t spending on to get a signup bonus, we had a good month of using the correct cards. Using the Bilt Palladium for everyday spending and using the Citi Custom Cash for dining (*cough cough* visiting breweries) gains nice returns. Getting an overall 6.8% return on spend is pretty good.

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Bilt Palladium	$2,517	8,365	$184.03	3.3	7.3%
Amex Gold	$555	786	$15.72	1.4	2.8%
Ink Cash	$507	2,534	$51.95	5.0	10.3%
Custom Cash	$504	2,464	$46.82	4.9	9.3%
Wyndham Business Earner	$367	1,835	$11.93	5.0	3.25%
Chase Sapphire	$222	461	$9.45	2.1	4.3%
Blue Business Plus	$118	236	$4.72	2.0	4.0%
Total	$4,790	16,681	$324.61	3.5	6.8%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Last month, I made a mistake in my points spreadsheet and forgot to include the value of Bilt points in our totals, which meant I underrepresented the value of our points by about $1,400. Oopsie. When I found the error, I was obviously happy that our points were worth more, but making an Excel mistake is a little embarrassing for someone who spends a decent amount of time looking at spreadsheets. Anyway, aside from the spending listed above, Jenn spent over $700 on her Atmos card, earning a little over 700 Atmos points, and I spent $2,900 on my Iberia card and earned around 3,200 Avios and the bonus of 75,000 Avios. That leaves us with:

255,800 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
223,400 IHG Points
104,800 Wyndham Points
92,600 American Airlines Miles
89,900 Amex Membership Rewards Points
83,800 Atmos Miles
81,800 Avios
72,700 Bilt Points
22,300 Citi Thank You Points
19,300 United Miles
15,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
1,500 Delta Miles
300 Hyatt Points
$133 Cash Back

All of these points added together, according to the Points Guy valuations are worth $15,500, up from a revised $14,500 in March. Once Jenn earns her Atmos bonus next month, we should be close to our all-time high. It’s a great time to accumulate points, knowing we don’t have a lot of plans this year, but we will need them in 2027, which should be a heavy travel year for us.

The Palmetum In Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Posted on May 3, 2026 by David Cox

The Palmetum is a botanical garden on a hillside overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It sits atop an artificial hill more than 100 feet tall on the site of an old landfill, which was closed in 1983. It is now a beautiful garden and a great example of how to reuse a brownfield site.

In the mid 1990s, the idea to build a botanical center on the old landfill formed. From 1997 through 2014, plants were cultivated, and the park was slowly built. The park was split into sections based on their geographical origin. Many of the plants gained maturity while the facility struggled with funding over that time. While they patiently awaited funding, over 400 species of palm trees were growing on the hill.

In 2010, the plan to open the park to the public began and signage, restrooms and a visitor center were built. Lights, paths, and squares were built to complete the project. Finally, in January 2014, Spain’s Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia inaugurated the site and the doors were opened to the public.

The Palmetum was part of a larger transformation of the waterfront in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The dramatic Auditorio de Tenerife is an amazing example of modern architecture, with its striking, fluid, wave-like concrete design. Construction began in 1997, and it opened in 2003. The Parque Marítimo César Manrique, a waterpark that lies between the Auditorio and the Palmetum, was opened in 1995.

Castillo de San Juan Bautista in the foreground and the Auditorio de Tenerife in the background

These construction projects filled in an area which also had some beautiful historic buildings, including the Casa de la Pólvora, a gunpowder warehouse built in the mid 1700s, and the Castillo de San Juan Bautista, a circular fortress surrounded by the ocean, from the 1600s. All of this makes walking along the recreational path on the Santa Cruz de Tenerife waterfront a beautiful experience.

Palm trees grow from the base of Casa de la Pólvora

When we showed up at the gates of the Palmetum, I didn’t know it was an old landfill. So much of the area around Santa Cruz de Tenerife has dramatic hills, that it seemed to be a natural formation. There was plenty of parking available in the lot in front of the Palmetum, so we just needed to pull in and walk up to the gift shop.

The gift shop itself isn’t terribly large; there were some tchotchkes and t-shirts, but most importantly, there was a bathroom and a gentleman there to collect our admission fees. For us non-residents, the admission fee was 6 euros each, which seemed like a fair price.

We left the gift shop and began to walk up a long, sloped path. On the left side was a short wall typical in Tenerife, built out of dark volcanic stones. As you might have guessed, the Palmetum is a botanical center that specializes in varieties of palm trees. While this may not seem as exciting to folks who live in Tenerife or other places where palm trees are plentiful, for us Midwesterners who spend an inordinate amount of time staring at corn, this was a nice change.

Along the slope after the entrance are plants and palm trees native to the Canary Islands.

The space between the visitor center and the top of the hill is the area that is devoted to plants from Tenerife. Since Tenerife is somewhat dry, there is a combination of palm trees and cacti. While walking up the slope, we would occasionally hear a faint scurry of tiny lizards as they went about their daily activities. Since Tenerife is an isolated island, there are no native species of mammals, except for bats. Except for domesticated animals, lizards, bats, and birds are probably the only fauna you will see in Tenerife.

Once we got to the top of the hill, the landscape flattened out. The majority of the botanical garden is at the top of this hill. The park itself is laid out by regions. The first section that we came across was Hawaii, followed by Fiji, Madagascar, and North Caledonia.

A breadfruit tree in the Fiji and Vanautu area

These exhibits are on the ocean side of the garden. In addition to all these amazing plants, there are tremendous ocean views from the top of the hill. I found myself staring out at the blue ocean water from this elevated vantage point often.

Giant palm tree in the Asia exhibit. Alex, for scale, is 6 feet tall.

As we followed along the edge facing the ocean, we walked into the Asia section. There, we came across a massive palm tree. I knew palm trees could get large, but this was an impressive size. It also demonstrated how different palm trees can be.

Views of the Atlantic Ocean from the Asia exhibit.

While the focus of this botanical garden is palm trees, there were also several unusual fruit trees and lots of flowers. There are also varieties of pine trees that I found to be unusual.

The Chinese Fan Palm bears blue fruit which are popular with birds

After walking around the park for a while, we stopped at a plaza that had a small food truck and grabbed some coffee, and then relaxed for a while. Nearby the plaza is a sign that helps identify the bird species that can be found at the park. We had a hard time seeing the birds, but they were definitely around because we heard them clearly.

Flowering ground cover plants in the Africa exhibit.

The bird population at the Palmetum is a success story on its own. As the park has developed, the number and variety of birds have increased over time. The Canary Islands play a vital role in bird migratory routes, so the Palmetum provides a wonderful stopover for birds making that journey. A great resource for which birds can be found at the park is located here.

The center support post for the Octogono is clad with volcanic stone and is also a water feature.

After our break, we walked into the Octogono. A semi-enclosed area that helps protect more delecate plants. It has some small ponds and waterfalls inside of it. Much of it is made out of the same dark, volcanic rock that can be found all around the island. The Octogono is beautiful and is a great place to take a selfie or two.

Following the Octogono, we walked around to the pond, where we saw one lone duck wandering around the far side of the pond. There is a small structure with a bench inside of it, which looks like it is designed to allow viewers to see the birds while making it difficult for the birds to see the people. Unfortunately, for us, there was just the one lone duck, but I imagine that it can be a great place to hang around for a while.

Viewing area for the pond intended for bird watching.

Following the pond, we walked back down the sloped walkway back to then entrance of the park. The experience at the Palmetum was great. It’s not a huge botanical center, but it is definitely large enough to have some great diversity. Overall, we spent around an hour and a half there. It turned out to be a nice relaxing walk with the opportunity to learn a little bit about the plants and animals from around the world. It was well worth the trip and I would highly recommend a stop if you are in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Points Check March 2026

Posted on April 27, 2026May 23, 2026 by David Cox

March in the Midwest can be frustrating. The winter is long, and we all begin to hope that winter is officially over. A couple of warm days early in the month marked what we call “False Spring” which raised our hopes. This was, of course, followed by an ill-timed blizzard which affected our Spring Break trip to Tenerife.

We saw the blizzard forming in the weather forecast for a week or so prior to the flight and ended up making some not ideal decisions with our points to save the vacation. Making these changes was more difficult than it should have been and cost us quite a few points. In retrospect, maybe I would have done things differently, but those last-minute decisions meant that we were able to save the vacation.

On the trip, itself, we explored London for a couple of days, then Tenerife for five days, and Madrid for one day. I wasn’t excited about London, but we had a great time, and I hope we get a chance to have another stopover there and explore other neighborhoods, since it’s such a large and diverse metropolitan area.

This was also our second stop in Madrid, and we didn’t enjoy it the first time, but this time it was great. Madrid, like London, is huge, and it’s really important to choose your neighborhood carefully. The first time, we stayed in Salamanca, an upscale part of Madrid, which wasn’t really our thing. This time we stayed near Plaza Mayor in Centro, and it was fantastic. The energy of the city, the crowds of pedestrians, and the amazing food scene all combined to make for an exciting stay in Madrid. Now I understand why people love Madrid so much.

What Those Flight Changes Cost Us

In order to avoid our flight being canceled and us missing at least the beginning of the trip, we canceled our American Airlines flight to London and received 19,000 AAdvantage miles each back, for a total of 57,000. Emma had her own miles, and she got her 19,000 AAdvantage miles returned to her account as well. Unfortunately for us, we had to book her on the United flight we took, because she wasn’t able to.

We used 65,000 American Express Membership Rewards points transferred to Singapore to book the two flights for Emma and Jenn, and 76,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points to transfer to United to book the flights for Alex and me. 57,000 American Airlines miles back definitely does not make up for those transfers, but at least we were able to make the trip, and the flight arrived 5 hours earlier than the American flight would have arrived, so we got more time in London. Emma was the big winner, though, getting all her points back without having to use any other miles.

Bilt Palladium Bonus

Jenn completed the spending necessary to earn the signup bonus on her Bilt Palladium Card. This card will be our go-to card for most things going forward, when not working on a signup bonus. Because we are able to essentially earn 4x on the first of the month, 2x the rest of the month, with an additional 1x with the points accelerator and an additional 1x when running our mortgage through their ACH processor, we will probably earn around 3X on everything when we are using that card. Since those points transfer now to an eye-popping 25 transfer partners, it won’t be difficult to find good uses for those points.

Bilt Tax Payment Blunder

We’ve used tax payments in the past to help us quickly earn a signup bonus. Typically, the math doesn’t work out when paying your taxes by credit card, because you would earn 1X on most cards while paying around a 2% fee. Some cards earn 2X, which means that you would essentially be earning 1 point for every cent you paid for the processing fee. That’s not terrible, and depending on the type of points, you might want to do that.

My daughter had about a $1,000 to pay to Uncle Sam, and we said we’d process it on our Bilt card, thinking that we would get the 2X on all charges, plus the 1X on the points accelerator, as well as move us closer to getting the signup bonus. Unfortunately, I didn’t read the fine print, because tax payments aren’t eligible to earn points, and it doesn’t count toward the signup bonus either. Essentially, because I wasn’t paying attention to the details, we paid 2% on the transaction and got absolutely nothing for it. Not great – don’t use your Bilt Card for tax payments!

On to the Points Check!

Most of the spending not devoted to signup bonuses was recurring payments, except for what we spent on Jenn’s Amex Gold card. That card has become the default for our son, who is an authorized user, to use when we need him to pick something up for us or when he needs something. I don’t imagine all of that is from him, but the fact that we only earned 1.4 points per $ spent on that means it wasn’t being used on groceries or dining very much (where it earns 4x).

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Amex Gold	$653	898	$17.96	1.4	2.8%
Wyndham Business Earner	$353	1,764	$19.40	5.0	5.5%
Ink Cash	$344	1,719	$35.24	5.0	10.3%
Blue Business Plus	$68	136	$2.72	2.0	4.0%
Total	$1,418	4,517	$75.32	3.2	5.3%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Aside from the spend not devoted to signup bonuses, I spent a little less than $1,900 on my Iberia Visa Signature card, earning a little over 2,000 Avios. Jenn spent a little over $4,000 on her Bilt Palladium Card and earned over 9,700 Bilt points as well as the 50,000-point signup bonus. Overall, our spending was pretty high, but not surprising with a trip and our daughter’s tax payment thrown in there.

All of this left us with:

252,800 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
229,900 IHG Points
102,900 Wyndham Points
88,900 Amex Membership Rewards Points
92,600 American Airlines Miles
79,400 Alaska Miles
64,300 Bilt Points
19,700 Citi Thank You Points
16,700 United Miles
15,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
3,600 Avios
1,500 Delta Miles
300 Hyatt Points
$133 Cash Back

According to the valuations by The Points Guy, the total value of points and miles is $13,000. This is a significant drop from the $15,300 last month and is almost exclusively because we had to change our travel plans at the last minute, and that’s even after getting a bonus from Bilt. I had planned to be a little less aggressive this year with signup bonuses, but with a big trip planned for next summer, that may not be an option. We’re going to have to get some points banked in order to do what we have planned.

Experiencing London on the Queen’s Walk

Posted on April 17, 2026 by David Cox

We only had two days to enjoy London because we were using London as a stopover on our way to Tenerife. The first day was the arrival day, where we mostly dealt with jet lag. On the second day, however, we could really get out and explore London. We had never visited London before, so we wanted to hit a lot of the must-see places in a short amount of time. I always believe that the best way to see a city is on foot and, in London, it was to do the Queen’s Walk.

Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace

We woke up early and after a little breakfast we took the train from East London to Westminster. On the train, I decided to look up when they do the Changing of the Guard, which just happened to be when we were about to arrive in Westminster. Even though we hadn’t planned to see it, we couldn’t have timed it any better.

We got off the train and headed toward Buckingham Palace to watch the spectacle. People lined every bit of the road where the guards march from the barracks to the Palace. It seemed a little strange seeing that many people who were there to watch the event. Even though it has been taking place on a regular basis since Queen Victoria started the tradition in 1837, it remains extremely popular, drawing tourists and residents multiple times per week.

In only a few minutes, the band played, and the changing of the guard began. Soldiers in red coats, black pants, and tall furry black hats marched by us and to the Palace. We lost sight of the event when the band and the soldiers approached the palace. Since we weren’t able to watch the entire ceremony, we left halfway through and headed toward Westminster Abbey.

We walked by St. James Park and through a lovely neighborhood. It was a gorgeous area with old brick row houses, where apartments sell for millions of British pounds. We walked along Old Queen Street, a narrow street lined with pristine brick buildings from the 17th and 18th centuries and luxury vehicles.

Just around the corner from Old Queen Street was Parliament Square Garden, a park lined with the 56 flags of the Commonwealth of Nations. The buildings around Parliament Square Garden include Westminster Abbey, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, and Westminster Palace, and are among the most famous buildings in the world, all amazing classic examples of Gothic and/or Neo-Gothic architecture.

The weather was nearly perfect, with cloudless blue skies and pleasant mid-60s (Fahrenheit) temperatures. The area around the square felt a little chaotic with multiple tour guides, each holding little flags and with a crowd of tourists in tow. There were also anti-Brexit protestors using megaphones. With as much history and beauty packed into such a small area, it is unsurprising that the crowd was lively.

Westminster Palace from across the Thames

We headed across the Westminster Bridge to the south side of the Thames River, to the official start of the Queen’s Walk. With it being such a beautiful day, lots of people were enjoying the day along the Queen’s Walk. Looking across the Thames, we had a perfect view of the full scope of Westminster Palace. When seeing the size of the palace, combined with its incredible detail, I couldn’t help but think about the amount of labor needed to complete such an amazing building.

The London Eye Looks Massive from Underneath

From Westminster Bridge, we headed Northeast along the Queen’s Walk. The crowds began to grow and become more lively. Joggers dodged the tourists as we passed the Aquarium and the London Eye.

We continued along the Queen’s Walk until we wandered away from the banks of the Thames to go to a tavern called Fountain and Ink. It’s a lovely traditional British Pub where we had a pint and chatted with the bartender who was very friendly and helpful. We were on our way to Burough Market and he encouraged us to go back to the Queen’s Walk rather than take a more direct route.

I’m glad he told us that, because shortly after returning to the Queen’s Walk, we passed the Globe Theatre. This is not the original location of the theater, but rather a replica of the building built in the late 1990s just a couple blocks from the original location which burned down in 1613. A second Globe Theater was built in the same location but was demolished in 1644.

We also walked past the Anchor Pub which has been in its location for 800 years. It would have been fun to stop in, but we had just stopped for a pint at Fountain and Ink, and as much fun as it might be, I didn’t want this to turn into a pub crawl.

The Anchor Bankside has been at this location for 800 years, the current structure is from 1676.

After the anchor, we walked past the Clink Prison Museum, the original site of the notorious prison dating back to 1144. If we had more time in London, this would have been a fascinating stop. A prison dating back that long must have some interesting stories to tell.

Shortly after the Clink Prison Museum, we arrived at Borough Market. Which, for 2PM on a Wednesday afternoon, was lively. There were all kinds of vendors there, but we were specifically looking for street food. Burough Market is filled with vendors selling fruits, vegetables, meats, and cheeses as well as bread and pastries. What really makes Burough Market incredible, though, is the incredible variety of prepared street food. In a small area, you can get Thai, Indian, Argentinian, and Spanish food. There is a Malaysian restaurant there, as well as a Japanese Barbecue (I didn’t even know Japanese Barbecue was a thing).

We told our kids to think of something that would be difficult to get at home, and we’d try to find it. Alex wanted Indian food, and Emma wanted Bao buns. Neither one turned out to be much of a challenge to find. I ended up getting some croquettes, and Jenn got fish and chips. Four different orders, and we covered India, China, Spain, and England. That is what is amazing about visiting a great market: everyone can have a completely different experience, and you can share that with each other.

Following our stop at the market, we began our walk back to the hotel, but decided to stop at an unusual German bar under London Bridge called Bermondsey Bierkeller. This wasn’t really part of the plan, but when you are in a tunnel and there is a door to a German pub, you go inside. It was unusual to say the least, and I couldn’t tell whether I felt like I was in a lagering cellar or a fallout shelter, but we stopped and got ourselves some crisp German beer before finishing up our walk back to the hotel.

Seating in the tunnels at Bermonsey Bierkeller

There are many ways to enjoy London on a short visit. We could have chosen to take a tour of Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, or to visit the British Museum. Those sorts of activities would have provided a great experience, but it would have been fairly narrow. However, if we have a short amount of time, we prefer to get out and walk around the town. It gives us a sense of what makes that city great. It also allows us to determine how badly we want to come back.

Parliament Square, Big Ben and the London Eye

We love visiting Europe, and when you do, there are a handful of cities that become the entry point to the journey. These are the main hubs that you fly into before you get on a smaller plane to go to your ultimate destination. For people flying from the US, those cities are Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Madrid. You can certainly fly into other cities directly, but these cities always seem to have a lot of flights coming in from the US. We always like to stop in these cities for a day or two to add a little variety to our trips. This was the first time we had experienced London, and I have to say, I would love to go back. It’s an absolutely enormous city and we only got the opportunity to experience a small portion of it. I look forward to going back someday.