Frequent Miler on the Air - 100K Vacay midstream check-in and scoring | | Coffee Break Ep73 | 10-7-25

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Last week, Greg completed his benchmark trip using 100K Chase Ultimate Rewards points for an incredible vacation in Malta. Shortly after he returned, Tim, Nick and Stephen set out to try and out-shine his trip using 100K of the transferable points they chose to compete with. Unfortunately Tim's trip came to an early end due to an unavoidable need back home, so Nick and Stephen were left to tackle the challenge themselves. With a return deadline by the October 8th 9pm final live check-in, our more than half way finished.This podcast episode features the full midstream live check-in where we heard trip recaps from both of our competitors and gave out grade scores for how they're doing in each main scoring category so far: Destination Wow, Applicability, Value, and Style.(00:24) - What is 100K Vacay?(01:31) - The Peppers summarize their travels so far, from JFK to London to Munich's Oktoberfest(06:42) - Nick summarizes his trip from Boston to Madrid to Malaga, where he had to rebook his flight from Madrid to Malaga, but then eventually made it to the Caminito del Rey cliffside hike(15:02) - Is Nick nervous about the budget?(16:56) - Greg and Carrie assign grades for the "Destination Wow" category for the Peppers(22:16) - Greg and Carrie assign grades for the "Destination Wow" category for Nick(25:57) - Greg and Carrie assign grades for the "Applicability" category for the Peppers(30:00) - Greg and Carrie assign grades for the "Applicability" category for Nick(32:02) - Greg and Carrie assign grades for the "Value" category for the Peppers(34:37) - Greg and Carrie assign grades for the "Value" category for Nick(36:55) - Greg and Carrie assign grades for the "Style" category for the Peppers(38:55) - Greg and Carrie assign grades for the "Style" category for Nick(40:02) - That leaves the Peppers just ahead of Nick in every category except for "Style" so far(41:08) - Budget usage so far(43:06) - What was the highlight and lowlight for everyone?(49:34) - Greg, are you surprised everyone flew to Europe?(53:13) - What's been the biggest obstacle with your bookings so far?Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Freakimilar's Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. All right, welcome to Frequent Milers, midstream, live stream, 100K, K vacation. check-in. That was easy to say. That will love for those who have not been following

along, I wanted to give a quick reminder of what 100KVK is. So every year we do an annual team challenge. This one, we have, Greg has just completed a challenge using 100,000 Chase Ultimate Roids points. He used

that to do an incredible trip to Malta. And now Nick, Stephen, and Tim were tasked with seeing if they could beat that trip with 100,000 points of a different transferable points currency, which they got to choose themselves. Unfortunately, Tim has had some family things come up. He had to go home. So now it's up to Nick and Stephen to see if they can outdo Greg's 100K vacay with Chase Ultimate rewards points. Nick is using American Express

membership awards points, and Stephen is using Capital One Miles. So now, real quick, what I'd like to do is have each of you spend five minutes or so, giving us a summary of what you've done since kickoff. We're going to start with the peppers. What have you done since kickoff? Okay, so we set off from JFK. We flew overnight from JFK to London on Virgin Atlantic using 6,000 virgin points. And then I spent the day brewing beer and drinking beer at Brewhouse and Kitchen Hivey,

while Shea went off and I took us on a monopoly adventure so in the morning a bit of train time but a lot of walking around London trying to see things that were mostly off the beaten track with a few little spots that were a little more well known but yeah it was really fun I had a great time and so then last night we stayed at a hotel near the airport

and then this morning we flew to Munich on British Airways visited the British Airways first-class lounge because it's an amazing lounge. He had access thanks to having higher globalist status, which we matched to American Airlines, Platinum Pro status, which got us emerald status with one world, which got us access to the lounge. And then it took a little bit longer to get to Munich than we were hoping. So we landed in Munich a few minutes behind, but not too far behind. But then it took ages to get through immigration. and then the train was cancelled that we were due to be taking to our hotel.

Apparently, there was some kind of like police incident or something like that. So my guess, because it's October fest here in Munich, there was probably some kind of fight or something like that. You think someone might have been drinking? In public? Yeah, like we hadn't gone, we didn't get to our hotel until like 5.5.30 or something like that. So I'd originally assumed that we would get there about 4 p.m. but thankfully none of our stuff was a time crunch today or anything like that so we were a little behind but it didn't spoil any of our plans so we got to october fest tonight it took a little yeah yeah it took a little while to be able to get a table anywhere and the weather's not great here because they i don't know if you guys have had like storm amy or something like that in the u.s but we've had storm amy here in europe and so we did actually get super lucky because um flights into the UK the day before we were due to arrive were apparently affected

and flights to Germany the day before we were due to flight to Germany were affected but we managed to get in and get out without having any kind of delays in that was the most part so that was fortunate but it didn't mean that it was raining tonight it was a little bit cooler than we were expecting so we kind of wish that we had rain codes on we have them with us we do have them with us we just decided I mean that would have interrupted the costume. Yeah, exactly. We were apparently the only people in Munich who thought that.

Yeah. But we didn't finally manage to get a table at one of the October Fest, like places and stuff like that. And we had a fantastic time for like two, two and a half hours or something like that. And then we got back here in time for this live stream. Stephen, what did the British Airways flight cost you? British Airways flight was 9,250 Aviol. per person and one dollar so it which which is really weird because I'm so

used to thinking that flights out of the UK will cost you a significant portion in like air passenger duty and things like that but yeah it does seem like a lot of British Airways flights to Europe will only cost you a buck in taxes and fees the number of miles you need varies depending on how far you're going to be going but this relatively short flight yeah 9,250 Aviosa and one dollar was a fantastic deal for how much we would have had to have paid otherwise, because you can get some direct flights to Munich, I think, on things like Ryanair, where it'll be a fair bit cheaper, but then if you want to take any kind of carry-on luggage or anything like that, then you'll be

paying fees well in excess of that. It's ours included carry-on luggage. I feel like it might have included checked bags. I can't remember if that was by default, or if it included it by default because of us having American airline status. But either way, it was like a superb deal for us. And it was comfortable. Like it wasn't like being on some of the more budget airlines.

Sure. It's funny, though, to think that you paid like a third less than that for, in points for your flight from the U.S. Exactly. Yes. They gave us water and cookies, which was nice. Rather than being like, this is a short flight, we're not going to throw anything at you. As we walked down the aisle, they did do a coffee, tea, and water and cookie service. And it's like a 3-3 plane seat-wise.

So Shea had a window seat. I had a middle seat. But the seats were surprisingly wide. And so the person sitting next to me, it wasn't kind of like a long haul international flight where it feels like you're like really tight in or anything like that. It didn't feel at all cramped. And it was only a, what, hour and a half hour and a quarter flight or something like that. So from London to Munich, it's nothing. Nice.

All right. Nick, we want to hear the synopsis of your trip so far. Look, I started out in Boston, and I flew a very economy class from Boston to Madrid for 6,400 Ravios, but there was a 30% transfer bonus from AMX membership rewards. So just 5,000 MX membership rewards points and about $90 in taxes and fees. So, okay, so my option initially, when I went to Buck, was either to spend like 3,000 additional points and $30 in tax. Or I could just book it as a separate flight for $60.80. So I said, well, it was poor value for the points in that case then since I'd be paying half of that in taxes and then essentially getting $30 off the flight for 3,000 points.

So I booked them separately, which seemed like a great idea at the time until – and it still seemed like a good idea when I got to the Boston airport because when I arrived, it said that my flight to Madrid was actually going to land 20 minutes early in Madrid. So I said, oh, great, I'm going to have a little extra time to. get something to eat before the Iberia flight to Malaga and unfortunately from there things only got worse and the flight got delayed we ended up leaving more than an hour and a half late and we ended up landing too tight to make the connection for the Iberia flight so so I got horrible value on that one because I just fleshed that $60.80 down the toilet since they don't protect you on separate tickets so I had to scramble to book something else so I booked area Europa for 5,000 Air France, KLM flying Blue Miles and $26 in taxes from Madrid to Malaga.

The irony is that flight back when I was booking was only $38. I paid more for the Iberia flight because I wanted to get to Malaga a little bit early. But of course, by the time I was booking it, the day of departure, it was $200 a seat on that flight. So I got good value for the Air France miles compared to the cost at the time I booked it. But I was kicking myself for not just having spent $38 in the beginning, and then I'd be ahead of the game. So anyway, so I flew to Malaga, though, and landed in Malaga and took the train to El Choro, which is where you take the shuttle bus to the entrance for Camino del Rey, which is a walkway along this canyon side that at some points is more than 300 feet in the air. It's a pretty narrow walkway that's built into the cliff side. So I say built into, that's not even accurate.

It's built on the cliff side and sort of like held up by beams. So you'd have to see pictures of it to understand, but it's pretty harrowing for people who are afraid of heights like me. So we did that. That's about a three, a little over a three mile walk on the pathways. And then it's also about a mile hike to get into it. So I did that. and then hustled back to the train station to make my way back into Malaga from there. And that was cool.

By the way, I was going to book that as a tour through something like, you know, get your guide or clook or whatever else. And I thought that I had to do that. And I knew I could book it actually directly through Cominito Del Rey, but I didn't realize I could get to Camino Del Rey via public transit via the train. And the train was so much cheaper. That was a much cheaper way. If you're interested in doing that, don't pay for a tour from Malika.

Just take the train to El Choro. It's really easy. You can book it on the train website. So that worked out really well. And then, yeah, so then after that, I got back to Malica and I checked into Palacio Celessio, which is an 18th century, And Lucian Palace, converted into a small luxury hotels of the world property that's bookable with Hilton points, of course. So 60,000 Hilton points a night, which with the transfer bonus meant only 24,000 membership

rewards points for that first night. So I got to stay in a palace, sort of. It's actually an annex that the standard rooms are in. But cool, nonetheless, great service, beautiful place, nice place to spend the night. And then this morning I got up and I rented a car, which was the last minute switch of plans, but I rented a car and drove south along the coast to a place where I could do some windsurfing, a company called Dynamic Wind Surfing. So I learned how to win surf, which is something I've always wanted to do. So I was pretty excited about that. And it ended up being a private lesson. So it was just me and the instructor. And so plenty of one-on-one time. And it was much more difficult than I expected. Not really difficult in terms of getting on the

board and getting going, but difficult keeping your balance and difficult on the muscle groups that keep that balance. So by the end of the time, I was just, I was so wobbly when I got back to the And he said, oh, it happens all the time. He said, beginners say they want to go out for four hours. And he said, I'm like, unless you're in great shape, great athletic shape, you're not going to go four hours. It just doesn't work that long. So, Nick, what everybody needs to know is how the heck did you film yourself doing that?

I had the thought ahead of time as to how to do that. And some of the footage from Cominito Del Rey that hasn't posted because it was a little shaky was a similar idea. I bought a chest harness. And so I bought a chest harness that I can connect either or GoPro or the Insta 360 to. And I was going to do it with the GoPro. But at the last minute, I said, you know what?

The Insta 360 is waterproof. Let's give it a shot. And so I connected that. And there are different attachments for it. And the one I attached may not have been the best choice, actually, in hindsight. But you live and learn. Anyway, so yeah, it was the Insta 360 attached to something on my chest. And for a while, I was doing single lens just on the one side.

But then eventually I was like, oh, well, I could just do 360 and lay the camera out flat from my chest and that's how I did it. So that way I didn't have to touch it and I could get video the whole thing. So it was a lot of fun. Okay, good. I was afraid you were trying to hold it the whole time. There's no way. There's no way. I wouldn't be able to do it.

I did try to put a GoPro on my wrist also, but I didn't think I could handle that. Yeah, yikes. And that was just today. So I think that catches us up. Well, where are you staying tonight? Oh, good question. Yeah. So back in Malaga tonight and I had to

switch up my plan for tonight. So I'm at the Hilton Garden Inn. I had to switch up plans because I had to accommodate for the unexpected area Europa flight. I'm at the Hilton Garden in and I used cash in points with Hilton to book this. So 22,000 Hilton points and about $70 in U.S. dollars cash. So I did the cash in points because that enabled me to use fewer Hilton points to free up the 5,000 points that I needed for the area Europa flight. And of course, I'm using a business platinum card to pay the cash portion because the business platinum card offers a $50 quarterly Hilton credit. Now, that's not going to reduce what I've spent on the trip. We're accounting for that still is being spent.

But, you know, in terms of paying less out of pocket, it was a good tip that readers mentioned when I wrote about booking cash and points bookings, that that could be a good way to use your $50 credits on those cards. So I am here and I had meals actually both nights via too good to go. I don't know. I don't think tonight's has posted yet, but I had myself a little bit of a picnic. So no fancy chef required. I booked or I didn't book. I reserved it too good to go and got a whole bunch of bread. And I was like, oh, wow, this is a ton of bread. So I went to the grocery store and I bought some cheese and I bought a bottle of Rioja wine. And the cheese and wine was about five euros altogether. And you'll see the bread. There was a lot of bread for five euros. So that's,

that's my story and I'm sticking to it so far. Did you pick local cheeses per chance? I did. The localist of the local cheeses I was not totally sure on. It was a goat cheese and I liked goat cheese, but I wasn't sure I could eat a whole block of goat cheese by myself. So I went with something that I felt like I could probably eat more of because goat cheese to me is like, you know.

No, no, no, no, it's Spanish cheese. Are you right? but a little closer to like it's a mild Spanish cheese so goat cheese I was like I could eat some goat cheese but I couldn't do that for dinner I'm curious because you had mentioned before that you were going to be bumping up against the top of your budget the fact that you've now had to spend like 70 bucks on this hotel plus the additional hilton points how's that doing for your budget I it's a little painful I'm not going to lie. It's a little painful. I'm going to have to make some decisions in the end.

But I certainly was not anticipating missing that I bury a flight. That was certainly a disappointment. So I did have a little bit of room, but I don't know if I had enough room. We'll find out. Why plan for unpredictables? You know, just plan for perfection. All right. So I think it's hopefully. Hold on the just plan for perfection. I was thinking about this before. I don't think in all of the challenges we've done, have any of us missed a flight yet? Good question. I don't think that was, I think that's the first time any of us have missed a flight, right? Yeah, yeah. I came really close. Well, Keri and I came really close. And then, you know, on the SaaS thing, I came really close on one, but yeah. If it was going to happen,

yeah. Yeah. There's the first. And I had like almost two hours between flights there, by the way. I think during the SaaS thing, you bought some that were like an hour in between, right, Greg? Yeah, the one in Saudi was the one that I booked, like, I think it was just barely over an hour. I did have, like, a backup plan, but, yeah, and that was the one I had to literally run. I mean, it wasn't like a sort of fast walking like we did in Belgrade. It was literally running through the Saudi airport. Oh, I hate that. Like a sad airplane trophy.

You just didn't run fast enough. It would be a honor of being the first one. Yeah. It would be Nick. It would be Nick. No offense, Nick. All right. Pushing things to the limit. So it's kind of a compliment. So now we're going to go to grading. Nick, Greg and I have prepared some grades that we're going to kind of debate between each other. And we're going to go through our waves category, starting with Destination Wow. And as a reminder, that includes your location, your adventure. relaxation, food, local exposure, and out-of-the-box ideas. So, Greg, why don't you start, we'll go one person at a time here.

How did you, Greg, how did you grade Stephen? Yeah. Let me just back up a little bit for a second and say, the way we're planning on judging this ultimately is with points that we're going to score everyone on. but that's all based on like how you did relative to my trip and it's really not going to work doing that point scoring this early in the trip there's a lot of things that can't work that way so what we're doing is assigning you for now just a interim a through f type of grades and it doesn't necessarily mean anything for who's going to ultimately win right it's just going to show uh what we're thinking right now about how we think you're doing. So it'll give you some, maybe it'll give some idea of what we're looking for and then maybe you'll adapt as you go.

I don't know. All right. So starting with Destination Wow, Stephen. So you've got two locations that are very desirable between London and Munich. Adventure, as we defined it, is one place. where I wouldn't say you guys went, like, super adventurous, but a little bit. It didn't see a lot of relaxation, except for that one photo. Food, you had some good food exposure, so that was good.

Local exposure, that, I don't know that I, so, okay. So what we mean by that is interacting with locals, not like going to local places. So I'm not sure we saw that. So with two locals yesterday. I just didn't like record it. Yeah. And then. Bricky mistake. So going German people and stuff at Octoberfest, but we just haven't had a chance to send that three together.

Even that. Although I guess we didn't record that or anything like that. So we have had some local interaction, but certainly not extensive. I talked to a gentleman for 25 minutes of his 30-minute lunch break yesterday. We're all about what was happening. He's the one who told me about Spitafield's Market. And then I talked to some very fancy ladies at lunch. Fancy ladies.

Nice. And they really recommended the lucky lady cocktail. They thought that that was better than the bellini that I chose. And then I watched them enjoy their oysters. And of course, Stephen also spent the day with the local beer, beer maker. so there's that okay so anyway out-of-the-box ideas though I think you guys knocked it out of the park from the monopoly thing to spending a day making beer to dressing up for october fest all that stuff was great so I added all that up to an a minus how about you carry a minus all right so um let me

check my little notes here I gave an a for all of that um so I do have the benefit of being the one who edits the footage. And so I knew about the conversation with the guy who recommended the marketplace. So that factors in a little bit. Yeah. So I'm going with an A for that. Are there any other pieces that you'd say that kind of was too harsh on? I actually dinged y'all a little bit for going to. So the only reason I didn't give you guys an A plus was because you chose the location you literally live in as your first locations. So I docked adventure.

She's been interacting with a local this entire time. She's been so interacting with a local. She literally married a local. But all the other things, I thought you guys knocked it out of the park for location picking a location that is interesting in part because of this world famous event

that's going on, that's, like, definitely out of the box and also, like, Tick's location also. So, yeah, I thought you guys nearly had A-plus if it weren't the country you lived in. Okay. So I'm willing to go up to an A for this one. Okay. Can we agree on A? I would have enough with an A minor. Wait, wait, wait, wait, right, no, there's room for improvement, but.

Nick doesn't like the sound of that. All right, well, speaking of Nick, how do you rank Nick there? Okay, so location seems great, an adventure way, way out of the park on that. I don't think Nick is feeling very relaxed. Well, you know, you didn't get to see. I did post or I did send this to Kerry that I had my picnic because I had a movie downloaded. And so I had planned downtime tonight to watch a movie with Daniel Craig in it to prepare for my next destination. That's your hint, folks.

But anyway, but fair enough. Otherwise, you're right. I've been on the move a lot. So food, also, also I should say, my grades came before you guys did your recap. So food, I was very unimpressed up till now. I'm still not super impressed with your craft singles, but I like that you threw in a bottle of wine. Spanish wine at that. It's Reva Ray. We all love a good theme.

Now, local exposure, here again, I don't know of any or much of that that happened. Carrie might know more. And out-of-the-box ideas, though, very high. But not as high, I'd say, as Shane and Stephen. So I gave Nick a B for destination. All right. Not to sound like good cop over here, but I gave Nick an A also. For one, I thought it was really clever to stay in a palace going with the King theme.

And that location was right downtown, right across from where Picasso was born. And then you check the adventure box with the Cominito del Rey. That's on my bucket list now. That looks awesome. I assumed your guide for the windsurfing was local. Was he not? He was not. No, he was from Sweden.

He's local European. He's European. All right. All right. Well, so maybe I could be committed to knock him down a little bit. And then the food I thought, you know, even if that's not quite as splashy as Greg was hoping to see, I did think it was clever that you're demonstrating that like, okay, Greg did this. picnic thing you could also do that yourself you know like with this too good to go app and with

your own grocery store visit so I liked I liked the you I like the idea I haven't watched the full video yet don't right on the heels you like it so far that's funny let me pour another glass of wine and he's quite appreciate it carry I appreciate it and not to underline the scoring for the peppers but honestly Nick as someone who also does not care for heights I was very proud of you for appreciate thank you oh that was impressive yes that was super impressive that was like extra adventure points the fact that you didn't like yeah but so yeah I was going to give an A I feel like I could be talked into closer to a B a minus or B plus maybe so the the too good to go stuff I gave gave neck points under budget but yeah I don't really think of it as like

local that's a way to go and enjoy the local fair right I mean you're just getting whatever the heck you're getting it didn't look that in the bakery you'll disagree with you You're right, you're right. That's fair. It's all fair criticism. So how far down will you come, Carrie? Would you agree with my B or? I'll go to B plus, I feel like.

Because I do like the effort in saying like, hey, I can replicate a. All right. What Greg did without a show. So far, so far we have for destination, the peppers have an A and Nick is with a B plus. Let's talk applicability. So applicability, remember, is like replicability. Would others be able to replicate what you did? And applicability is like, did you do things that would be hard for people

because they would need certain credit cards or certain elite status or whatever? So if we look at the peppers first, I think all of your activities would be very highly, easily replicable, except maybe lugging your later hosen across the world. Well, and the keg. It all fit within our carry-on. The keg? Well, you know what I wouldn't be able to replicate is jumping up with my regular clothes on and then with my October Fest clothes on.

That was impressive. So we can replicate the keg thing because I said to Stephen. I said, not a minute. Oh, I'm not worried about that. Yeah. No, that's cool. And he's like, don't have a carry. They all have a checked bag.

Yeah, where I think the one thing I'm thinking that's not replicable is the low taxes on the Virgin Atlantic flight because that's just they've raised their taxes since then. That's not something that was in your control, but it's still a fact that if people are trying to replicate this budget, that becomes harder with that trick. applicability you did use some like elite status and stuff but you did show that you did show that like you know if you had priority pass you could get into alternate lounges so so that was good yeah i can't remember what else i was thinking there but i came up with a b plus for this category all right so for the peppers I gave an A-minus because they featured a mixture of lounges that could be attained with commonly held priority pass, but also featured some lounges that required, you know, magic, this status leads to this status, leads to this status. And their flights and activities all seemed replicable. So I thought, you know, other than, you know, highlighting that one lounge kind of a bit more than the others, you know, seemed pretty, pretty applicable and replicable.

Yeah. Now, did you know about the taxes that you can't get the Virgin Atlantic flight for that amount anymore? This, I understand a way fewer of the nuances, so I'm definitely comfortable going with your grade on that. That's pretty small. I think the peppers have done well here. I think Greg was unfair. All right. Shall we bump Greg up a little bit?

I don't think Stephen really highlighted that the Priority Pass lounge had robot trash cans that moved around and said, put your trash in my baby. I mean, I really think that Steven didn't highlight that very, We were living in 3,000 in that priority lounge for everybody. Well, shall we? Like, Hello, Hello Sky Lounge at, I guess that was in SK. Yeah, that was just really random. It was just constantly going back and forth.

And what was particularly funny was there was this kid who kept chasing after it. He was chasing behind. And so he kept trying to, like, put it on it, but it would keep moving. So I had to put his stuff in on this, like, move our trash thing. And then it would be forward. If you're not in front of it, it doesn't stop. Like, when you're in front of it. When we grade you on robotic entertainment, but that doesn't really apply much to applicability and replicability.

What was particularly annoying, though, was that whenever I was trying to get anywhere, I would be in front of it. And so it would like move to the side, it would always be like, that's going to the left, I'm going to the left, that's going to the right, I'm going to never get past it. And this time I was going back and forth, whereas this kid had the opposite problem. Some things don't require so much technology. Um, well, Greg, have Nick and I convinced you, um, to bump that score up at all for, okay, so we're sticking with B plus. All right. How about Nick?

Okay. Um, for Nick, um, the, so he gets, he gets dinged in my mind pretty bad because the, um, the, um, the, um, the Iberia flight was like a one-time sale. And so it's going to be very hard for anyone. to replicate that. The applicability, I think, has been really good. I'm trying to remember if he did anything that you need special status or anything for, well, you did Priority Pass. Priority Pass, yeah.

Restaurant restaurants. Yeah, but anyway, so I mainly dropped him down quite a bit because of the replicability of a key part of his overall travel. So I gave a B minus. Yeah, you know, I'm actually going to default to your score there too because in my world B plus is dinging somebody a little bit. I gave him a B plus for that same reason. He actually went out of his way in his notes to explain to me

that he should get dinged for that because I wouldn't have known. But then also the priority past restaurants, he did demonstrate or he explained how somebody could get a no annual fee card to get prior to past restaurants but I think, you know, I don't know how popular that card is and if that's kind of the only way to do it, I think I agree with Greg on this, so let's

go with Greg's score there. Okay. I can't fight back too hard. Iberia does run sales now and then, but that specific you're right. I mean, whether you'll be lucky to have that lineup with your plans or not, I knew I would get dinged there. It was worth it. Yeah.

Was that the flight that you hated the seat so bad? Oh, my goodness. So maybe it was not worth that, but horrible. It was horrible. Don't ever fly on the A321 XLR on Iberia anyway to Europe. Those seats were awful. Maybe that's why they were on sale. All right.

So value, Greg. Okay. So for the peppers, so we had a, we, under value, we are looking at pro behavior, which is like using advanced techniques to, get good deals. The dollar value of the trip, which I don't actually have that information for you guys, and frugality. So without really knowing like where you're at with so much with a pro behavior and dollar value, the frugality, I'm super, super impressed with getting Shay into the same 100K bucket of the budget as, you know, so you have two people,

at one in your budget for as far as the points go. And so I gave an A plus. Yeah, I mean, I did too. I'll add to that that also I think it's pretty clever. You know, everyone was saying like, how is Stephen going to demonstrate an impressive hotel with Capital One? Well, he did it by going to a hotel in a place that's going to be super expensive because of, again, a world-renowned activity that's going there.

I mean, like, he found a way to make it impressive beyond, you know, within the constraints of Capital One, you know, Wyndham, that kind of isn't that the only transfer option or something? Anyway, very few, yeah. Yeah, so I thought that was really clever. I would say that I haven't necessarily demonstrated pro-behavior more because I was going for applicability and replicability. And so I feel like the more pro-behavior you go for, the less you make. it accessible for like novices and things like that and so because yeah i was trying to make our trip as like easy to book as it would possibly be able to be um for anyone to do it um whether they're like a novice or um like more experienced with this um so if i did end up getting dinged on that at the end of the um challenge and that would be completely fair enough on the pro side of it

um as as as booking that iberia flight was a promo Whereas as a person who was on four buses and three trains and 16 walks and got rained on and think, I could do it with a little more pro pro. I love that. Not on that budget, though. It's a teeny bit outside the city, but yeah. She's going to start paying cash for things to not fly with. No, I think we're both in agreement on A plus on value for the peppers.

All right. Let's talk Nick. So Nick, you know, book. dirt cheap on points, Iberia flight, he got lunch and dinner or something from Priority Pass. I can't remember how many meals you got out of Priority Pass, and then got multiple meals out of that Too Good to Go app thing, which I didn't even know was outside the U.S. So that was actually a European company. Oh, I think I can't remember somewhere in Scandinavia.

Oh, we have it in the UK. We have a whole bunch of places near where we live. We haven't gotten to actually using it and stuff. Nick first used it in Million Mile Ladness. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, is that right? Well, I don't know if Fiona was actually the first.

Well, no, because the first time I've used it and we talked about, showed the audience. Yeah. That was the tip from a reader at some point, a while back. They said something about it. And then I started looking when I was traveling because I don't, there aren't many places, really no places close to me. at home. But now when I travel, I always pull up the app just because I'm kind of curious. I'm kind of addicted to these. And the prices vary. So some of them are four euros, some of them

are five, some of them are six, depending on the place. But yeah. So anyway, that was a reader tip, not my original find. But it's more widely available in Europe than it is in the United States. Anyway, so Nick's eating like a pauper, but doing filling himself up anyway. And staying in, I was very impressed with the point price of that SLH property that he was able to book with Hilton points, transferred from Amex with the transfer bonus and all that. So I gave Nick an A. I gave him an A also. I'm in agreement with all of that.

I think he needs the A because sounds like he's writing very close to that budget line. So let's go ahead. I have some room. It'll require changing some plans that I was excited about. But we'll see. We'll give him that A. We're going to skip the next category would be extras, but since that's stuff that's kind of summarized at the end,

like did they stay in budget? Did they do their three-night requirement? We're going to skip that. We're going to wait for the final check-in on Wednesday for that. We're going to go to style. So how about the peppers on style? All right. So style, this is like luxury flights,

luxury accommodations, and sort of miscellaneous other. luxuries like lounges, massages, whatever you could get with your points and so on. This is intended to be a category, too, like where you used your points or other like sort of travel savviness to get these extra benefits. So peppers, not much going on in the luxury flight category. It flew economy overnight and then economy to Munich. luxury accommodations

from my point of view it looked like they were mid-tier accommodations like not bad but like yeah I'd say this remada that we're staying in it's way nicer than your average remade in the US the ibis that we stayed out of Heathrow was fine but it certainly wasn't amazing or anything like that as a cheap overnight hotel it was perfectly fine

but certainly not luxury this one I greatly appreciated the three late cookies things. Yeah. Like that was, that was a really nice. There's a fridge in the room, which a lot of European hotels, particularly in the UK,

they don't have. They don't have any pictures. Yeah. And you did enjoy some airport lounges, but anyway, I added it all up to just a B-minus. Okay. Yeah, I'm actually in agreement on that. Again, I've talked about how the hotels were a wow, because, like, you nailed this location in the middle of this event.

But for the luxury side of things, not luxurious. otherwise. Same for the flights. So especially when I'm thinking in comparison, you didn't describe your flight as the worst seat you could have gotten, but Greg was able to do all of his international flights, at least premium economy or above. So especially when we think in comparison to Greg, I agree on that B minus. Okay. Let's talk Nick. So Nick also flew across the pond in economy and it was even worse than he expected to do to an equipment swap. And unlike Tim, he didn't, he didn't manage to weasel his way into a economy, what was it? Delight. The light. The heck. Do we believe him? Next look decidedly undelightful. However,

I erased my minus because of the luxury accommodation, the SLOH property. The SLOH property. looked very nice. I gave Nick A.B. I'm in agreement there. Also, I also gave Nick a B for the same reasons. That flight sounded miserable, but that palace looked very cool. But you were in the annex of the palace, so not quite cool enough to take you into the A zone. So, fair enough. I did spend more time in the palace than I did in the Aberia flight. So now your dinged relaxation points because that means you more to sleep in your room. All right. All right.

Should we summarize now who's ahead and behind on each category? So for destination, Stephen is ahead with an A versus a B plus. For applicability, peppers are ahead with a B plus instead of next B minus. For value, peppers are ahead with an A plus versus next A. style's the only one that they're behind style Nick is ahead with a B versus the peppers B minus yes so that's peppers ahead of Nick for everything but style so I'm just gonna go to I'm gonna go

where's Nick? I'm coming for you sorry I have to go where there's five dollar wine and then she is just dumped she's jump chip I don't know Nick's budget is already bulging Don't know if we'll be able to There's plenty of wine left though

I'm going to quick take a look at everyone's budget graphics real quick Nick has spent 43,000 points out of 100,000 And $429.98 out of a thousand So he's just about not quite halfway on both Stephen has spent 39,300 out of 100,000 points and $359.18 out of 1,000.

So he's got more of his budget left. He's doing better. We're going to look at Tim's just because. And then Greg's finals, as a reminder, Greg was under budget with both, 97,000 points out of $100,000 and $968 out of $1,000. So that's where we're at for now. Now I think we want to take some questions. Yeah. While you're compiling questions, I just want to say what's happening next is my wife asked me, or maybe it was my mom, asked me, well, when does this end? And when this ends for each individual, it may vary. But everybody has to be completely done in time for the next check-in, which is this coming Wednesday evening at 9 p.m. Eastern time. So everybody will be done.

by then if Nick hasn't missed his flights home. And don't curse me like that. Don't curse me. But they could be done much sooner than that because the only requirement for how long it had to be was you have at least three nights in proper lodging. And so it could be done as early as a day after tomorrow. Yeah.

For someone. All right. So we do want y'all to come back and join our live Wednesday. 9 p.m. Eastern time where we'll wrap this all up. We'll go over those final scores. We'll actually, you know, calculate it all. So come up with an actual score for everybody. And we'll also see final budgets. Now we'll do just a few questions. Let's start off with the peppers. What is your highlight and low light so far? I mean, I did really enjoy the like beer brewing experience. But we had a really fun table at October. So it took a little while to be able to get a table. So at October fest, if you're part of a big group, you can book a table ahead of time. But if you're not, then you just have to kind of like rock up and hope that you can sit somewhere.

And it was a bit trickier tonight because it had been raining. It was a bit chilly out. So basically everyone was in the tents and inside the buildings and things like that. So it was absolutely packed. So it took a little while to get somewhere. But then we eventually managed to get upstairs outside of this place that had some outdoor heating. But we ended up at this great table with a couple of guys from Maryland and a couple of girls who are from Germany. And so we got chatting to them.

It was a really fun group to be part of. And then just the energy up there was fantastic as well. Like right next to us, there was this big group of friends who were like dancing around to all the music. Like there was live music playing inside, but it was being pumped out on the speakers outside. So it was just really, at first, the October Fest experience for the first hour, wasn't a moment. But then after that, once we'd finally gotten there and managed to like get a drink a little bit. It was fantastic.

Yeah. And drink a little bit. And have some coerced and have some Spetzel and stuff like that. I love Spetzel. It was a really fantastic experience. So I think that has been my favorite part. And that was even better than the trash robot. I think so because the trash robot was just getting in my way.

So really, yeah. Trash robot can go far away. And low light? or was that muddled in there became a low light than a highlight low light was more just how long it took us to get to October Fest today so yeah so when we landed

it was only a few minutes behind but then we had to get a bus to the terminal and then at the terminal there was a long line to get through immigration and then from immigration we had to wait a long time for a train and then that train was cancelled so we had to wait even longer for a train and then we had to like get out to our hotel so we didn't end up getting to october fest till seven seven 30-ish um and so that it was kind of a longer day so that was a little bit

disappointing because i was hoping to get to october fest by like like 36 did you have to take a bus or anything from your hotel or where are you right there um so no so um we're on the um eastern side of the city. So basically by the time we had started planning this trip, basically all the hotels anywhere close to like downtown Munich, we're all booked up. So we're on the eastern side of the city. We're still within the general metro area. But we, from the airport, we had to get one train all the way down and then just a bus to close it to our hotel. And then 15 minute walk. And then 10.15 minute walk. And then from our hotel, it was like a 10 minute walk to the local subway station and then we took one um underground train and what was super

nice is we got off our underground train and then literally the next train to get downtown to or straight to october fest was literally on the next the platform opposite us and so that made it super nice we haven't we weren't 100% sure at first when we got there if that train was going to be going there because it was because there were some trains that say that it's going to i can't even remember what And the name is like Therese and Weiss or something like that, which is where Octoberfest is. And but there were some trains that go beyond that. And we weren't 100% sure. As soon as we got there, there was this train.

It's like, well, we don't want to get on this train only to find out it's not going where we want to go. So we left that one and got one like four minutes later or something like that. But it's straightforward enough to get there from where we're staying at. It was definitely easier to get to October then from getting from the airport. Yes. How much is the transit time, roughly, from your home? hotel to that? From a hotel to there, I think it was about 45 minutes and it took just about 45 minutes to get back. One thing that I would say is that if you can't afford to stay

downtown or if like all the like downtown stuff's all fully booked up, if you can find some kind of airport hotel where you can get to the airport easily enough, there is the S1 train that goes directly from Munich Air to October Fest, Therese and Vice or however you pronounce it. And it's just like one straight shot there. And so that would actually be pretty convenient to do. So knowing that for next time, it might be more beneficial to stay up there if we couldn't book something a little bit closer by. Yeah. Nick, highlights and low lights so far? Highlights for me that have done a couple things that were a lot of fun. I mean, I've always wanted to try windsurfing and never had an opportunity where it lined up. So that's

something that I saw, right, I wanted to surf back in like 2009 and loved it. I mean, I fell so many times, barely got on the board at all, but those few times I got on the board were amazing. So I've been interested in windsurfing since whenever I first saw that, which was probably sometime after I surfed, but I just haven't had an opportunity to do it. And so that was a lot of fun. So, but I don't know, Camino de Re is so impressive, looking. I guess maybe that has to be the highlight so far

because it's really an amazing view. And it's wild when you think about the fact that people used to walk the old path. Wow. And in fact, the guide told us that there was a family. She pointed out a house in the canyon that a family lived in until sometime in the 80s and they had five kids that had to walk that path,

the old path to get to school. Yeah. So, yeah, pretty wild. Yeah, it is. So anyway. So that was a lot of fun. Low light for sure was missing the Iberia flight. I mean, the Iberia flight to Madrid was not fun and not how I would fly again.

But if I got there in time, it would have been far better than not getting there in time. So that's got to be my low light so far. And hopefully that will be the worst of the low lights. All right. Question for Greg. Are you surprised everyone chose to go to Europe, given the challenges parameters? I was thinking someone might zag to South America or maybe the Middle East. Asia was probably too far.

Yeah. Not too surprised because I know in my situation that when I looked at South America, one of the hard things was I wanted to show really good value for my hotel points. That was like a big part of what I wanted to do. And that's something that we talked a lot about in the purpose of the challenge. That's why we require at least three nights and everything. And so the problem with South America is a lot of places are really cheap in cash. And so then when you look at the value you're getting for your hotel points, it's not very good.

Middle East, it's mixed. I mean, you can actually get really good value there. So I wouldn't have been surprised at all to see someone go there. But getting much further than Europe on this budget. is difficult so uh so i don't know i i mean i'm a little bit surprised i guess that everybody chose it i didn't see that coming i thought at least nick or or tim might might head uh might head to asia somehow well you don't know where tim would have ultimately ended up well that's true that's true i don't uh he'll be updating his post at some point we just know that

he started in in europe or i had actually looked at dubai and what i had actually looked at dubai as an option. I hadn't really investigated too deeply the flight side of things, but the hotel side of things, there were some ridiculously high, in terms of sense, per point value options there. So at some point, I'll try and get some kind of post out about that, about what I actually saw. It was insane. I think it was Wyndham particularly that had some really good value options that in terms of like the differential between the points that they charge. and the cash price. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. That would have been way more awkward and later hosen. Sorry. Be hot too. I did find a number of Hilton and Marriott properties in both South America and Africa that were priced such that they would fit in the budget well for multiple nights. But exactly Greg's point is the main problem, that many of them were very inexpensive with cash also.

Or they were located in places that didn't have enough intrigue. I didn't think to be competitive. They might have been interesting and fun. There were a couple of places in South America in particular that I thought, I'd be cool because here's a city I've never even heard of and wouldn't have thought to go to, but unfortunately not enough value. They're also, by the way, I very seriously considered going somewhere in Columbia. I've wanted to go to this specific beach that I've heard is really amazing.

And I found terrific value flights to get there. And then I learned about an island that I had never heard of, a Colombian island off the coast, that looks beautiful. And again, you can get great value for points flying there. The problem in both cases is that you're limited on options. There were no points options at all on the island, so I couldn't go there. And I wanted to. I kept trying to figure out, is there some sort of weird partnerships somewhere that nobody's ever heard of?

But I couldn't find a single hotel that had any of those types of partnerships. And there was one Hilton property near the beach in Columbia that I'd like to visit. it, but it would have been hard, I think, to be competitive if that was it. Yeah. So along those same lines, what's been your biggest obstacle when booking so far? So question for Peppers and Nick. We'll start with you, Nick. Biggest obstacle when booking one points so far?

The budget. Fair. You know, it's... Which part of the budget? The points or the cash? No, well, I don't know. I mean, I said the budget, kind of joking. I think the thing with Hilton, particularly,

is that there are some properties that are well priced, but they're far out, and I didn't want to be inconveniently located for the most part. And then there were some also that looked really cool. This trip very nearly ended up being me going to Estonia and Latvia, because those are two countries I haven't been to. I've been to Lithuania, and I was super surprised and loved it. And there are SLH properties that are very reasonable in terms of the number of points in both Talon and in Riga, thank you, Enriga. And they looked really cool, and I was actually pretty excited about one of them

had a cool-looking spa too. But the cash rates, again, were pretty reasonable. So they didn't offer a lot of value for the points. And so, and I ended up coming up with a theme of things that I've wanted to do for a long time, but haven't. And once I kind of came up with that theme, there were a number of things I wanted to do that then

I took precedence over. of those obstacles I was hitting. So we'll see how that all shakes out in the end. Great question for you, Carrie. Were Estonia or Latvia on your list of secret places that would get you bonus points of visiting? Yes. Yes.

That was the plan right up in the very last minute switched plans and decided, well, when the Siberia flight came up, in fact, that's when I changed it, but I was like pretty sat on going to both of those countries. There is a methodology to the secret. destination bonus but obviously i'm not going to tell you just yet but my guess with that i had speculated with shea that you were going to be picking countries for each of us that we haven't visited before that was my supposition as to what we will say that's an interesting thought and given that you thought that it's interesting you went to london but i only thought about that the

other because i already planned this before you uh yes yes well and speak of the challenge he was like i know we're doing. Yes, very, very good. And that's a lower bonus anyway, so you shouldn't be planning your trip around that. So Peppers, biggest obstacle when booking so far, what do you think? I'd say finding a hotel in Munich. I mean, to be fair, I was surprised that I could find a hotel in Munich. And there were a few options with Wyndham that were bookable and things like that. but in terms of finding somewhere like I would love to have had somewhere where it was much more local where you could either walk to October Fest or only have to take a train like one or two stops or something like that it really hasn't been all that much of a hassle

getting to and from October Fest from where we are but it would have been so much nice if we could have been down to town so if we had had more time to plan this ahead of time so for people watching we want to go next year we want to go next year yeah like we had started like being able to book our stuff before we'd actually announce a challenge was it like mid-May or something it wasn't that long ago yeah it was more around there yeah yeah for a big yeah four yeah four or five months you'd probably need a year in advance to yeah and so i feel like yeah if you can start booking stuff in like october november december or something like that for october fest next year you'll probably have a better option like if you're wanting to use wind

points or something like that um you probably would need to pay 15,000 points rather than the 7,500 points in either we're i'm using here but you might be able to get something a little bit closer than might be a bit more convenient um so that would have been nice to have been able to find out like it's that even an option um at that time yeah or does or are those properties priced at 30 000 points um anyway because whenever i was searching like a lot of stuff was already fully but so that was my biggest obstacle, but it wasn't an obstacle, obviously, to coming to October Fest, because we managed to sort it out anyway. So it sounds like each of our competitors planned whatever they wanted. Like, so, you know, you didn't plan October Fest because

there was some kind of specific thing. You just wanted to do Octoberfest. And similarly, Nick themed his whole trip out of like, you know, here's what I feel like doing. So that's kind of neat. We have a few shoutouts before we let everyone go. We've got a shout out for Nick's Spanish cheese meal. Thank you. Good. I appreciate that someone appreciated my Spanish cheese. I'm real hot. Yes. And then we've got a shout out for Shea's

Monopoly tour that was super clever. That was a lot of fun. That was well done. And people can probably replicate that. I'm sure in your post you'll outline the stops of cool. Yes, if anyone was to do the Monopoly tour. I think, yeah, anything else from you, Greg, before we go.

I want to say again, I'm really sorry that Tim wasn't able to join us and that he had to end his trip early. I was, you know, obviously, you know, my heart goes out to him and his family for what's going on there. But he was rocking it. He had an unbelievable, you know, find with that SLH property. He managed, even with an economy flight to London, to London, to. to get to get to London comfortably.

You know, so he was doing great, and I think it would have been a very different challenge. So I'm sorry that it has to be the way it is. Yeah. And thanks for all your messages for Tim. We will pass them along. I think that's all we've got for now. Make sure to check in with us again. Wednesday, 9 p.m. Eastern Time, we will be, everyone will be home, right?

I think everyone's required to be home by then. Connect to your origin airport. Okay. Interesting. Yes, but interesting that you're noting that. Yeah, that he's different. Yeah. Came to mind.

Well, is that yet. So Boston. So Boston or home. Right, one of the other. Yes. And then you can revisit our judges post. So if you go to Frequentmiler.com, we have a little banner at the top. You can click to the landing page where you can see the last kickoff video.

You can also read everyone's journal updates. and you can see the schedule for what comes next. And I forget what else I was going to say is on there. But anyway, go there. And don't forget to like this video. Yes, and like this video. Don't forget. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list,

you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media, and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. Hi, I'm David Brody, co-host of the Travel and Ten podcast. Together, myself and my co-host, Tim Johnson, have traveled to over 150 countries around the world and all seven continents. Now we're sharing our favorite places, some of our best tips and experiences from all around the world in just 10 minutes on Travelin'10. Join us at Voyescape.com. I'm Pauline Fromer. I've spent most of my life writing, talking, and thinking about travel, not just where to go, but how to go in a way that's meaningful.

On the Frommers Travel Show, we explore the trends, people, and ideas shaping how we see the world. If you care about the why, as much as the where, I hope you'll join me. You can find new episodes weekly at voyescape.com.