I don't have a great history of blogging consistently anymore... but there are some things that are worth documenting, and our recent trip to Europe is one. We returned from a 15-day stay in Europe a few days ago with the kids (newly 4 and 5.75) and I'm attempting to capture while items are fresh in my mind. As you probably recognize by now, I'm a wordy talker and writer, so I'm trying my best to keep this succinct.
Trip Itinerary
- Sunday 5/21: Depart from Denver (we flew Lufthansa, booked on points through United), and flew through Frankfurt to get to Madrid)
- Monday 5/22 - Thursday 5/23: Madrid (3 nights)
- Thursday 5/23: Fly 1.5 hours to Lisbon
- Thursday 5/23 - Monday 5/29: Lisbon (4 nights)
- Monday 5/29: Pick up rental car at Lisbon Airport and drive 3 hours south to the Algarve region of southern Portugal
- Monday 5/29 - Saturday 6/3: Carvoiero (5 nights)
- Saturday, 6/3: Fly 3 hours to Munich
- Saturday 6/3: Stay in Munich (1 night)
- Sunday 6/4: Fly back to Denver
We booked the trip this way for a few reasons. The biggest driver was that we wanted to go to Portugal for the majority of the trip, but we wanted to fly using Chase Ultimate Rewards points (see old post here and happy to talk points with anyone, anytime!). Denver has somewhat limited options of where to fly into for Europe. I looked at "positioning" flights, ie. flying to a large US hub airport and then directly to our destination, but even then, I didn't find many "good" options for the points I was willing to spend to get to Lisbon. Thus, when I found decent flights to Madrid from Denver (with a Frankfurt layover), and knew that we could easily (and cheaply) get from Madrid to Lisbon; it seemed like a worthwhile option.
I also knew from my research that I wanted us to end our trip at the beach. I figured we would enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city for a few days and then enjoy the downtime of the beach following. This was the perfect approach for us.
We could have stayed one more night in Carvoeiro; but I figured flying back to Denver on a 10 hour direct flight from Munich was going to be long enough and I didn't want to add another flight to that day (which would have also been an early AM flight), instead we opted to fly Faro to Munich the day ahead of time and use credit card points for one night hotel. While we wish we would have had more time to explore Munich, this approach of a quick stopover worked well for us.
Because I have no shame and get excited about travelling on points, our international flights would have cost us $8,200 cash. Instead we paid 262,400 points + $629 cash (for taxes and fees). Wohoo!
While several aspects of this trip were heavily planned, the general daily itinerary was not. Our kids are used to shuffling around and keeping busy at home/in the mountains, but I wasn't sure how much any of us would be up for or what would keep their interest. I'm going to break each city up into it's own post to share what we ended up doing while there. Check for links below (once created)
Lisbon
Algarve
Munich
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| View from breakfast of our Lisbon airbnb street |
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