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I’ve been excited to tell you the details of our planned Europe trip for a while now. But I wanted to wait until we had the framework all planned out.
We now have 38 nights of fun booked for this fall. This includes flights, lodging, cruises, and a first-class train ride.
Now that everything’s in place, I did the math on what this would have cost if we had just booked everything through normal channels (Priceline, Booking.com, airline and cruise websites, etc.)…
$24,985.85!
Holy schnikes! My jaw dropped seeing this number. But the other reason I was so shocked was seeing just how little we’ve paid for 38 nights in Europe. Are you ready for this?
$3,205.25!!
Between casino deals and credit card points, we saved a whopping $21,780.60 over what it would have cost otherwise. I’m completely in awe. I knew we were doing well with this trip, but I had no idea it was this good.
If you dream of traveling more but money is a constraining factor in that dream, I hope you understand the tremendous value of points and miles. If you already pay off your credit card bills in full every month, the opportunity to gain ridiculous amounts of free or heavily discounted travel on your regular spending is so much easier than you might think.
The Details and Cost of Our 38-Night Europe Trip
Our Europe trip is this fall and it’s truly exciting – not only because of how little it’s costing us but also because it’s the first time we’ll be visiting the continent.
25 of our days are being used up by two different cruises visiting various ports of call. Outside of the cruises and our travel days, we’re left with 11 days to play with.
At first, we planned to see and do it all. We were anticipating going everywhere (all over Italy, Spain, France, and Switzerland), and doing everything. We were excited and our vision was too steep for our time allotted. But eventually, I called a timeout, we discussed it, and we decided that less would be more. That’s worked well and we’re very happy with our plans now.
We’ve decided to spend our time outside of the cruises in a few cities in Italy and a couple of cities in Spain. This will allow us to soak things in rather than rushing around and spending all our time being on the move and heading to “the next thing.”
Here’s a peek at our general travel plans (I’m keeping it a little broad so we don’t end up with any stalkers on the trip! 😉 ):
| Nights | Event | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Flight from Cleveland to Boston | Southwest, Wanna Get Away |
| 1 | Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts | TownePlace Suites Studio, 1 King, Sofa bed |
| 1 | Flight from Boston to Rome | TAP Portgual, Business Class |
| 4 | Hotel in Rome, Italy | Comfort Hotel Bolivar, 3 Single Beds; Walking distance to the Colosseum |
| 11 | Europe/Mediterranean Cruise (Italy, Greece, Turkey, Spain) | Princess, Deluxe Balcony |
| 1 | Hotel in Barcelona, Spain | Hotel Porta Fira, Twin Room with Extra Bed |
| 0 | Train from Barcelona to Madrid | Iryo, Infinita Bistró (First class) |
| 2 | Hostel in Madrid, Spain | Latroupe Prado Hostel, Deluxe Quadruple Room (whole room) |
| 0 | Flight from Barcelona to Florence | Vueling, Fly (Economy) |
| 3 | Hotel in Florence, Italy | Wyndham Garden Florence, 1 Queen 1 Sofa room |
| 1 | Hotel in Rome, Italy | The Tribune Hotel, Junior Suite:1 King Bed, Sofa Bed |
| 14 | Transatlantic Cruise (Italy, Spain, Azores, Bahamas, Florida) | Carnival, Balcony |
| 0 | Flight from Tampa to Cleveland | TBD |
That’s one big trip, right? Even with us scaling back on some of our travel, we’re still getting a chance to visit a bunch of cool places!
One thing I left out… the details such as where we’re going at each stop, the day trips we have in mind, and everything else we’re planning on doing. Well, I’m leaving you hanging because this post would be way too long to include all of that here. Instead, I’ll save that for a future write-up. We’re still figuring out all those details anyway.
But just what you see here would have been a whopping total cost of $24,985.85 if we had paid cash for everything. I mean, maybe that’s a fair number for everything we’re doing on this Europe trip, but there’s no way we would have been able to shell out that much money for one trip in a single year. Bear in mind that this is only one trip in our busy year of travel, too – we’re traveling a full third of the year!
Note that this won’t be all the costs we incur on our Europe trip – it’s only the basic outline. Obviously, we’ll have meals, entertainment, gratuities/drinks on the cruises, and some smaller transportation needs. However, we will have free meals for 25 days between the two cruises and we also get free drinks while in the casino of the 14-day cruise (mocktails for me!).
So we’ll have additional costs but it’s a lot more palatable knowing how little we spent on everything else.
The important question is “How did we get the cost down from $24,985.85 to $3,205.25?” There’s no doubt that the power of credit card points and casino offers helped this dream become a reality. Learning some strategic redemption strategies helped as well. Here’s the scoop…
Credit Card Points – The Key to Free Flights & Hotels
Ok, let’s talk about how credit card points made so much of this trip cost almost nothing. Keep in mind that only a small portion of our credit card points are earned through actual airline and hotel travel. Most of the credit card points we have are from credit card sign-up bonuses. And they’ve been enough to cover a lot of our other travel plans as well.
Here’s how it helped for our Europe trip:
| Flight from Cleveland to Boston (3 tickets) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | Southwest, Wanna Get Away |
| Paid with: | Southwest miles and the Companion Pass |
| Existing Points Used: | 19,000 |
| Notes: | Used the Southwest Companion Pass, which saved us the cost for one ticket; If the price drops, we’ll recoup some points, too |
| Would Have Cost: | $507.54 |
| Our Cost: | $16.80 |
| Total Saved: | $490.74 |
| Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts (1 night) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | TownePlace Suites, Studio, 1 King, Sofa bed |
| Paid with: | Chase Ultimate Rewards → Marriott |
| Points Transferred: | 30,000 |
| Point Value Once Transferred: | 45,000 |
| Point Transfer Ratio: | 1.5:1 |
| Existing Points Used: | 0 |
| Total Points Used: | 45,000 |
| Would Have Cost: | $389.83 |
| Our Cost: | 0 |
| Total Saved: | $389.83 |
Damn, hotels are expensive in Boston! And this is on a weekday!
| Flight from Boston to Rome (3 tickets) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | TAP Portugal, Business Class |
| Paid with: | Chase Ultimate Rewards → United |
| Points Transferred: | 188,000 |
| Point Value Once Transferred: | 188,000 |
| Point Transfer Ratio: | 1:1 |
| Existing Points Used: | 76,000 |
| Total Points Used: | 264,000 |
| Notes: | Lay-down seats; Found through PointsYeah; Booked through United |
| Would Have Cost: | $7,985.70 |
| Our Cost: | $78.00 |
| Total Saved: | $7,907.70 |
I struggle with flying long distances – I get really antsy after a few hours. That’s a big reason we haven’t done a Europe trip before – it’s all my fault! So we decided on this trip to fly business class one way with lay-down seats so I could sleep to be more comfortable. As you can see, it’s normally big bucks to do this… and this is just for a one-way flight! On the way back, we’ll take a cruise so no long flight is needed.
As crazy as the flight would have been to pay for using cash, it didn’t break the bank too badly using credit card points. That’s because we utilized the PointsYeah service for the first time… this service is awesome!
Essentially, it finds flights you’re looking for and tells you how to book them the most optimally using your credit card points. Not only that, but it tells you which airline to book the flight through. This might surprise you, but many times it’s ridiculously cheaper to book the exact same flight through a different partner airline.
It’s an odd concept to understand, but most airlines belong to an alliance that helps each member airline offer flights in areas they might not normally serve. That helps them provide a more solid brand and it allows you to book flights to more places around the world through a single airline reservation. Here are the three biggest alliances:
Star Alliance
- United Airlines
- Lufthansa
- Air Canada
- Singapore Airlines
- Thai Airways
- Turkish Airlines
- Air China
- ANA (All Nippon Airways)
- EVA Air
- and a lot of others
SkyTeam
- Delta Air Lines
- Air France
- KLM
- Korean Air
- China Eastern Airlines
- Vietnam Airlines
- Virgin Atlantic
- Scandinavian Airlines (SAS)
- and a lot of others
Oneworld
- American Airlines
- British Airways
- Qantas
- Cathay Pacific
- Japan Airlines
- Alaska Airlines
- Qatar Airways
- and several others
The reason this is important is that sometimes it’s actually much cheaper to book a flight through an alliance partner rather than through the actual airline you’ll be flying. For example, you could book a United Airlines flight to Hawaii using the Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles program at a steep discount over what it would cost you to book that exact flight directly through United.
Figuring out these nuances is something I’m continuing to learn because it can save you big money or credit card points. But PointsYeah does a lot of that heavy lifting for you and tells you the ways to get the best deals. In our case, the deal we found was booking the business class TAP Portugal flight through United instead of through TAP Portugal directly where it was a lot more expensive. That saved us a tremendous number of credit card points!
There are several services like PointsYeah, but PointsYeah does a fantastic job in its free version. It does have a premium version with even more functionality that I’m considering moving to, but right now, the free version has done a great job for us! It’s worth creating an account and trying it out the next time you’re looking to book a flight with points.
As a side note, PointsYeah can help you book hotels with points as well.
| Hotel in Rome, Italy (4 nights) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | Comfort Hotel Bolivar, 3 Single Beds |
| Paid with: | Citi ThankYou Rewards → Choice Hotels |
| Points Transferred: | 40,000 |
| Point Value Once Transferred: | 80,000 |
| Point Transfer Ratio: | 2:1 |
| Existing Points Used: | 0 |
| Total Points Used: | 80,000 |
| Notes: | Walking distance to the Colosseum |
| Would Have Cost: | $2,459.76 |
| Our Cost: | $0.00 |
| Total Saved: | $2,459.76 |
It’s crazy how expensive hotels in Rome can be. This isn’t even a high-end hotel, but it does put us right in the mix and we’ll be able to walk to the Colosseum from where we’ll be staying. We could even walk to the Vatican (though that’s a little bit of a longer walk). If we weren’t using credit card points, there’s no way we’d be able to stay anywhere near the heart of things like this.
| Hotel in Barcelona, Spain (1 night) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | Hotel Porta Fira, Twin Room with Extra Bed |
| Paid with: | Capital One Rewards |
| Existing Points Used: | 15,708 |
| Total Points Used: | 15,708 |
| Would Have Cost: | $158.50 |
| Our Cost: | $0.00 |
| Total Saved: | $158.50 |
| Hostel in Madrid, Spain (2 nights) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | Latroupe Prado Hostel, Deluxe Quadruple Room (whole room) |
| Paid with: | To be reimbursed with Capital One Rewards points |
| Existing Points Used: | 33,600 |
| Notes: | Once the charge is booked after our stay, we’ll reimburse ourselves using Capital One Rewards points |
| Would Have Cost: | $336.00 |
| Our Cost: | $0.00 |
| Total Saved: | $336.00 |
We thought it might be interesting to try dipping our toes into the idea of staying at a hostel. This one is sort of a “tweener” – it’s almost like a high-end hostel. We booked a whole room though – we’re not ready to go shared dormitory style!
| Hotel in Florence, Italy (3 nights) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | Wyndham Garden Florence, 1 Queen 1 Sofa room |
| Paid with: | Capital One Rewards → Wyndham |
| Points Transferred: | 30,000 |
| Point Value Once Transferred: | 30,000 |
| Point Transfer Ratio: | 1:1 |
| Existing Points Used: | 10,500 |
| Total Points Used: | 40,500 |
| Notes: | Was 45k points but got 10% off as a Wyndham Diamond member, which I have just from having the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Card |
| Would Have Cost: | $739.34 |
| Our Cost: | $0.00 |
| Total Saved: | $739.34 |
The whole adventure we went on last spring to get free cruises (which paid off handsomely!) started with us getting the Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Card. Of course, we made sure to get the sign-up bonus in Wyndham Rewards points, but it also gives us 10% off most of our bookings and free upgrades when available at each hotel. This has turned out to be a handy card to have around!
| Hotel in Rome, Italy (1 night) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | The Tribune Hotel, Junior Suite:1 King Bed, Sofa Bed |
| Paid with: | Chase Ultimate Rewards → Hyatt |
| Points Transferred: | 18,000 |
| Point Value Once Transferred: | 32,000 |
| Point Transfer Ratio: | 1.78:1 |
| Would Have Cost: | $635.03 |
| Our Cost: | $0.00 |
| Total Saved: | $635.03 |
This hotel is just for a night to get us back near the cruise port for our next cruise.
Overall, we did pretty darn good with our use of credit card points…
| Would Have Cost: | $13,211.70 |
| Our Cost: | $94.80 |
| Total Saved: | $13,116.90 |
A hundred bucks out of pocket for all that travel – wowzers!!
It’s important to know that we weren’t aiming for perfection. There are always ways to get the biggest bang out of your credit card points. You can optimize to make every point stretch further, but that wasn’t our sole goal. We intended to subsidize as much of the trip as we could… and I think we were pretty darn successful!
Hopefully, you’re realizing just how valuable this can be. I’ve talked about credit card points quite a bit over the years:
- A Month-Long Panama Trip for 3 for an Unbeatable Price of Less than $1,500!
- We Got the Chase United Explorer Card… Again. Boom! Easy Free Travel!
- Is It Worth It to Open a Credit Card With a Huge Annual Fee?
- The #1 Best Way To Track Credit Card Rewards
- The #1 Easy Way We’re Getting the Southwest Companion Pass
- Our Travel Perks Are Drying Up and That’s Big $$$!
- Free Nights – We’ve Had 5 at Hilton Hotels Recently
- We Got Turned Down for a Credit Card… Ok, Four!
- Travel Rewards – 12 Free Flights Earned in 9 Months!
Those are just some of the articles I’ve written on the subject. Why do I keep harping on the subject? Because it’s such low-hanging fruit that can yield tremendous rewards for so many folks.
And you don’t need to be an expert to get started. Starting with a single credit card sign-up bonus can score you enough points for some free travel. If you pay off your credit cards every month and you’re someone who wants to travel more, it’s definitely something to consider.
One of my favorite travel rewards cards is the Capital One Venture X card. I’ve had this card for a handful of years now and love it. Yes, it’s got a high annual fee, but the card more than pays for itself for someone who travels even just 2-3 times a year and the benefits such as airport lounge access are invaluable.
I use the Travel Freely site to help manage our credit cards (you just put in what the card is, not the card number). It provides personalized recommendations on new cards to sign up for, reminds me about sign-up bonus deadlines, and lets me know when a card’s annual fee is due (along with options on canceling or downgrading the card).
Casino Offers – The Secret to Cheap Cruises
The other secret sauce to this Europe trip – and actually the reason for this particular vacation in the first place – is the casino offers we received from various cruise lines.
You can read my post, Free Cruises with Just a Little Leg Work… Living Like Rock Stars!, for the scoop on how we got all these casino offers. We decided to utilize two of these offers to help create this Europe trip. As I mentioned, I get antsy flying more than a few hours so we came up with the idea of flying business class to Europe to make that a little easier and then doing a transatlantic cruise back to the U.S. at the end of the trip.
The transatlantic cruise is two weeks long with a lot of sea days, which I love, so that’ll be a bonus and a great way to end our trip. But we have an exciting 11-day cruise we’ll be taking while in Europe as well.
Almost as important is that these cruise were heavily subsidized through their casino departments…
| 11-Night Europe/Mediterranean Cruise (for 3) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | Princess, Deluxe Balcony |
| Notes: | Part of our cost also comes back to us as a $400 onboard credit |
| Would Have Cost: | $7,373.70 |
| Our Cost: | $1,270.00 |
| Total Saved: | $6,103.70 |
| 14-Night Transatlantic Cruise (for 3) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | Carnival, Balcony |
| Notes: | Part of our cost also comes back to us as a $200 onboard credit; We get $100 in casino credit; We also get free drinks in the casino |
| Would Have Cost: | $3,320.00 |
| Our Cost: | $760.00 |
| Total Saved: | $2,560.00 |
This is another crazy area where we saved a fortune. On most cruise lines, it would be tough to get a 7-day Caribbean cruise for three with a balcony for $2k, but that was essentially our cost for 25 days of cruising in Europe, one of which is on the more elite Princess cruise line!
| Would Have Cost (on Just Cruises): | $10,693.70 |
| Our Cost (on Just Cruises): | $2,030.00 |
| Total Saved (on Just Cruises): | $8,663.70 |
Of course, we’ll also have additional costs not included here such as gratuities and drinks once all is said and done.
Additional Costs
Credit card points and casino offers didn’t cover everything for our Europe trip. Here are a few costs that we paid for outright:
| Train from Barcelona to Madrid (for 3) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | Iryo, Infinita Bistró |
| Notes: | First class with a meal |
| Our Cost: | $207.12 |
| Total Saved: | $0.00 |
I’m oddly more excited about this train ride than most of the trip. I’ve never been on a real train ride before and I’m fascinated by this Iryo bullet train. It travels at speeds of around 200 mph! We decided to upgrade for the best experience. For about $200 total, we’ll enjoy a first-class ride for about 2½ hours with an included meal… I’m good with that!
| Flight from Madrid to Florence (for 3) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | Vueling, Fly (Economy) |
| Our Cost: | $273.33 |
| Total Saved: | $0.00 |
This flight just gets us from Spain back over to Italy. Nothing exciting about it. We looked at different options and going to Rome would have been much easier than going right to Florence, but with the time of day and timing we wanted, this option just made sense for us.
| Flight from Tampa to Cleveland (for 3) | |
|---|---|
| Brand/Type, Class: | TBD |
| Notes: | This hasn’t been booked yet, but should be soon, so this cost is an estimate… and hopefully high! |
| Our Cost: | $600.00 |
| Total Saved: | $0.00 |
The big fat Europe trip ends with the cruise back to Tampa. Then it just requires a flight back to Cleveland and the airlines are just starting to release flights for this far out. I’m not ready to book just yet, but I’m thinking we’ll be looking at $600 (hopefully less). We still need to decide if we’ll pay cash for a non-stop flight or use credit card points for a flight with a layover. Regardless, I went with a $600 estimate for now.
Overall, these additional costs don’t come out too much…
| Additional Costs: | $1,080.45 |
| Our Cost: | $1,080.45 |
| Total Saved: | $0.00 |
Wrap-up
So here’s where we stand on our booked Europe trip framework:
| Cost Total (So Far): | |
|---|---|
| Would Have Cost: | $24,985.85 |
| Our Cost: | $3,205.25 |
| Total Saved: | $21,780.60 |
As I mentioned before, this isn’t going to be all of our costs. The costs that stand out that we’ll still have to cover:
- Meals (except for the 25 days on the cruise ships)
- Drinks and snacks
- Gratuities on the cruise ships
- WiFi on the cruise ships
- Entertainment
- Taxis, ride-shares, small train rides
- Souvenirs (not something we spend much on)
I’m also buying an eSIM card service for each of us for Europre with a 30-day plan. Cell service won’t be usable for the last week while crossing the Atlantic so that should be sufficient. But I’m going to set each of us up with a different service so we can be pretty confident that if one doesn’t work well in an area, one of the others likely will. We’ll be using:
I think all of these will work well based on everything I’ve read, but why not hedge our bets anyway? For under $40 each for 10GB of data, that’ll cover us when we don’t have WiFi available.
I can live with the rest of these expected costs, especially for such a trip of a lifetime. It’s insane how much money we’ve saved already and the final tally shouldn’t end up being anything too crazy.
In a future post, I’ll break down more of our plans while on this trip.
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Plan well, take action, and live your best life!
Thanks for reading!!
— Jim
Greetings Jim, what an awesome adventure!
Last year we did repositioning cruise one way and flew back on Condor (affiliated with Lufthansa) on lie down seats. Airalo worked well for us everywhere we went (Italy, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Austria and Germany). Give our regards to the family!
Hi, Nancy – I was just thinking about you guys the other day! I hope all is well!
Sounds like we’re almost following in your footsteps on this trip! 🙂 I bet that was a really cool trip. Thanks for the heads up on Airalo – that’s the service my phone will be on so at least we know I’ll have good service! 😉
Well done, Jim.
Would you like to share hiw to get the cruiser deal? Thanks,
Jack
Hi, Jack – I wrote about how we made the cruise deals happen in a couple of posts:
The Next Mission… Free Cruises Through Casino Status Matches!
Free Cruises with Just a Little Leg Work… Living Like Rock Stars!
Unfortunately, Caesars is no longer status matching from Wyndham, which was the key to making this work, so that ended that fun ride. Guess we all just need to wait for the next rare opportunity like this and be ready to jump on it! 🙂
Hi Jim,
I’ve been following your blog for a long time but I don’t remember if I have ever commented.
Anyway I’m so happy to hear you are finally crossing the pond and coming to Europe! I’m Italian and live near Rome, I would be happy to help with any question or doubt you might have about the Italian part of the trip (and other areas too, I have travelled quite extensively around Europe). It would be great to meet you and your family too, when you are in Rome, if you like. I’m not a stalker, I promise! 😉
Hi, Sabrina! We’re super excited to make our way to Europe (especially Italy and Spain!). I’ll definitely keep you in mind as we get closer to our travel dates – thanks (and thanks for not being a stalker, too! 😉 ).
Hey Jim,
If you are so inclined I would be more than happy to show you some great cuisine in Boston as I don’t live far away. No matter have a wonderful trip.
Jason
Hey, Jason – much appreciated on the offer. I’m not sure how much time we’ll actually have in Boston but I’ll definitely reach out if we can make it happen!
Very cool, Jim. Looking forward to seeing the pics/updates from the trip! We are sitting in the airport in Florida after another free-ish cruise (short one on Holland) and have a couple more booked in Europe in the summer and fall (Scotland/Ireland and in the north of EU).
We enjoyed an $80 family ticket for 1st class train travel all day in Europe on Deutsche Bahn on our first big family trip to Europe. Several 3-4 hour segments traversing the whole country and we got to dine and drink for free in their 1st class lounge at 3 of the stations along the way. I think we got a great deal bc the kids were under age 14 at the time so they were free add-ons to our 1st class ticket in Germany, and we bought the tix several months ahead of time on an off-peak date. Phenomenal value for us! And it beats the heck out of air travel.
Cheers to cheap travel!
Cheers for sure! You guys are crushing it, Justin! Between early retirement and being able to spend so much time with family to traveling the world on a fraction of the cost… life is good!
Enjoy your cruise!
Wow, sounds like a grand adventure. Mrs. RB40 is retiring so we’ll have a lot more time for vacation. I need to read the casino post again and see what we can do. 🙂 Enjoy!
Unfortunately, they closed a big loophole that made the free cruises possible. Caesars no longer matches Wyndham Diamond status so the chain is broken with the method we used. We’ll need to keep our eyes and ears open for the next great opportunity! 🙂
In the meantime, I’m learning a lot more about travel rewards, booking through partner airlines, skiplagging, etc., and you can save a fortune on travel by learning more about this. The Frequent Miler podcast is a fantastic resource among others out there.