The Setup

Our first big trip for 2018 was off to Kauai! This was both Beth’s and I’s first time to anywhere in Hawaii and we had a great time. Now of course with us being frugal and into miles and points we were able to save a significant amount of cash by using miles and points for our flights, hotel, and even on the rental car. To summarize, these are all the options we used to get to Hawaii near free!

• 90,000 United miles for 2 nonstop economy flights from Denver to Lihue, Hawaii
• 360,000 Marriott points that gave us 7 nights at the Marriott Kauai plus 120,000 Southwest and the Southwest Companion Pass (more on this)
• 2,750 Hertz points for a 1 week rental car

In October, Beth and I decided to do a long weekend trip to Puerto Vallarta. This was Beth’s fall break and it was a perfect excuse for a beach vacation. We stayed 4 nights at the Sheraton Bunganvillas near downtown Puerto Vallarta. A full review on that hotel later but we loved our stay there. While our main purpose was to be beach bums, we had one hike on our itinerary which from Boca de Tomatlan to Las Animas beach, picture above!

While in Dubrovnik, Croatia, one of our favorite days was our day trip up north to Ston and Prapratno Beach. Ston is home to the largest intact wall in Europe making for a nice piece of trivia, while Prapratno Beach was the most beautiful beach we visited on our entire honeymoon on points. While Dubrovnik is an amazing place to begin with, it is also a perfect spot to base yourself for day trips. From our hotel, the Sheraton Dubrovnik, we first day tripped to the awe-inspiring Kotor, Montenegro, and our second one up to Ston, Croatia. Both were amazing.

One of the highlights of our trip to Australia was driving the Great Ocean Road for  three days. We were lucky enough to stay with friends in Melbourne, Australia the majority of time but in the middle of the week we headed out to tour one of the most scenic drives in the world! Our friends thought we were somewhat crazy as three days really isn’t that much time but we think it was just about perfect. Granted we didn’t have time to relax too much but we love being active and busy anyway.

For our journey we started on the southeast side of Melbourne at Noble Park so please keep that in mind if you want to use our trip as a basis for your travels on the Great Ocean Road. The itinerary I will outline below worked very well for us and I would only suggest a couple tweaks based on our experience. I will note those at the end of each section. Bolded items are key stops or activities that we did.

The past couple weeks were crazy going from one coast to the other for weddings, but I had a splendid time in one of my favorite cities, San Diego! I had the chance to visit one of my friends in San Diego a year and a half ago and I was excited that he invited me to his wedding.

Me and my fiancé Beth ventured out from Indianapolis to San Diego on Friday night with a connection through Denver. Thanks to a previous mishap on a Southwest flight I had enough in vouchers to pay for one ticket and then the Southwest companion pass allowed Beth to fly for free with me! Not a bad deal, free flights! For those interested, the Southwest credit card is at 50k point right now which is a lot towards the 110k companion pass qualification, a decent guide about the Southwest Companion Pass at The Points Guy if you are interested. Now on to the actual trip!