March was a pretty exciting month. We took a spring break trip to Costa Rica and had the opportunity to see just how beautiful that country is. We stayed in an Airbnb in the Central Valley near Grecia, which meant we were staying amongst the locals. That really gave us a more authentic taste of Costa Rica and was definitely not the normal touristy vacation.
We had to drive quite a bit to get to the locations that we wanted to visit, but in a week we managed to do hikes in a mountain pine forest and another by gorgeous waterfalls. We visited the only coffee farm owned by Starbucks. We also visited Poas Volcano as well as Playa Hermosa. Hey, any week you manage to visit the mountains, the beach and waterfalls in the same week is pretty good.
Costa Rica is a beautiful country and I would recommend it to anyone who is willing to go a little off the beaten path.
American Express Business Gold
Jenn applied for and was accepted for the American Express Business Gold. This is a card that we normally would ignore because of the higher annual fee and the higher required spend to earn the bonus on the card.
I have some mixed feelings about this card. The first issue for me is the $375 annual fee. We have, for the most part, gotten used to annual fees when they hand you a nice welcome bonus, but normally they have been less than $100 for us. That being said, this was an enormous 130,000 Membership Reward point bonus which The Points Guy values at 2 cents per point, so the bonus itself is worth $2,600. That definitely takes the sting out of the annual fee, especially if you plan to cancel before it renews.
The other negative here is that in order to receive this massive bonus, you must spend $10,000 in the first 3 months. That’s not easy for us, but with tax time coming and a pretty large tax bill, this shouldn’t be too hard. Making the most out of paying our taxes is becoming a annual tradition for us, last year we managed to profit $1,350 from paying our taxes.
The Amex Business Gold card earns 4x on some pretty good categories such as dining, gas and transit. It also offers 4x in some business categories such as advertising, electronics retailers, cloud system providers and cell phone service providers. In addition, it earns 3x on purchases through amextravel.com and 1x on all other purchases.
They have some monthly and annual credits, such as $155 refund for Walmart Plus membership and $20 per month for purchases at office supply stores, Grubhub, or FedEx. While I don’t think we’ll be signing up for Walmart Plus, Jenn has figured out that she can use that $20 per month by ordering takeout through Grubhub for some of our favorite restaurants so we will definitely be using those $20 Grubhub credits.
Ok, on the Points Check
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Ink Cash
$534
2,651
$54.35
5.0
10.2%
Capital One Venture
$519
1,038
$19.20
2.0
3.6%
Marriott Bonvoy
$421
2,105
$17.68
5.0
4.2%
Citibusiness AAdvantage
$347
347
$5.38
1.0
1.6%
Wyndham Business Earner
$124
814
$8.95
6.6
7.2%
Custom Cash
$49
244
$4.39
5
9.2%
Total
$1,994
7,199
$109.96
3.6
5.5%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
We actually have 3 open cards where we are working on signup bonuses, which is a little crazy so the spend on cards without signup bonuses is pretty low this month. Most of the stuff in the chart above are set up as autopay for things like insurance, cell phones, utilities, etc. The Marriott Bonvoy charges are because we were earning 5x on groceries as a promo, and once again, somehow, we accidentally spent on the Citibusiness card at 1x which is a little frustrating. All in all, though, getting 5.5% back on non-bonus spend is fine by me.
In addition to the non-bonus spend, I spent $735 on my American Express Gold card and earned a little over 1,900 Membership Reward points. Jenn spent about $2,250 on her US Bank Business Connect card and earned $46 in cash back.
We didn’t earn any bonuses this month but I would imagine that those should start to hit over the next few months and they are some pretty big ones, with a $500 cash back bonus, a 75,000 Membership Reward bonus on my Amex Gold card, and the 130,000 Membership Reward bonus on Jenn’s Amex Business Gold card. I’m looking forward to seeing our point valuations balloon as these start to hit.
The only real redemption this month was that I used the cash back that I had earned last year to pay for the rental car and some of the gas while we were in Costa Rica.
Because we used some of our cash back, and we didn’t have any bonuses hit, we ended the month with a lower total value than the previous month. We ended the month with 260,300 Chase Ultimate Reward points, 115,200 American Airlines miles, 76,300 Capital One Venture miles, 38,800 Citi Thank You points, 34,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, 25,000 United miles, 10,000 Wyndham points, 6,900 Hyatt points, 5,000 Delta Miles, 1,900 Amex Membership Reward points and $183 in cash back. All of that, according to the valuations from The Points Guy, is worth around $10,300.
** On November 30, 2025, vacasa will end ITS partnership with Wyndham and this will no longer be available.**
The Vacasa/Wyndham partnership devalued again, for the second time in just 6 months. This is pretty annoying, because this partnership went under the radar for a while, and as people became aware of what a tremendous deal this was, they had to start dialing it back. Now after a second devaluation, the partnership is still pretty good but it’s just not the same fantastic deal it was before.
The original redemption rates for Wyndham points on Vacasa rentals was simple – 15,000 Wyndham points per bedroom, per night on any rental up to $500 per bedroom per night. In October of last year, they kept the same basic structure, but lowered the maximum redemption from $500 per bedroom per night to $350 per bedroom per night.
With the change made in October, it effectively made any rental that cost more than $350 per bedroom per night unrentable on points. The newest devaluation makes those properties rentable again, but means that any property that cost between $250-$500 per night per bedroom just got twice as expensive as it was prior to October 2023.
The new Vacasa/Wyndham redemption rates are essentially this: for any Vacasa vacation rental, it costs 15,000 Wyndham points per bedroom per night for any property that costs up to $250 per bedroom per night. For any property that costs $250-$500 per bedroom per night, that will cost 30,000 Wyndham points per bedroom per night. Any property that costs more that $500 per bedroom per night will be unavailable on points.
Example
Before Oct 2023
Oct 2023 – March 2024
After March 2024
1 Bedroom $200/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
1 Bedroom $300/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
1 Bedroom $400/Night
15,000 Pts/Night
Unavailable on Points
30,000 Pts/ Night
2 Bedroom $450/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
2 Bedroom $600/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
60,000 Pts/Night
2 Bedroom $900/Night
30,000 Pts/Night
Unavailable on Points
60,000 Pts/Night
Effect of last 2 Vacasa/Wyndham devaluation on redemptions
These are All-In Prices
The $250 per bedroom per night price is the all-in price not the headline price on Vacasa’s website. They might show a headline price of $200 per night, for example, but for 5 nights it’s not going to be $1,000, it’s probably going to be closer to $1,400. This is because they charge a number of taxes and fees, which can get pretty extensive.
These fees can be state and local taxes, amenity fees, booking fees, damage waivers, etc. In my experience, these will probably cost an extra 30 to 50 percent on top of the rent itself.
I think we can all agree that fees are getting out of control as you can see below. I mean, damn, I know you have expenses and all but do you need to itemize them and make me pay one by one? Just tell me what the price is! I mean, I get it, you got an HOA, but you can include that in the price instead of charging me for an ‘Amenity Fee’? And what the hell is a ‘destination surcharge’?
How Many Properties Does This Actually Affect?
One of the bright spots about this devaluation has been that if you had a rental that you liked that normally cost $200 per bedroom per night, you have gone completely unaffected by this. There are a lot of quality vacation rentals that are under that $250 per bedroom per night range and they are the same as they ever were.
That being said, if you had your eye on a more expensive unit, you might be reevaluating your plans now.
Let’s look at the Destin Florida area for a 5 day rental in June to see the real life results of the devaluation. Let’s say you’re a family of 4 and you would prefer a 2 bedroom vacation rental, but would settle for a 1 bedroom if it had room for everyone to sleep.
The below examples are taking into account a 40% upcharge for taxes and fees. These fees vary by property, so some are higher and some are lower but in order for me to use the filters on Vacasa’s website for this chart, I had to make some assumptions.
Up to $250 per bedroom per night
$250 -$350 per bedroom per night
$350- $500 per bedroom per night
More than $500 per bedroom per night
1 Bedroom
25 (15,000 pts)
119 (30,000 pts)
129 (30,000 pts)
120
2 Bedrooms
323 (30,000 pts)
298 (60,000 pts)
94 (60,000 pts)
12
3 Bedroom
204 (45,000 pts)
86 (90,000 pts)
29 (90,000 pts)
4
Example availability of Vacasa vacation rentals with room for 4 near Destin for a random summer extended weekend.
The unicorn rental is if you can find a 1 bedroom with enough sleeping space for 4, that can be rented for 15,000 Wyndham points. In this example, prior to October 2023, there would have been 273 total 1 bedroom properties rentable for under $500 per night. When the first devaluation occurred and dropped the maximum price for redemption to $350 per night, that number dropped to 144. After the March 2024 devaluation, there are only 25 such properties left at the 15,000 point level. That’s only 9% of the original available properties at that rate.
Two bedroom properties fared a little better in the devaluation than the one bedroom properties. 94 were affected by the devaluation in October and another 298 were affected by the March devaluation. In this case 45% of the two bedroom properties in this example were unaffected by these devaluations.
The three bedroom properties fared the best with 204 of the total 319 properties for a total of 64% unaffected by the devaluation.
In general, the next time that I rent a Vacasa on points I’ll most likely be renting something that is 30,000 points per night, because the unicorn 15,000 point redemption is just going to be very hard to find now. It probably means that we will be looking for a two bedroom which will probably be more comfortable for us than a one bedroom, but twice the number of points is still a bit of a kick to the gut.
Elevated Signup Bonuses as a Consolation Prize
I don’t know if Wyndham did this at the same time as the most recent devaluation to soften the blow a little bit, but current signup bonuses for Wyndham credit cards are massive right now.
Wyndham is currently offering 100,000 point bonuses on their Wyndham Reward Earner Business card and their Wyndham Reward Earner Plus (Consumer) card. They are also offering a 75,000 point bonus on their Wyndham Earner card. All of those bonuses are the largest bonuses ever offered according to Frequent Miler.
The Wyndham Reward Earner Business card is one that we hold and continue to use. Jenn signed up for this one when the bonus was only 45,000 points. The reason we continue to use it is that it has some great point earning rates. It is 8x at gas stations and 5x on utilities. I put all of our gas and utilities on it for this reason. The full 100,000 point bonus for this card is after spending $15,000 on the card within 12 months.
If you really like those Wyndham points (which we do), the Wyndham Reward Earner (Consumer version) Card has some great earning categories too. It is 6x at gas stations, 4x on groceries and 4x on dining. It is also currently offering a 100,000 point bonus after a much lower $2,000 in spending within 6 months.
If you spend a lot on gas and you like vacation rentals, these cards can rack up points for those rentals in a hurry. In addition, all 3 of the Wyndham cards offer a 10% discount on award redemptions if you are a cardholder. This means that the example of a 1 bedroom Vacasa under $250 per night isn’t actually 15,000 points per night, it’s really 13,500 points per night for cardholders. The 100,000 point bonus alone would pay for a week at those rates.
Keep in mind that if you were to maximize these redemptions at a full $250 per night per bedroom, and you had one of these credit cards to reduce the redemption to 13,500 points, you would be redeeming those points at 1.85 cents per point. If you are earning 8x on all of your gas spending, you are essentially earning 14.8% back at gas stations. That’s pretty ridiculous.
Vacasa Still Remains the Best Way to Book a Vacation Rental on Points
Even with the rapid fire devaluations, Vacasa still remains the best way to book a vacation rental on points. Marriott has it’s Homes and Villas collection which does allow for booking vacation rentals using Bonvoy points, but the rates are much higher, and I would argue the points are harder to earn.
Sure, if you are a business traveler, you might be able to earn quite a lot of Bonvoy points by staying in Marriott hotels, so Homes and Villas might be pretty attractive for your family vacation. But, if you’re not a business traveler, the ability to earn a lot of points through spending on gas and utilities on the Business Earner card or by gas, groceries, and dining on the consumer Earner card is huge.
I’m still hoping that Hyatt, IHG, or Hilton can someday begin to make their points usable at VRBO or Airbnb, but I wouldn’t count on it. That being said, as long as Wyndham keeps the amount of points needed to book a rental low as well as allow easy earning of Wyndham points, it’s going to remain a fantastic deal. There is no doubt in my mind that the Vacasa/Wyndham partnership remains the best way to use points on vacation rentals.
Playa Hermosa is a small, laid back beach town along the Pacific coast in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. The sand on the beach is a little darker than you might expect because of the volcanic rock that helped form Costa Rica over millions of years. The bay around Playa Hermosa is crescent shaped and creates some stunning views, especially at sunset. It also makes for a nice stopping point for flights in or out of Guanacaste Airport.
Playa Hermosa is a Great Stop after Landing at Guanacaste Airport
The reason why we stayed at Playa Hermosa was simply that we didn’t want to drive at night. We had about a 3 to 3 1/2 hour drive from Guanacaste Airport to our Airbnb in the Central Valley near Grecia. Even though we landed around noon, by the time we got through passport control and customs, took the shuttle to the car rental place and finally got the keys to the rental car, it was around 2:30.
The problem with Guanacaste Airport is that almost all of the planes from the US and Canada (which are the majority of planes landing there) arrive between 10:30 and 2:30. Also, the airport itself isn’t really near many tourist spots. A lot of the typical stops for tourists are a bit of a drive from the airport:
La Fortuna – 2.5 to 3 hour drive from the airport
Monteverde Cloud Forest – 2.5 to 3 hour drive from the airport
Jaco – 3 to 4 hour drive from the airport
Central Valley – 3 to 4 hour drive from the airport
Driving at night in Costa Rica, if you aren’t familiar with the area that you are driving, can be tricky to say the least. Between the fact that the roads are narrow, curvy and unlit, the lack of street signs, and the fact that there are always people walking in the road, you might just want to drive in the daytime, at least at first.
Lodging in Playa Hermosa
For being a pretty small travel destination there are a number of choices of places to spend the night in Playa Hermosa, all of whom are small operators (your Marriott Bonvoy and World of Hyatt points are useless here). For more expensive hotels, there are some villas on the north side of Playa Hermosa and Hotel Bosque del Mar on the south end. We stayed in the center of Playa Hermosa where you will find some modest boutique hotels.
We stayed at Huetares Hotel and Villas. It had a nice pool area, which we really enjoyed. The rooms were spacious but a little rundown, which didn’t bother us too much since we were just sleeping there one night and then moving on. Our room had two full bathrooms and two bedrooms, each bedroom had a single and a double bed. It also had a kitchen area which would’ve been nice if had stayed longer.
There was a questionable shower there with exposed wiring. At first I didn’t understand why there was wiring on a showerhead, but I think it was an instant water heater showerhead. Either way, I’m not sticking my head under a showerhead with exposed wiring – luckily there were two bathrooms and two showers, so we didn’t use that sketchy thing.
Yeah, I’m not taking a shower under this thing. I don’t feel like dying today.
Swimming at the Beach
The sand at Playa Hermosa is fairly pleasant. It’s not a white Cancun style of beach, this is a little darker with volcanic sand mixed in. This makes the water appear dirtier than at a white sand beach, but its really that the sand is just darker.
There is a first row of trees on the edge of the beach, then a path and then the rest of the trees which allow you to walk the beach in the shade.
The water is about as warm as at any beach I’ve been to. It was very pleasant to swim in and we did see a bit of fish activity while we were swimming. The waves were fairly gentle to moderate which also made swimming very pleasant.
Wildlife in Playa Hermosa
In the short amount of time we spent in Playa Hermosa, we spotted quite a bit of wildlife. At our hotel, we spotted an Iquana that was probably 2-3 feet long. There were also quite a bit of tropical birds that were flying around and chatting to each other. The squirrels that we saw were grey and reddish orange.
Two howler monkeys in a tree. You can also see in the tree, a couple of wires. That is the monkey bridges that have been built to allow the monkeys to cross the roads without having to use electrical wires or walk across the street.
What you really need to go looking for are the howler monkeys. If you don’t know where they are, don’t worry, you’ll hear them. I don’t know how many of them live in Playa Hermosa, but there are at least a dozen who spend a lot of time at the tops of the trees. Howler monkeys are known for being loud with calls that can be up to 140 decibels. We had a lot of fun watching them in the wild and they weren’t in the least bit concerned with us.
Dining at Sunset
Playa Hermosa is located on the west coast of Costa Rica, making it a beautiful place to watch sunsets. There are also a handful of restaurants along the beach making it a great place to have dinner on the beach while watching the sunset.
The majority of the seating at Aquasport is in the sand, which is exactly where you want to sit.
The restaurants that I noticed while we were there were La Casita del Marisco, Roberto’s and Aquasport. We chose Aquasport.
There was a large swing there that was in constant use throughout dinner.
I really liked the menu at Aquasport because it allowed us to try a pretty wide variety of food that’s not available in our hometown in Iowa. Alex got the Surf and Surf, which was mahi mahi and shrimp in a pretty interesting sauce. Jenn got the mahi mahi fillet, while I ordered the beef tacu tacu and Emma ordered a chicken causa. We also shared some patacones.
Chicken Causa – a Peruvian dish with layers of potato, avocado and chicken.
Most of the food was very good. The prices were a bit on the high end, but I wouldn’t have expected anything else considering Aquasport is directly on the beach.
A live band played during dinner. They played mostly American pop music covers.
We also had a few chiliguaros, which is a shot that has guaro (a Costa Rican liquor made of sugar cane, similar to unaged rum), tomato juice and tobasco served in a salted shot glass. We chased those chiliguaros with the national beer of Costa Rica, Imperial, which is a pretty descent pilsner.
Rope lights provide great mood lighting after dusk.
We enjoyed our dinner and the fresh breeze as the sun disappeared into the Pacific Ocean. The staff was excellent, the food great, and the sunset was spectacular.
A First Taste of Gallo Pinto
Huetares Hotel and Villas is attached to a traditional Costa Rican restaurant called Coco Viquez. They serve their breakfast the way that a traditional Costa Rican ‘soda’ does. It’s set up as a buffet where you get one plate, you tell them what you want and they fill the plate up for a set price, in this case $10 US, or 5,000 Colones.
There are two sections of this buffet, one with hot foods like gallo pinto, eggs, and sausage, and the cold section with cheese and fresh fruit
Traditionally a Costa Rican breakfast comes with gallo pinto, which is essentially black beans and rice mixed together. Gallo pinto is also not complete without some plantains, some meat – I had salchichon (a type of sausage), and as much fresh fruit as they can squeeze on the plate. We also got some coffee, which they served with hot milk, which is a nice touch to not cool down your coffee, but it was already 90 degrees outside, so I’m not sure it was necessary.
Must’ve eaten the papaya before snapping this photo. The papaya was amazing.
It was all very good and the staff was very friendly. I can see why this style of breakfast became a staple in Costa Rica, it’s fast, nutritious and is delicious. This is how fast food should be done.
Small Town Feel
Playa Hermosa is a very small area. We could pretty much walk the entire town in about 30 minutes. There really is only about a half dozen restaurants, a mini grocery store, a few hotels and a beach. I think that’s the real attraction to Playa Hermosa. There isn’t a ton to see, but the views are tremendous. There aren’t a lot of choices of places to eat, but the food is really good.
There were only really two streets to walk on in Playa Hermosa. No tall buildings, not a lot of traffic. It definitely had the feel of a small town.
Because the choices are limited, Playa Hermosa will force you to take it easy. Go ahead and spend a few hours on the beach. Have a long dinner in the sand as the sun dips into the ocean. Relax and unwind. Life is stressful and hurried, but that is not the vibe in Playa Hermosa. You’re not in America anymore, you’re in Costa Rica now – Pura Vida!
Moving Along
With our bellies full of Gallo Pinto, we got into the car for what turned out to be a stressful 4 hour drive to Grecia in the Central Valley of Costa Rica. I’m glad we had a chance to unwind from our flight before attempting that drive.
We spent less than 24 hours in Playa Hermosa, because we were using it as a stop before moving on to the rest of our journey. I have a feeling that we will find our way back to Playa Hermosa, there are a few other places that I would like to visit in Costa Rica, including La Fortuna, Jaco, and Manuel Antonio National Park. I can definitely see this being a stop over anytime that we might go to Costa Rica in the future, if we are using Guanacaste Airport. The proximity to the airport, the gorgeous sunsets, and the great food make it an ideal first taste of Costa Rica.
I’ve only been into travel hacking for a couple of years, but I have been around long enough to know how much time can be spent trying to get a good deal on an award flight. When we were planning our first trip to Europe, United miles was the only way for us to go. It was the only program where we had accumulated enough points in order to book flights for the whole family to Europe. In some respects, that made it easier for me. Just search the United website and nothing else.
Even then, our dates were flexible and our destination was flexible to some extent. When I was checking for available award flights, I would have to make multiple searches based on different destination airports and different dates. Honestly, it didn’t take too long to do these searches, because it was all on one website, and I actually find United Airlines’s website to be pretty good.
However, as we started to venture into more transferable points, such as Capital One Venture miles and Chase Ultimate Reward points, it became much more difficult. Chase alone transfers to 11 airline programs and Capital One has 15 airline transfer partners. Even if you narrow it down to just a handful of programs that you want to check, repeating the steps that I took on United’s website on 4 or 5 other websites can get pretty annoying.
The Rise of Flight Award Search Tools
I must not have been the only person who found myself with this problem because recently there has been an explosion in the number of good online award search tools, often with very powerful and free searches. All of them have their pluses and minuses. They include:
Now, have I tried all of these websites and done a point by point comparison to determine exactly the best website to use? Hell no! I have tried a few of them, but once I started to use Pointsyeah.com I latched onto it pretty quickly. I’m a firm believer that once you’ve found a tool that works for you, there’s no sense in continuing to look for a better tool. If I have a screw to tighten and I’m holding a screwdriver that works, I don’t go run to Home Depot to see if they have a slightly better screwdriver with a better grip. I just tighten the screw and move on with my life. That being said, Pointsyeah.com is a hell of a tool.
Basic Award Searching
Let’s look at a scenario, where you want to visit a friend in Phoenix, and you have a little flexibility on date. You just enter into the search bar your departure airport and the arrival airport, and a date range of up to 4 days. When you click the ‘Yeah!’ button it will automatically search for awards across a variety of airline award programs.
In just a few seconds, you will be presented with the results. In this case, the best deal is with Spirit Airlines for 4,000 points and $5.60 for a one-way flight from Chicago to Phoenix.
The problem with that is, that I don’t have Spirit points, nor a desire to fly Spirit Airlines. Also, that flight is almost 15 hours with connections – no thank you. In this case, you can scroll down, or you can filter out results from Spirit Airlines altogether, since it’s not really an option.
At the top of the screen, you will see a series of buttons that are preset filters. I want to filter out the airlines programs that I know I don’t have points for or transfer partners for, in this case, Alaska Airlines and Spirit Airlines. All you have to do is uncheck the boxes and click ‘Apply’ and view the new results.
This gives you another set of results, the top one being this Delta Airlines flight. The results here pack a ton of useful information into one tiny area. First, you will notice that the flight costs 8,000 Delta Skymiles and $5.60 in taxes. Secondly, you notice right above the Skymiles total you see the number of American Express Membership Rewards that are needed to transfer those 8,000 points to Delta. There is also (not on every result, but on some) a cash price listed. This is awesome, because you might just look at this flight and say that it’s cheap enough that you don’t want to waste your Skymiles or Membership Rewards points on it, you’ll just pay cash. Lastly, you can click on the down arrow to the right to expand the box to give you details about the flight itself.
But, what if you just want a direct flight? Well just go back to the top bar where all of the filters are and simply click on ‘Stops’ and then click ‘Non-stop only’. This supports multiple filters, so you will be able to search for non-stop only with the airlines that you don’t want to see already turned off.
Once you do that, you will see a number of results that fit the newly narrowed search criteria that you entered into the filters.
What is left is a series of direct American Airlines flights from Chicago to Phoenix for 8,500 points and $5.60. Perfect, now you know what to look for and can log onto the American Airlines website, search for this flight and book it.
Daydream Explorer is Awesome
There is a new feature that PointsYeah has added recently called Daydream explorer which is like a candy store for travel junkies. Rather than searching for individual flights from airport to airport, Daydream Explorer allows you to search airport to region, region to region, airport to country, country to region, basically anything that you can think of. On top of that, it allows for super broad time ranges like a couple of months.
Imagine you’re thinking “I’d like to go to Central or South America in April” – you can search for that and just see what comes up. Let’s say you’re local airport is MSP and you want to go south in April. Just search for MSP to Central or South America from April 1st to April 30th and abracadabra a list of potential flights you could take and their prices pop up.
You will get a bunch of random results that you can sort by price, date or last update. This will allow you to browse a whole bunch of different ideas for taking a trip to Central or South America. You can also use the filters at the top to look for deals with certain airline programs or bank programs. You can even filter by number of stops or set a maximum that you’re willing to pay for taxes and surcharges.
If you’re thinking that you would like to go from New York to Spain in May in business class, just put in that criteria and search again.
A group of results appear nearly instantaneously, allowing for the user to browse through and see if they find anything that they like. The results are so fast and the searches are so interesting that you can easily waste hours just window shopping potential vacations.
Let PointsYeah Send you Updates
PointsYeah also has a feature called Points Price Alert. This allows you to have PointsYeah send you an email when there is a flight available within the criteria that you set.
If I would like to get notified on a specific date if business class seats become available, I can set that criteria. In this case, I’m looking to book a flight home from Europe, and I know that Iberia does occasionally have business class flights available from Madrid to Chicago for 34,000 Avios, so I want to know if those seats become available on the day that I want to fly home. I simply put in the criteria that I’m looking for.
In this case, I want two seats, under 40,000 points and $200 in taxes and fees, per seat. I set that criteria and clicked create and now I will get an email if that Iberia business class award becomes available.
You are only allowed 4 flight alerts on a free account and each day counts as a flight alert. If you want to search this criteria but over a 4 day window, that would count as 4 searches.
Disclaimer
If you haven’t noticed, you will see on these searches that there is an updated date on these searches. The reason for this is because of how PointsYeah works.
What PointsYeah is doing is crawling the various airline websites and doing a ton of searches and saving the results. If they didn’t do this, these searches (especially the Daydream Explorer feature) would take forever because it would have to search each of those websites in real time and crunch that data (the websites would hate that as well, because it would create unnecessary traffic).
They are nice enough to let you know the last time that they searched those flights, because the older the search, the less likely it is to still exist, especially if it’s a particularly good deal. You always need to check the airlines website to see if the deals are still available. In other words, don’t transfer your Chase Ultimate Reward points to Flying Blue before you know that the flight you want to book is still available.
Free Vs Paid Account
Everything that I’ve talked about thus far is part of the free account. Why? Well I use a free account. I find it has all the features that I need right now and that’s just fine with me. However, if you want to have some additional features, you can pay for a subscription.
The main difference between the free and the paid memberships is that you can search for 8 days instead of 4 days on normal searches and you can set up as many as 24 alerts instead of the 4 that are available with the free version. The price of the paid membership is only around $8 per month, so if you find the additional alerts or the expanded date range useful, it might be worth the money.
Why I love PointsYeah
I always find it funny when people say they have a bucket list of places they want to go. The reason for that is that if I actually sat down and wrote a bucket list, it would be unbelievably long. I could probably think of at least 2 dozen places it Italy that would make that list. The biggest problem with a list like that is that the more I travel, the longer the list gets. As we visit places, we always hear about other places that we hadn’t heard of and that list just keeps growing.
What PointsYeah does for people like me, is to allow those of us with flexible places and dates, to dream a little better. Maybe you didn’t know that for 37,500 American Airlines miles and $44 you can fly from Chicago to New Zealand. Well you do now, and it only took a quick search to find out.
You might never have thought you could do that trip, but now you know whether it’s possible or not, and you did it without making multiple searches on multiple websites. Just one search gets it done. PointsYeah is an absolute gamechanger for me, I love it.
We’re inching closer every day to our spring break Costa Rican adventure. Honestly, this is a trip that I probably wouldn’t have dared to do a year ago. When we first started to do international travel (it’s only been a year – we’re still newbies!), every logistical step in the process was something that we needed to examine. How long will we be waiting in customs? Is that layover long enough? How do the trains/busses/taxis work from the airport? Will we be understood if we don’t speak the local language well? Each trip that we take gives us a little more confidence in the process and our abilities to handle those logistical issues.
The biggest logistical hurdle this time is driving a rental car in a foreign country, especially Costa Rica. There are horror stories all over the internet about scams at the rental car counter. Also, driving habits apparently are a little different in Costa Rica and the roads sound like they will be questionable off the major highways.
It’s easier for us to mentally prepare ourselves for what could be stressful driving and perhaps a difficult time at the rental car facility when we don’t have to mentally prepare ourselves for the logistics of flying. I feel like there are parts of travel that we’ve started to understand pretty well and it opens up my mental energy for new experiences. This is really important when you don’t want the negatives of travel to overwhelm what I’m anticipating to be an amazing experience with waterfalls, beaches and volcanoes in Costa Rica.
Hold!!!
Jenn and I have been planning a trip for us with her parents and our good friends who live in Nashville. The biggest logistical issue for this trip was landing around the same time in Rome with us using 3 different flight itineraries. That part has been done, but we’ve only managed to book the flights to Italy, not the return flights.
However, every time I try to bring up the fact that maybe we should book the return trip, Jenn turns into Kirstin Bell from the Carvana commercial and just tells me “HOLD!” I think she’s waiting on the perfect flight home that costs something like 1,000 points in business class with a stopover in Madrid. I’m sure we’ll find something decent since it is off-peak from Europe, but she’s making me nervous. I guess there are worse things in life than getting stranded in Italy.
The redemption turned out to be pretty good. The price of a comparable flight was $658 (with the $50 stopover fee included), so the 20,000 points we used reduced the cost of the flight by $518 each, meaning we got nearly 2.6 cents per point for the Chase Ultimate Reward points which are normally valued at 2 cents per point. You gotta love how great the deals have been on Flying Blue lately.
We also double booked some lodging in Costa Rica. We kept going over the logistics of landing at the Guanacaste Airport at a little past noon, going through passport control and customs, then renting a car and driving more than 3 hours to Grecia, outside of San Jose and trying to do this before dark. It gets dark in Costa Rica around 5:30 and it’s not recommended for people who aren’t familiar with the roads there to drive after dark, so we decided that maybe we should get a hotel closer to the airport and make the big drive the next day.
We ended up booking a local hotel in Playa Hermosa, which is less than 30 minutes from the airport. We booked it through Capital One travel for a little over 16,000 Capital One miles. These are redeemed at exactly 1 cent per point, which isn’t a fantastic redemption of Capital One miles, but it served it’s purpose and now we will get a little beach time while in Costa Rica, when we hadn’t planned to spend any time near the coast. We probably could have shortened our stay at the Airbnb by the day that we are in Playa Hermosa, but it feels wrong this late to change our reservation, and frankly it was only $75 per night at the Airbnb. This also ensures that we can check in at any time the next day.
A Shiny New Amex Gold Card
American Express Membership Rewards is a beloved program in the points and miles space. It has a ton of great transfer partners and has amazing opportunities to accumulate a massive amounts of Membership Rewards points very quickly with enormous signup bonuses, great bonus spend categories and other Amex offers. Up until now, I’ve avoided Amex because their cards tend to have high annual fees.
I applied for and was accepted for the American Express Gold Card. It has an annual fee of $250 and earns 4x on dining, 4x on groceries, and 3x on flights booked through Amex travel or directly through the airline. It also has $120 Uber Cash and $120 Dining Credit every month which is good at a handful of restaurants or Grubhub (so it’ll get used on Grubhub, if at all). Those credits are doled out monthly so it’s really $10 per month for Uber and $10 per month for Grubhub.
I applied with the bonus offer of 75,000 membership reward points and a 20% rebate on dining up to $250 back. The 75,000 membership reward points are awarded if I spend $6,000 in 6 months. There was also an offer for 90,000 membership rewards points without the 20% rebate, but I thought this was a way to get an Amex Gold card for essentially no annual fee, since spending $1,250 on dining for the $250 rebate is practically automatic for us and is equal to the $250 annual fee.
Anyway, On to the Point Check!
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Citibusiness AAdvantage
$1,139
1,139
$17.65
1.0
1.5%
Capital One Venture
$706
1437
$26.74
2.0
4.0%
Wyndham Business Earner Card
$581
3,069
$33.76
5.3
5.8%
Citi Custom Cash
$540
2,539
$45.70
4.7
8.7%
Ink Cash
$531
2,639
$54.10
5.0
10.2%
Citi Premier
$491
935
$16.83
1.9
3.4%
Marriott Bonvoy
$198
995
$8.36
5.0
4.2%
Total
$4,184
12,753
$202.99
3.0
4.9%
This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus
We still haven’t managed to stop accidentally spending on our Citibusiness cards. They are practically useless for normal spend, and the problem is that when we are done with a bonus, we forget to remove them from all of the places where we’ve set up default payments. The most painful one here was when we ordered a dishwasher through Home Depot’s website and somehow managed to use that card instead of a card we are working on a bonus for. $700 worth of spending that could’ve gone toward a bonus, dammit.
Our spending was quite elevated this month because of the dishwasher and we also bought a new couch since the kids and the dog had managed to slowly kill the old one. Aside from the non-bonus spending in the chart above, Jenn spent a little less than $3,400 on her US Bank Altitude Business Connect card and earned a little more than $43 in cash back.
This left us with a grand total of 257,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points, 115,500 American Airlines miles, 75,100 Capital One Venture miles, 38,400 Citi Thank You points, 31,800 Marriott Bonvoy points, 24,900 United miles, 6,900 Hyatt points, 5,100 Delta miles, and $700 in cash back. According to the valuations determined by the Points Guy, these points are worth a grand total of a little less than $10,800.
We’re planning a trip to Italy for the fall with friends and Jenn’s parents. This requires a little bit of coordination between the parties, especially since we are all booking with different methods. Remarkably, even though Jenn’s parents and our friends were flying from different airports, the last leg of their journey is on the same Delta flight from Atlanta to Rome. Now it was up to us to try to match that time to land.
The best thing to do would’ve been to use Delta and get on the same flight, but we don’t have a lot of Delta Skymiles and their only transfer partner is American Express Membership Rewards and we don’t have any Amex points. Delta was not going to work but Air France (Flying Blue) had a flight landing just 10 minutes after the Delta flight.
The Problem with Short Layovers
Unfortunately, that had an hour and 25 minute layover in Paris (CDG), and that seemed pretty risky considering we would have to go through passport control, then security, and then find our gate in a busy airport I’m not familiar with. I would put the chances of success at about 50/50. Not good enough for me – especially with Jenn’s luck (she has had delays of 2 hours, 5 hours and 8 hours respectively on her last three flights)
A little off topic here, but why in the hell do airlines offer these tight layovers? You know you all suck at getting your flights in the air on time. I once sat on the tarmac for half an hour watching two mechanics trying to fix a seat that wouldn’t recline – on a 2 hour flight. Suck it up buttercup, I got places to go and your inability to move your seat 3 inches back is not my problem. Strap yourself in and lets go!
Sorry about the rant – the other option was to arrive in Rome 3 hours later, around 3 PM. Not only would that have been a massive inconvenience for our fellow travelers, but our plan was to take a train to Florence on the first day, and when I added up all the time to get through passport control, take the commuter line to Rome Termini, transfer, then take a train from Rome to Florence, we would be getting in very late. Assuming we all only sleep a little on the plane, we might be dragging our suitcases through Florence trying to find our Airbnb with the mental acuity of a toddler on Benadryl.
The better option was to go a day early, but with timing of the flights and the fact that FCO really isn’t that close to Rome, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to enjoy the extra day in Rome, we probably would just end up sitting in a hotel room. But what if we stayed in Paris or Amsterdam on the way, instead?
Flying Blue Free Stopovers to the Rescue
A quick google search pulled up this article by One Mile at a Time that points out that indeed, Flying Blue offers free layovers. We pieced together an itinerary that flew KLM from Chicago landing in Amsterdam at 7:10 AM and a second flight that leaves Amsterdam 26 hours later which lands in Rome a mere 20 minutes after our companions. The nice thing is that since we will go through passport control in Amsterdam, and they will be going through in Rome, theoretically we should be ready to leave the airport in Rome around the same time.
Perfect, now we just had to call, and by we, I mean Jenn since the points were in her account. She wasn’t happy about that.
She was on hold for about an hour, but when she got on, the agent understood what Jenn was trying to do, and got it all booked. The process on the phone wasn’t exactly quick, but she was probably off the phone in about 15 minutes after the agent picked up.
Free Stopovers Aren’t Exactly Free
When Jenn got off the phone, she said that the taxes were higher than we expected. We looked and sure enough, the taxes were $139.70 per ticket instead of the $85.90 that is listed online. The difference worked out to be exactly 50 Euros. So it appears that the “Free Layover” is going to cost 50 Euros per ticket, unless it’s 100 Euros per call.
They do have the fact that higher issuing fees do occur by phone, but when you click on the link for an explanation, you get a dead link. So my assumption is that it costs 50 Euros per ticket, but I don’t know for sure.
Booking Stopover Online isn’t Possible, Yet
Currently there isn’t a way to book with a stopover on the website. I would assume that they might add that in the future, but for now it’s by phone only. This means that you are going to have to do a considerable amount of research on their website to pick out the flight segments that you want and then communicate this effectively to an agent who is most likely in France or the Netherlands. This can lead to confusion, which Jenn found out, when she gave my birthdate to the agent the American way, month-day-year, and the agent entered the birthdate the European way, day-month-year.
It also means that until they can add a free stopover feature to their website, you will be paying the fees associated with making an award flight redemption over the phone. My limited experience with how agile tech development is with airline point programs suggest it might take some time before you see that feature on their website. For now, prepare to pay for the stopover.
Which Cities Can you Stopover with Flying Blue?
I assume that these stopovers will only work in their hubs. I doubt that they would let you fly, say Chicago to Paris to Barcelona, then get a free stopover, then Barcelona to Paris to Munich. However, they will allow you to stop in Paris if flying from Chicago to Barcelona when the normal layover would be in Paris. So that will limit any stopovers to just Paris or Amsterdam. The article from One Mile at a Time does indicate that it should work with partner airlines booked through Flying Blue, so there are actually other possibilities besides Amsterdam and Paris, but for the most part, that’s how you would typically use them.
Stopovers can be as short as 24 hours and as long as 1 year. That offers great flexibility, but I imagine that most people are going to use this as a way to visit Paris or Amsterdam for a few days and then move on to another location. With this stopover rule, you could pretty easily put together an itinerary where you go to Amsterdam for a few days on a flight from the US, move on to another European city for a few days and stop in Paris for a few days on the way back. That’s a pretty easy way to get a sampler platter of Europe and the prices could be around 40,000 points (transferable from Citi, Amex, Chase, Capital One and Bilt), around $240 for taxes and $100 for booking by phone. That’s not too shabby.
Making Lemonade out of Lemons
For us, it was a way to make lemonade out of lemons. We didn’t want to land in Rome that late on the same day as our fellow travelers, and getting in at 3 PM the day before left us with not a lot of time to enjoy Rome. However, 26 hours in Amsterdam with the opportunity to adjust our sleep to the new time zone, sign me up. We’ll get to walk along the canals and have dinner in downtown Amsterdam and still make it into Rome right at the right time. That’s some damn good lemonade.
Gamla Stan dates back to the 13th Century and was founded when leaders from Sigtuna were having issues with armed bandits and were looking for a more defensible capital. Since the area is a series of islands and islands are easier to defend, it was a great place to build a capital. Now, without those pesky marauding bands of raiders, it makes for a great place to shop, eat and have a drink.
St George and the Dragon Statue commemorating the slaying of a dragon who was extorting villagers. I’m skeptical about the historical accuracy of this story.
Gamla Stan is the old town of Stockholm and consists of the islands of Stadtsholden, Riddarholmen, Helgeandsholmen and Stromsborg. Stadtsholden is the main island and the one that most people associate with Gamla Stan.
A look down Osterlanggatan, a road built on the location of the original east wall of the city.
On our first full day in Stockholm, we made it to the old town fairly early. The streets were mostly empty and some of the shops were still closed, which gave us a fairly calm walk to start the day. We popped in a couple of shops and made our way through town to find a cup of coffee. We managed to find that at Sundberg’s Konditori. We enjoyed the coffee sitting out in the cobblestone plaza. While we were drinking our coffee, however, the streets went from being fairly empty to being pretty packed.
A look down a side street at the belltower on the Stockholm Cathedral, also known as the Great Church.
Quite a few tour groups showed up, who traveled in packs of a dozen or two and tended to stretch all the way across the narrower roads. Tourists and shoppers started to pop up everywhere, but this was only a Thursday, so it probably could’ve been busier.
A typical building in the old town.
For the next couple of hours, we checked out a lot of shops while making our way down the crowded cobblestone streets. There were quite a few kitschy shops selling Swedish keepsakes scattered amongst art galleries and jewelry stores. After a while, we decided to go looking for a beer.
Swedish Attitudes towards drinking are A Bit Conservative
I mention this because as we were looking around for a beer, I noticed that there didn’t seem to be any Swedish bars, Swedish beers, or frankly any kind authentic Swedish alcohol anywhere. Most of the bars we came across were English, Irish or American, so we decided to stop in at Wirstrom’s Pub, an Irish Pub.
The Cellar Pubs of Stockholm
Wirstrom’s had a pretty nice selection of beers and Jenn ended up getting a nice Belgian Dubbel and I had a English Ale. They were showing a soccer game, and the majority of the clientele were pretty laser focused on that. We were admiring the building, which was lovely and has a really interesting basement where you can have a beer in an old cellar.
Belgian Dubbel at Wirstrom’s
This, as it turns out, was not unique to Wirstrom’s. We went to O’Connell’s Irish Pub for lunch where I think everyone but Emma got Fish and Chips. The food was great and I developed a love for mushy peas there, but they also had cellar with a bar in it. That bar wasn’t open at the time, but I got the impression that they use it at night when the bars fill up.
Staircase to Kallerbyn.
Later on we came across another cellar pub named Kallerbyn. It looked very nice, but we didn’t stick around very long. I believe we picked up a to go coffee there and they let us walk around.
Kallerbyn seating
I think if we kept looking, we could’ve found more, It might be fun to do a cellar pub crawl in Stockholm. I mean, fun for me, Jenn couldn’t get out of these cellars fast enough, for some reason they creeped her out.
Narrow Roads and Fika
A lot of our time in Gamla Stan was spent wandering the narrow roads and admiring the architecture. The old stone roads were mostly car free, which made the walks fairly carefree and enjoyable. It was crowded but not so much as to be unbearable.
Riddarholm Church grabbed my attention right away when we approached the old town. I was fascinated by the beautiful iron spire on top of the belltower.
The church began it’s life as a monastery in the late 13th century. The church itself began to be built almost immediately after the monastery was opened. It became a popular place for Swedish royalty to be buried and there are 17 regents buried in the church. When the protestant reformation happened, the monastery was vacated and the church became a Lutheran church which stopped using the church in 1809. In 1835, a lightning strike destroyed the original spire and was replaced by the beautiful and unique iron spire.
Currently the church is known for being the burial church of the kings, even though Swedish Royalty stopped using the church for burials in 1950.
Riddarholmen Church looks remarkably well preserved.
Personally, I was struck by the contrast of the traditional 13th Century gothic church design mixed with a much more modern iron spire. However, knowing that by the time the iron spire had been added it was no longer being used as a church, that somehow made a little more sense to me. It’s absolutely unique and gorgeous, but unfortunately, we didn’t have tickets, or frankly a lot of time to visit, so we walked around the outside of the church, admired it’s beauty and left.
Reasons to Return to Gamla Stan
There were so many things that we didn’t really make time for in Gamla Stan. There is the Nobel Prize museum and the Royal Palace as well as Parliament. There are a couple of beautiful cathedrals to tour, the house of Nobility and the Bonde Palace. If you really wanted to explore the area to its fullest, I think you would need to devote at least 3 days to it, maybe more. We didn’t have enough time for all of that, but that’s okay with me, since that just gives us an excuse to return and get more of those amazing Swedish cinnamon rolls.
We finally passed our previous all-time high point total of around $10,600 in value. This came primarily from earning a sign up bonus from my Citibusiness AAdvantage Platinum Select card. It offered a 65,000 point bonus for spending $4,000 in the first 3 months and I met the required spend this month. Jenn actually did the required spending on her Barclays American Airlines Aviator Red card which will earn her a 75,000 point bonus as soon as Barclays processes it. We’re actually waiting on that because we plan to book airline tickets to Costa Rica for spring break and the little delay from Barclays is annoying.
A Second Citibusiness AAdvantage Platinum Select Card
Jenn applied for the exact same card I just completed the minimum spend on – the Citibusiness AAdvantage Platinum Select card. She, however, got a better signup bonus than I did. She will receive a 75,000 AAdvantage mile bonus when she spends $6,000 in the first 6 months of having the card.
As I pointed out in the post when I applied for the card, it has a $99 annual fee which is waived for the first year. Miles earning on this card is pretty weak, in that it is 1x on most purchases, and 2x on American Airlines purchases, gas, telecommunications merchants, car rental services and cable and satellite providers. It does provide a free checked bag and priority boarding.
There is a $99 domestic companion certificate that you can earn when you spend $30,000 on the card, but seriously don’t do that. There has to be better ways of getting a cheap companion flight than that, with the only exception of maybe if you spend $30,000 on American Airlines flights.
Getting Bailed out of a Mistake
We had a hotel stay booked with Marriott that Jenn didn’t realize she booked with a non-refundable rate. When you use the Bonvoy app to book a room, there are multiple tabs for you to choose from. The prepaid option is non-refundable, and while they do have that written on there, it’s not exactly jumping out at you.
Jenn had been so used to booking things on points (which are almost always refundable, especially well in advance), that it didn’t really occur to her that the room was non-refundable. She canceled the room almost a month in advance, and after a while I asked her why they hadn’t refunded the money. She called the hotel, only to find out the room was non-refundable, but she was persistent and asked to talk to a manager, who was unavailable, of course. She called back the next day and tried again, with no luck and finally we kind of accepted the fact that there would be no refund. However, once the date for the hotel stay passed, the room was refunded to us. They never called back to let us know, they just refunded it. I guess this just goes to show that sometimes it never hurts to ask. Also, kudos to Marriott and the hotel itself, they absolutely were under no obligation to do so. That being said, it was smart of them because they will probably get more of our business now, because they were gracious in helping us fix our mistake. In the future, we will make sure to not use the non-refundable option.
Anyway, On to the Point Check
Card Used
Spend
Points Earned
Point Value
Points Per $
Return on Spend
Citi Premier
$1,445
2,280
$41.04
1.6
2.8%
Capital One Venture
$1,077
2,154
$39.85
2.0
3.7%
Chase Ink Cash
$518
2,570
$52.69
5.0
10.2%
World of Hyatt
$429
2,144
$36.45
5.0
8.5%
Chase Ink Unlimited
$395
592
$12.14
1.5
3.1%
Wyndham Business Earner
$254
729
$14.94
2.9
3.2%
Delta Business Gold
$107
107
$1.61
1.0
1.5%
Total
$4,225
10,576
$197.10
2.5
4.7%
This month was a little disappointing in that the return on spend on our other cards dipped under 5% and I’m really trying to keep that up above the 5% mark. One of the big reasons for that, however, was the fact that my daughter’s car had about $800 of repair costs, and while that can be charged, there isn’t exactly a bonus category for it. We probably should have used the Capital One Venture card, since it is 2x everywhere, but Emma is an authorized user on the Citi Premier card and that’s what she used, for a disappointing 1x instead. Oh well. We were able to get 5x on Amazon through a World of Hyatt promo, which is nice but somehow I misunderstood the Wyndham Business Earner categories and moved our insurance there, thinking I would get 5x and it absolutely wasn’t, just a lowsy 1x on that.
Jenn got an electric car as well, which has cut our fuel consumption by about 75%. That is awesome, but I’m missing the massive amounts of Wyndham points we earned at 8x on gas.
Aside from the spending not devoted to a bonus, I spent almost $1,800 on my Citibusiness AAdvantage Platinum Select card and earned almost 1,800 AAdvantage miles and the 65,000 point bonus. Jenn spent around $1,000 on her Citibusiness AAdvantage Platinum Select card and earned around 1,000 AAdvantage miles.
All of this left us with a month-end total of 289,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points, 88,400 Capital One Venture miles, 77,000 American Airlines miles, 48,300 Marriott Bonvoy points, 29,800 Citi Thank You points, 24,600 United Miles, 15,000 Delta miles, 3,700 Hyatt points, and $974 in cash back. If you use valuations by the Points Guy, the total value of all of these points is $11,280.
There is debate on this, but the general consensus is that around 600 AD, Italians who were fleeing attacks from Lombard invaders moved out onto the islands of Venice because they could defend themselves better on the islands. The islands were marshy and difficult to build on, but much easier to defend than being on the mainland. In order to prevent anything that was built on the marsh from predictably sinking, the Venetians drove millions of wooden posts into the marsh. These posts compacted the mud. The mud keeps the posts from decomposing and the combination of the mud and posts makes a solid foundation on which to build. Strip the City does a great job demonstrating how this worked in the video below.
Venice Becomes a Trade Empire
For much of the time between the 9th Century and the 16th Century, Venice was uniquely positioned to take advantage of trade routes. Venice had access to Constantinople as well as Alexandria by ship and was able to unload goods onto the European mainland. This allowed them to sell goods throughout Europe. Venice built a powerful navy in order to protect their merchants from pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. This turned Venice into a vital link between the spice and silk trade of Asia and Medieval Europe where those goods were so valuable. The Smithsonian Magazine has a great article which goes into greater depth on this subject.
Image provided by the Smithsonian Magazine
Wealth Produces Art
One thing that always seems to be the case throughout history, is that where there is great wealth, there is great art. The vast trading empire of Venice was creating an amazing amount of wealth amongst its merchants. That wealth created a market for artwork, since having great artwork is generally a way that many wealthy people demonstrate that they are wealthy and successful. There are a number of famous renaissance artists from Venice, including Giovanni Bellini, Vittore Carpaccio, Giorgione, and Titian.
Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti
We typically think of painting when we think of art. But art is evident throughout Venice. You see it in the architecture, the stonework and the ironwork on buildings. You see it in the statues and even in the beauty of the gondolas that seem to glide through the canals.
Gondolas take around 6 months to build and cost around 40,000 Euro.
The Architecture of Venice
As was just about everything in Venice, the architecture of Venice was influenced by its trading partners. Because Venice was trading with people throughout Europe and into the Byzantine Empire, a new form of architecture emerged in Venice. It is known as Venetian Gothic and it is found throughout Venice and has elements of Gothic architecture such as pointed arches, rib vaults and tracery as well as elements of Byzantine architecture such as the use of domes and veneers. These elements created a unique style that can be seen throughout Venice.
The domes at St Mark’s Basilica are examples of Byzantine influence in Venetian architecture
The vast majority of buildings are obviously not as adorned as St. Mark’s Basilica, but even the typical homes in Venice have a certain flair to them. There are a number of Juliet balconies, windows featuring tracing and pointed arches, and a lot of lovely doors. There are also window boxes with flowers everywhere. It all leads to a style that is positively Venetian.
The Doors of Venice
One of my favorite things about Venice is the doors. They all seem to be unique to the buildings. A lot of them are wooden and very worn with time. Often you see them like in the below picture, with beautiful stonework and ironwork surrounding the doorframe.
Other times, you see doors which are not quite as worn, but instead are truly unique pieces of art, like this beautiful metal door. This door also has beautiful stonework surrounding it as well as some really interesting brickwork.
Below is another example of great stonework and brickwork surrounding the door. Also, this door is a gorgeous piece of woodwork. Another thing I’ve noticed about Venetian doors is that not always is the lock and door pull where you would expect them which is interesting. Venetian doors also tend to all have letter slots.
Beautiful Door with Inscription over it meaning “Year of our Lord 1904″
Venetian Statues
If you walk around enough in Venice, you will undoubtably come across a few statues. Many of the campos in Venice feature a statue dedicated to a historical figure of Venice. From the limited amount of time I spent in Venice, it seemed that the majority of these statues were fairly recent, being from the 19th Century or newer. However, in my opinion, they fit in nicely to their surroundings, even if they are recent additions to the plazas they inhabit.
The Monument to Daniele Manin was erected in 1875 and was sculpted by Luigi Borro.
The above statue is a bronze statue of Daniele Manin, who was born in Venice and an important leader who helped to reunify Italy. It is the featured statue in Campo Manin, obviously named for the Daniele Manin.
Monument to Niccoló Tommaseo built in 1882 by Francesco Barzaghi
The statue above, is a built out of Carrara marble. It was a monument built to Niccoló Tommaseo who was known as a scholar and an Italian patriot. This particular statue has a funny nickname, because as the sculptor was carving the statue, it began to have structural issues. In order to keep it from falling over, he carved a stack of books for Niccoló to lean on. The problem is that the stack of books looks like it’s flowing from under his overcoat, which has earned the statue the nickname “book shitter”.
The Bridges of Venice
Virtually all bridges in Venice are built with the same basic shape. The strength is created by an archway over the canal, while a walkway is a set of stairs up and a set of stairs down. Many of the bridges, especially the ones that are built over smaller canals are built with stone and brick.
Both of these bridges are typical of Venetian bridges. Arched at the bottom and stairs on top.
The bridges that are built over the Grand Canal are longer and require a more modern structural design. The most modern example is the Constitution Bridge that was opened in 2008 and is unique in Venice for it’s steel and glass construction and modern design.
Artistic Touches
There is a certain flair to much of what you run across in Venice, you’ll see it in door frames, window frames, as well as architectural sculptures. You’ll also see it in the detail of the three flagpoles in the Piazza San Marco. The bronze bases were sculpted by Alessandro Leopardi in 1505. The flagpoles are spaced out in front of the St. Marks Basilica and are strikingly beautiful.
St Mark’s Clocktower is also a great example of the style of Venice. It’s an beautiful white stone structure, with the Lion of St Mark near the top. Below that is the Virgin with Child and then the clockface itself. This clocktower was built as a replacement for an older clocktower in the late 15th Century.
St Mark’s Clocktower
St. Mark’s Basilica itself takes the details to extremes. There are details everywhere. Just one small section of the basilica demonstrates the details. There are multiple columns and a stone archway. The door itself has intricate ironwork while the head of the doorframe is an intricate Byzantine design. The most stunning part, however is the mosaic half-dome which depicts the moment that St Mark’s body was carried into the Basilica. It is adorned in 24 carat gold leaf. Seemingly every inch of the Basilica is covered in detail like this.
This mosaic half dome over a door to St Mark’s Basilica is stunning.
Ironwork of Venice
Venice has some amazing Ironwork that can be found around the city. Mostly you will see it in gates, fences and balconies, but you will also see it on lamp posts.
Ironwork on the doors as well as on lamps are everywhere in Venice
The most typical places that you see this ironwork is as window grills or as door protections. I’m sure that the original purpose of this was for security, however they do tend to be very beautiful and add a certain flair to an already beautiful city.
Window Grille from our AirBnB looking out to a courtyard
The Canals of Venice
Canals aren’t necessarily art themselves, but in reality they are the parts of Venice that weren’t forced to become solid ground. They are, in a sense, the absence of development. But they are also the main thoroughfares that are the lifeblood of Venice. They are the roads that deliver the goods that feed the city as well as transport citizens and tourists alike around the city.
The canals are quintessentially Venice and are usually the first things that people think of when they picture the city. They are more a result of public works, much as any street in the world is, but there is just something uniquely beautiful about these canals. I believe that beauty is a result of how well the canals fit in with their surroundings.
Centuries of Artisans create a Single Masterpiece
In the end, what Venice has become is the result of centuries of hard work by thousands upon thousands of hard working Venetian citizens. Great cities take time to evolve. Venice was a city built in the marsh because of the need for security of its citizens. It developed slowly but steadily into a trading empire and it’s citizens became wealthy. As the city developed, they continued to make improvement after improvement, whether it be public works projects like bridges and canals, architectural and building projects, or artisan projects like statues, doors and ironwork.
In the end what is left is a single masterpiece that people from around the world visit and admire. It is one of the world’s great cities and should be experienced at least once in a lifetime.
Newby to Expert Traveler 