In summer of 2021, we crossed off an item from our travel bucket list: we spent a month in Europe, visiting 3 countries (Spain, France & Turkey), with 3 kids in tow.  How did we do this?  Looking back, I don’t even know how we juggled kids (our youngest was just barely 6 months old at the time) and work schedules – but somehow we did it.  And if you ask us if we’d do it again, we most certainly would.  How did we do it as far as logistics?  Well, it was a mix of points, miles, and cash.  You see, this was a graduation gift – when my husband asked me what I wanted after completing my Master’s Degree in May of 2021 – I said but of course, travel!

We started planning again in the spring of 2021 (our original plan had been for summer of 2020), as I was finishing my last semester of graduate school.  With a newborn, and having moved just a few months prior to our new home, while having two other kids doing virtual learning – well, we had our hands more than full!  Did I mention we were still in the midst of a global pandemic? And we also had a passport fiasco.  So many things, where do I begin?

For starters, I would reiterate checking your passport’s expiration date.  It has a way of creeping up on you, and given that it’s currently taking longer than normal to get a passport, I’d say even if you have no international travel plans, make sure your passport is up to date regardless!  We had applied for my daughter’s passport in May of 2021, thinking we had enough time.  She was born in December 2020, and yes the smart thing to do would have been to apply for it within the first few weeks after her birth.  But like I mentioned, in the craziness that was our life then (and sometimes still is), it didn’t happen.  We paid extra to have the baby’s passport expedited when we did get to it, as our international flight was scheduled for July 1.  Spoiler alert:  It didn’t come in time, but we still made our scheduled flight.

It was the last week of June 2021, and we started panicking as everytime we checked the status online it showed “pending” or “in process.”  My husband started looking at passport offices close to us – there were no available appointments, and no walk-ins were allowed at the time.  He finally found an appointment – but it was in Miami, Florida.  Now what?  We were less than 2 weeks out, and still no sign of the baby’s passport showing anywhere near completion.  So we flew to Miami for 24 hours – yes that’s right, all 5 of us. 

Now I’m sure you’re thinking wow, a last-minute trip to Miami for a family of 5 (baby was free, and currently still is) – that must have cost them thousands of dollars!  And right before a month-long international trip too!  It most certainly would have cost us that much if we had paid in cash, but lucky for us – we had a stash of points that had been sitting there since 2020.  Let me also add by saying, I cried inside at what I’m about to tell you, and this is NOT how I wanted to use these points – but it was either that, or deal with the hassle of trying to delay and/or cancel parts of this month-long international trip, if not all of it.  And we didn’t want to do that, as we had already had to delay this trip once before.

We spent 100,000 Southwest points for four airline tickets to Miami.  Yes, you read that right.  I had to use 100,000 Southwest points for a 24-hour trip to Miami. We had these points sitting in our Southwest account because as we all know, in 2020 no one was really traveling.  The bulk of these points my husband had earned the prior year through work travels.  That stash of points could have covered two domestic vacations for our family – this was so hard to accept, but better than spending thousands of dollars!  For our hotel, we spent one night at Homewood Suites by Hilton Miami – Airport/Blue Lagoon.  It was nothing fancy, close to the passport center where we had our appointment the next morning, and gave us the space we needed for a night.  It cost us 30,000 points for one night, and they had been earned from my Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card.  I had gotten this card in 2020, when the offer was a little different; it was 130,000 Hilton Honors points instead, after meeting the minimum spend.

Now I never recommend getting an airline or hotel branded card without a tentative plan – because points/miles can expire, and award charts do change.  Cards from Citibank, Capital One, and especially Chase – are flexible rewards currency, and can offer you multiple options, especially through airline/hotel partners.  To be honest, I had jumped on this offer in 2020, thinking I’ll eventually figure it out.  It wasn’t the best decision at the time, but it ended up working in our favor as we didn’t have to shell out money for a night in Miami.  Both our – one-night stay, and flights for the four of us – had been covered!  Points and miles to the rescue!

I’m so beyond grateful for how things worked out.  We came back from Miami, with 3 new passports (we ended up getting updated ones for our older two children as well as they were a few months out from expiring), and knew better for next time: plan further out than you think!  A few days later, on July 1, 2021, we flew to Madrid, Spain to start our month in Europe.  Memories made, adventures had, lessons learned.