We arrived in DC on a Saturday evening after a long Southwest Airlines flight from Ontario, California. My parents had arrived from India a couple of hours earlier. Since we were all pretty tired by now, we headed straight for the hotel. We were staying at the Fairfield Inn & Suites, Dulles Airport. Day 1: After getting up early in the morning and having complimentary breakfast at the hotel, me and Karen went to the Dulles Airport to pick up our rental car. This was the only rental booked without points for this trip. We had booked an intermediate car …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoSeptember 2013: Washington DC Trip Report
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoSeptember 2013: DC/NYC/Niagara Trip – Introduction
During the Labor Day week Me and Karen took time off of work and went on a trip covering Washington DC, New York and Niagara Falls. My parents were flying in from India and met us in Washington DC. Itinerary for the trip: Day 1: Ontario – Washington DC (Southwest Airlines) Day 2: Washington DC Sightseeing (Washington Monument, WW2 Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Capitol Building) Day 3: Washington DC Sightseeing (Museum of Natural History, Holocaust Museum) Day 4: Amtrak from Washington Union Station – New York Penn Station. NYC sightseeing (Top of the Rock, Times …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoAugust 2013: Las Vegas Weekend Trip
During the second weekend of August, we did a quick trip to Las Vegas. We had been wanting to see Celine Dion’s performance at the Colosseum in Caesar’s Palace Hotel for a while as we are both big fan of hers. The opportunity presented itself when I had about $165 of Southwest vouchers expiring by September and had to be used before that. Normally we would drive to Las Vegas as its only about 4 hours from our home but we flew instead. Our Itinerary: Fly ONT-LAS on Southwest Airlines Stay 2 nights at the Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites, …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoJuly 2013: Independence Day Weekend Florida Trip – Day 3
This was our last day of vacation and we wanted to spend the whole time………drumroll……. pretty much at the beach :). We wanted to check out the Hollywood Beach and the famous Boardwalk. We packed our lunches and icebox and drove there just past 11 AM. We forgot that it was a Saturday and the parking lot was already starting to get full. Parking entry fee is $8 for the day. The beach was pretty crowded by the time we got there. We were there to spend our day in the water and without much ado, jumped right in. The …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoJuly 2013: Independence Day Weekend Florida Trip – Day 2
We woke up early and decided to head out for the Keys after breakfast. The rental car agent had told us that it will take us about 5-6 hours to drive down to Key West. Since we were staying the next two nights in Fort Lauderdale, we didn’t know if we would go all the way there because the round-trip drive alone would take the whole day. We decided to get to some point midway, spend the day and return back. The drive is pretty interesting. You get through many stretches of single lane road where there is water on …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoJuly 2013: Independence Day Weekend Florida Trip – Day 1
We arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport just before 9 AM after an American Airlines non-stop red-eye flight from Los Angeles. I had 2 AVIS Free-rental-day paper certificates and only after arrival at the airport did I realize that I had left them at home. Bummer !! I knew that the rental rates were pretty expensive here, but remembered seeing better rates at carrentalsavers.com compared to Kayak/Southwest/Hotwire and all the individual car rental sites. So using the phone, I booked a 2 day rental with Budget through that website. After arrival at the Budget Fastbreak counter, we got a complimentary upgrade …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoJuly 2013: Independence Day Weekend Florida Trip – Introduction
When life gives you lemons, make some hard lemonade !! We had originally planned on a trip to the Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands for the July 4th weekend this year. I was planning on staying at the Comfort Suites, Seven Mile Beach using Choice Privileges Points. Since the booking window for award stay in Caribbean properties for US residents opens 90 days out, by the time the booking window opened, the award flight availability using British Airways Avios points (MIA – GCM route operated by American Airlines) had completely vanished. That meant that we were going to spend our weekend …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoJune 2013 – San Diego Zoo Safari Park Trip Report
Last month we went on a day trip to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. We had never been to this safari park but had heard good reviews about it. There was an Amazon-Local deal where the regular entry tickets of 44$ were on sale for 20$. Obviously Karen jumped on the deal right away and got 3 tickets for us and her sister Danny. The park is near Escondido, which is around 30 miles from San Diego. The park opens at 9 AM and closes at 5 PM – 7 PM depending on the time of the year. After entering the …
Destination Trip Reports North America US, Canada, MexicoMay 2013: Portland Trip Report
During the Memorial Day weekend, we went on a quick getaway trip to Portland. We wanted to do some hiking, seeing waterfalls, simple outdoors stuff. We flew on Southwest from Ontario to Oakland and then to Portland. For the first time, I checked in online exactly 24 hours early and we were able to get letter A boarding number. I was excited to get exit row seating without paying for Early Bird check-in. Day 1: We reached PDX around 10:30 AM and after getting our rental car from Budget, we were on our way. First up on our list of …
Asia Destination Trip ReportsJanuary 2013: Maldives Trip Report – Day 4
Since this was the last day of our stay at the resort, we wanted to make the most of it. Because our flight left at around 11 PM, the front desk notified us that we had complimentary late checkout till 2 PM and after that we could leave our luggage at the reception and leave on the last outbound speedboat at 8 PM. We went to the beach early to spend at least 3-4 hours swimming. Pretty soon it was lunchtime. We went back to our room and took a shower and then headed to the Bokkuraa Club. After lunch, …
Asia Destination Trip ReportsJanuary 2013: Maldives Trip Report – Day 3
On Day 3, we woke up early and had a quick breakfast. Karen had signed up for a complimentary snorkeling trip at the house reef . The trip starts at 9:30 AM and snorkeling gear rent is free for the trip. There were about 8 people on the boat plus the 3 man crew and 1 instructor. It takes only about 10 minutes to get to the house reef which is somewhere between the Kandooma resort and the Cocoa resort. The snorkeling trip lasted about 2 hours and then we were back on the island. We decided to walk some …
Asia Destination Trip ReportsJanuary 2013: Maldives Trip Report – Day 2
We woke up early and Karen decided to make some freshly brewed coffee using the french press in the room. The resort is pretty expensive when it comes to food. We brought some breakfast snacks like cake, dry indian sweets, chips, crackers for breakfast supplies for the 4 days we were here. We only ate at the restaurants for lunch and dinner. After breakfast we decided to walk some more around the island. After walking and taking lots of pictures for about 2 hours we decided to go to the poolside. Karen had signed up for a complimentary basic …
Asia Destination Trip ReportsJanuary 2013: Maldives Trip Report – Day 1
We arrived at the resort by speedboat from Male around noon. After an expedited check-in we were shown our sea-view beach house. After freshening up we decided to do a quick tour around the island. You can walk around the entire island in about 20 minutes. Since we are after all in the tropics, pretty soon we were dying to get into the water to cool off. The water is warm and clear with almost no waves in the swimming areas. After spending about an hour or two (who counts time during vacation? :)) we decided to move to the pool. After …