I had three free night certificates burning a hole in my pocket. They came from getting the sign-up bonus from the Chase Ritz-Carlton credit card and would expire in mid Sept. Ritz-Carlton nights are not to be spent unwisely, unlike the free nights from Marriott or Hyatt where the category level was limited. I plotted…
Received a very enticing email today for American: 10,000 miles per night? Yes, please! However, when checking out the details it was not quite so lucrative. I checked for a trip to Honolulu that we are planning for January. The Booking.com site lists the number of miles earned depending on the hotel. Here is an…
I was unaware, but MGM Resorts has a Veterans Employee Network Group. They have developed a special program associated with the M Life Program called the Military & Veterans Program or MVP. It is open to active military, veterans and their spouses. All you need is a military ID to sign up at any MGM…
While it would be great to stay in the fictional Grand Budapest Hotel, I had to settle for a close second with a stay at the Boscolo Hotel in downtown Budapest. This hotel is part of the Autograph Collection from Marriott. The motto of the autograph Collection is that every property is unique (just like…
Staying in Rotterdam might not be at the top of everyone’s list, but it worked for me when I had some business to do in The Hague. Rotterdam is only 20 minutes from The Hague and about an hour from Amsterdam. Of course, nothing in the Netherlands is very far away. I don’t think you…
Authoritarian regimes don’t get any worse than Kim Jung Un’s North Korean dictatorship ironically named the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Concentration camps, people executed at the drop of a hat, mass starvation while maintaining a million man army, they have it all in an otherwise beautiful country. The story I saw this morning in…
I saw on DTS, that they are going to make changes to the Joint Travel Regulation (JTR) which is the bible by which all our travel and payments are based. It was recently highlighted in this newsletter from the Defense Travel Office. Nothing in the JTR changes significantly, according to them, but the volumes (one…
Catching up after being TDY for 3 of the last 4 weeks. This hotel review is part of the Sonoma Valley Wine Tasting I wrote about previously. This Napa Valley Doubletree is on the main highway connecting both Napa and Sonoma Valleys to the North Bay area of San Francisco. The location serves well for…
My wife and I lived in Honolulu from 2010-13 and like to go back about once a year. It has been fun to see the developments that have taken place over time. On this recent trip, I noted a number of improvements around Waikiki that you might want to check out for yourself on an…
In 2015 we stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Waikiki using the two free nights from the Hyatt Credit Card. Keeping the credit card is a no brainer since the annual fee is offset by a free night, but only up to Tier 4. That meant that the Hyatt Regency was just out of reach,…
