Frequent Miler on the Air - Great travel tips revealed and a 100K Vacay winner is crowned | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep327 | 10-10-25

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

This podcast was recorded live on October 8th, at 9 pm ET during our 100K Vacay Annual Challenge final livestream. In that livestream we did our final scoring of Nick and Stephen's trips and crowned the 100K Vacay winner! You'll hear that livestream now, as part of this podcast episode.(You'll notice some audio quality issues with Nick's mic this week - our apologies!) Giant Mailbag(00:39) - "Hi Greg. I know your 100K Vacay trip was meant to set the benchmark, but I would love to read a post of a trip you would have done if you were competing for real to beat the other contestants. I’m sure you could have had an amazing trip that blew the other contestants away."Main Event(02:55) - Overview of challenge and rules(09:58) - Greg's benchmark trip, highs and lows(11:48) - Stephen's highest highs and lowest lows(18:15) - Nick's highest highs and lowest lows(33:03) - Here are some of the things you all flagged as dubious(38:13) - Flight deals revealed(47:09) - Other airport tricks revealed(55:11) - Hotel deals revealed(1:07:54) - Crowning the 100K Vacay winner!Questions of the Week(1:34:04) - If it weren't for this exact challenge, would you have wanted to do the trip you did? Would you recommend your exact itinerary to the rest of us?(1:37:30) - What is the hand that lost Nick the poker tournament?Subscribe and FollowVisit 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 – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Today's main event, great travel tips revealed, and 100K vacay winner is crowned. Frequent Miller on the air starts now. Today we're going to be crowning the winner of the 100KVK team challenge. As you know, every year we do a team challenge to see who can make the most of their points in miles. And this year, we were tasked with using 100,000, no more than 100,000 transferable points and $1,000 to build the greatest vacation we could. And so that is what we're going to get into in today's main event.

Moving on to the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from Grant. Grant wrote in to say, hi, Greg, I know your hundred, K vacate trip was meant to set the benchmark, but I would love to read a post of a trip you would have done if you were competing for real to beat the other contestants. I'm sure you could have had an amazing trip that blew the other contestants away. Not like that lame trip you did. I love this message because Gran at once put the ultimate slam down on my trip, like basically saying You weren't even trying to beat the other guys, but at the same time gave me this, like, great compliment.

Like, oh, I'm sure you could have beaten everybody had you only tried. So, Grant, I actually did try. I built a vacation that I thought was awesome. You know, I get that it's not as maybe fun to watch because I went to one place and stayed there. but that's what I think if when I'm vacationing that's what I prefer and so that's what I that's what I chose to do and Malta was a great vacation so I loved it but um another answer to your question is that had I been a competitor I would have wanted city thank you points not chase points um and then Tim and I would have fought over those points because he wanted city points as well well Tim's a lot

bigger than me. So he would have beat me up. And I wouldn't have been able to travel because I would have been beaten up. And so my trip wouldn't have happened. So anyway, that's the story of what would have happened had I been a real competitor. City points, eh? That deserves its own little explanation later, I think, or a post. I agree with Grant that it needs a full post. Well, city points are so interesting. There's so many interesting things you can do, especially around booking hotels with city points. And so I would have loved to have explored what was possible. And I know, I'm sure Tim enjoyed exploring what was possible, and I really wish we got to see what he did. Anyway, it's time now for the main event.

Main event time. Great travel tips revealed, and 100K vacay winner is crowned. We are going to be taking live audience questions. We're going to be reading them near the end of the show when we normally do the question of the week. And so I invite everyone who's on the live stream to go ahead. And if you have questions for us, if you have any that you've thought of now, or while we're doing the show, please post them into the comments. And Carrie's going to be, you know, skimming through them to find ones that make sense to read at the end of our broadcast. That's right. But before we get into all that, I want to remind everyone yet again what this challenge is about.

I know not all of you have been following from the beginning. So just as a reminder for this challenge, 100K vacay, we wanted all of our team to create a 100,000-point trip, the best that they could come up with. But we did it a little differently than usual. We decided to have a benchmark trip. So Greg and I were going to be the judges because it's really hard. to run a blog when literally all of us are traveling at the same time. And so we usually try to come up with, you know, some of us are judges, some of us are travelers. But, you know, Greg couldn't help himself, and he was like, I got to travel.

But in addition to kind of just being interested in traveling, we did think it would be weird to structure a 100,000 point challenge and not include Chase Ultimate Rewards points or not include city or not include you know there's there were four points currencies that felt like it made sense to include um so we wanted to include them all but chase had this kind of awkward advantage above all the others right like because of that high at partnership high a transfer ability um and this time we wanted to kind of focus on hotels it just made chase awkwardly better than everyone else which set itself really well to be the benchmark trip and the trip the judge gets to take. So I know that's like some people had had some qualms about that, but it allowed us to say, okay, can any of these other points

really compete with the one that's conventionally thought of as the best transferable points currency? Right, right. I would just want to throw in there also that there were just some practical considerations that, like, if we had had all four of us competing at the same time, then Kerry would have been alone to take care of all the blog business, write quick deals as they come up. For the first time ever. Right. You know, update the credit cards and all that stuff.

So that's just not practical. We always need somebody who's not actively competing. who's also a blog author to be available. And it's good for at least one of the judges to also be someone who knows the points in mile space really well, so they can judge some of the things that the competitors have done from the point of view of like, is that a pro move or not, that kind of thing.

Yeah, exactly. But we did have three challengers, which is something that's now kind of a standard for us. Um, our three challenges were Tim, Stephen, and Nick. Um, Tim chose city thank you rewards points. We let everyone choose their transferable points currency. Um, and Stephen chose capital one miles and Nick chose MX membership rewards points. Now, of course, um, you've only been seeing two travelers. Unfortunately, on day one, um, no sooner than he arrived in country, Tim had to turn around for some urgent needs back home. so this time we had two competitors towards the end so kind of different for us but it was just as exciting I think so we should also discuss some of the rules because I know y'all will ask so let's get that out of the way each some of the basics each vacation had to involve round trip travel this time so kind of inspired by 40k to far away but this time we wanted everyone

to make it back to the same airport they departed from. Contestants were allowed to pick whatever airport they wanted as their starting airport. They just had to return to it then. Also, we wanted each vacation to have a minimum of three nights in comfortable lodging. None of this concrete slab shenanigans that we had in Forty K to Far Away. We all loved watching some suffering out there. But we did want to be a little more on-brand with, You know, let's see some luxury this time.

So we require, and no more of this like, I know, Million Mile Madness, like no one slept in beds. So we wanted to cut everyone some slack and give them, you know, an actual rule that they had to spend three nights in comfortable lodging. Bonus points for if they stayed longer, they didn't have to cut it off at three nights. It had to be at least three nights, but they did have to be back by now to their home airport.

The budget was 100,000 points of their transferable currency that they selected and $1,000. And the $1,000 had to cover everything, all the activities, the taxes and fees, Ubers, things like that. And they weren't allowed to cash out points. So we kind of emphasize that, hey, guys, the spirit of this is to show how you can use your points well. so don't just cash out points and then do some cash Airbnb somewhere or something. Rebates didn't, rebates or gambling winnings, as it turns out. We didn't think to put that in the rules. But we did think to have a rule like this, which came in handy.

Rebates did not change your $1,000 budget. So you couldn't ever increase your $1,000 budget. You could only kind of get bonus points for getting rebates and things later in a different way. but not to increase your budget. Any transfer bonus that has occurred in the last, like, basically four or five months since we've been planning this travel challenge were a fair game to use. And you didn't have to, you know, in previous challenges, you would have to kind of like claim that like, okay, I'm officially using this transfer

bonus. We didn't make you do that. We just said, okay, if a transfer bonus comes up, you're allowed to make use of it. Pretty simple. Yep. All right. So that was the rules. And what we're going to do now is we're each going to give a quick overview of our trip.

For those who haven't been following along diligently on Instagram, you'll want to catch up at least high-level overview of what each traveler did. And we'll each include one choice from each trip of what was the highest high from our trip and the lowest low from our trip. Okay. So I'm going to start. I'm going to go probably faster than the others because my trip has been talked about a lot on previous episodes. So for my benchmark trip, I flew business class to Malta, stayed four nights at the Hyatt Centric, enjoyed great local food, did multiple tours and multiple outdoor activities. My return travel included Virgin Atlantic Premium Economy, which is very nice from London to New York. park. So I did all of that with the 100k budget. High Point is a little hard to pick, but there was one day where Keri and I went snorkeling and hiking around a local cove that was just a fantastic day, enjoying the great weather in Malta and the great water. Low Point is probably when we almost missed our flight from Belgrade to Malta. So we literally, our flight arriving in Belgrade was late, and so we literally had to run through the airport, but we made it, we did make it.

So, you know, it's not a terrible low point, but it didn't feel good while it was happening, nor on the flight in, because it was hard to sleep knowing, hey, we might be planning a day in Belgrade and running into Nick, who knows? I didn't know that part. All right. Stephen. Okay, so I started off in New York and flew from JFK to London on Virgin Atlantic. Got in at about 6.6.30 a.m. and headed straight for our hotel to drop off our bags. And I should point out here at the moment is that I brought my wife along with me and all of her

travel in terms of points and miles was all covered within my 100K budget as well. So we both headed to the hotel, dropped off our bags, headed into London. She went off and had this fantastic Monopoly themed day while I went to Brew House and Kitchen Highbury and got to brew beer all day and got to try a bunch of their, got to try nine of their different beers and take a five-liter keg with me and stuff at the end of the day. So it was a lot of fun because I've been on brewery tours before, but yeah, I've never actually made any beer. And then from there we flew to Munich because the challenge dates timed perfectly with the last two dates of Octoberfest. So we stayed just outside of the city center in a Ramada. And Ramadas outside of

the U.S. are much nicer than Ramadas inside the U.S. So don't let that put you off right now. October Fest was absolutely amazing. Had so much fun. Both nights we were there. A little unlucky with the weather because it was raining, but it kind of like didn't dampen our spirits. So that was a fantastic time. From there, we took a flex bus to Prague and we stayed two nights at the Clarion Prague Old Town. And using Choice Points, we were able to book directly into this amazing one-bedroom suite that had like the biggest terrace that I've ever seen at a hotel before. It was absolutely amazing. So yeah, we really enjoy just like standing out there, just looking out over Old Town. So we had an excellent time there. Did a couple more beer experiences. So

Czech Republic is where Pilsner comes from. So we went to the Pilsner experience. And then we also went to spa beer land where we got to spend an hour soaking in a beer bath and getting unlimited beer. And then we had an amazing or two fantastic local meals at Czech restaurant. And then the flight out of Prague would have been from Prague to Amsterdam to New York, but using virgin points, but flying on KLM. Very good. And all your flights were economy. Is that right? All of my flights were economy, correct? Yeah. I love that you did a three country beer crawl basically. I remember back when nine beers felt like a lot in that one video when you're like, I had nine beers. I was like, whoa. And then I tasted nine beers. I didn't complete nine

beers. So did you have a high point and low point in there somewhere? Oh yeah. Like high point, I think overall high point would be October 1st because it was a complete blast. And having she with me made it all that much better because I'm a bit more of an introvert. Like I'm extroverted enough that I'll enjoy that kind of thing. But if I was just sitting there by myself, I would find it much harder to ingratiate myself with people. But having Shea around, she's so much more gregarious. Like, she'll make friends.

She makes friends in the grocery storelight every single time we go and things like that. So that made it a much more enjoyable experience overall. But then I would also say Prague, like, absolutely loved it. It was like my new favourite country. And so we're definitely going to be going back. No point is that we both got sick about like 24 to 36 hours ago. So our last day in Prague, although it was fun, we weren't feeling amazing and we'd plan to go to a place that someone at

October Fest had recommended called it's some kind of dog bar in Prague like it's a dog think bar so I thought that you particularly know oh yeah love that but yeah on the final night we were just absolutely toast and it's like yeah we're not walking 20 minutes and our livers were like done by that point so I'm not going for like one more drink right now we headed back to the hotel and that was a wise move you need How many beers did you, were you served the entire trip, do you know? Well, at the brewery experience, I was served nine beers and I'd say, and they were half pints, and I probably drank in total about five half pints, so about two and a half pints.

Then at Octoberfest, they served in Steins that are like one liter each. The first night I had two litres, the second night I had three litres. So about four pints the first night, six pints the next, which is the most beer I've had in a long, long time. And then in Prague, you get like these smallish paws at Billsner. It's certainly not like a pint or anything like that. So in total, like two and a half three beers were probably about a pint's worth. And then at the spa beer land for the beer spa, I think I probably had like maybe a pint and a half. or something like that.

So, yeah, Shay and I, like, Shea doesn't even like beer for the most part, but this actually converted her a little bit. She drank beer on the strip and enjoyed it a little bit more. But, yeah, I think we're going to be not only because we're feeling sick at the moment, but I think we're going to be teetotel for at least. Right, right. Well, and you weren't even counting how much beer from the beer spa got into you through osmosis from your skin.

And my t-shirt, like the t-shirt I was wearing that day. You have to, like, create all the water. And so you're, like, pushing down on all this malted barley with, like, this giant thing just to mix it all up and make sure it all gets moist and damp. But it all just kept splattering back up and all over my face, all over my t-shirt. I'm so glad I brought extra clothing just because that immediately. I bet. Wow. So much beer.

It was so much fun. All right. Well, great job. That was so much fun to watch. If anyone's message, go to Instagram, find Friggen-Miler there, find the, if you go to her profile, you'll see there's like day one through six or one through seven recap videos and you can just watch them in order. You'll see Stephen making beer. You'll see him singing at, at, at, at, uh, yeah, singing with strangers. I can't believe that.

Yeah. Um, if you, it's in our highlight reel. So our highlight reel includes all the daily recaps. Okay, yeah. So go there. Go there. All right. Nick, you got your microphone sorted out?

Hopefully. I don't know. Okay. So I'll talk about what I did. I flew Iberia. So they ran a sale about a month ago. And I always tell readers that you have to strike. Well, the iron is hot.

You have to jump on the good deals when they come around. And so I decided to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. And plan a trip around the great deal. they were offering. So I booked Iberia economy class from Boston to Madrid for 6,400 Avios one way. And then in Madrid, I was scheduled to fly Iberia to Malica, but unfortunately, my Iberia flight was delayed. And so unlike Greg, I didn't almost miss my next flight. I did miss my next flight. So didn't make the connection. And I made the mistake of booking them separate tickets, which in hindsight, I suppose, was a mistake, although I think I've said the last

time we talked about this, that in all of the challenges, I think it was the first of us to miss a flight. So we have not had that bad luck before, but this time I did. So I missed that flight and had to scramble to book Air Europa to get to Malaga, but I still did get there. And that was important because that same day, I had a reservation to hike Caminito del Rey, which is a really cool hike outside of Malaga. It's about an hour train ride from Malaga to a place called El Choro, and then you take a shuttle bus from there to this hike that it's built along the edge of a cliff or into the side of a cliff. You really have to just Google pictures of it to understand, but it's a path that is, again, kind of attached to the side of the cliff all the way around,

and it provides some amazing views. It's a pretty thrilling experience. I am afraid of heights, And so I actually decided for this trip I was going to do a bunch of things that I kind of always wanted to do it. So I started out with the theme of conquering my fear of fights. So I did Cominito Del Rey. That was fun.

And then I stayed that night at a small luxury hotels of the world property called Palacio Celessio in the old center of Malaga. And I would wholeheartedly recommend staying there, both, hey, because it's just kind of cool. It's an old 18th century palace

turned into a hotel. I think the basterms might all be in the annex building next door. So the room itself is not in the palace, but it's still very nice. It certainly feels very high end like an SLOH property typically does. And the location is terrific. I didn't actually play that up enough probably when I did footage that you might have seen or not seen on Instagram yet.

But it was such a good location. I went out several times that night just to walk around and like people watch because there were so many people and it was right in the old center. So that was a great place. I would totally recommend staying again. And then from there, the next day, the thing I've always wanted to do but hadn't done before was windsurf. That was something that jumped out of me right away. When I started playing this truck, I said, oh, this is an opportunity to try to learn windsurfing because you can do that in that area.

So I went and did a windsurfing lesson that became a private lesson. And it was kind of lucky in that regard that just nobody else had signed up that day. And so I got a wind surfing lesson. I got to get out on a windsurf board. and that was a good time. It wiped me out, though. It was hard work doing that. So I was pretty exhausted afterwards,

but I had a lot of fun doing it for the most part. I'm going to say for the most part, because if you get seasick easily, windsurfing is kind of like having a tiny sailboat at your feet. So after about 90 minutes of that, it did start to get to my stomach a little bit. So, yeah, there's that too. But I had fun.

Like when the wind's going and you start moving and you're holding out of the sale. I mean, it's definitely a lot of fun. So I would totally do it again. And then after that, I spent that night closer to the airport in Malaga. I used Too Good to Go, which I'll talk more about later on to eat. But I'll get back to that, like I said, later on, I think, in the show. And stayed near the airport because the next day I flew from Malaga, Spain, to Belgrade, Serbia.

And I had actually booked a ticket from Malaga to Belgrade to Sofia, Bulgaria. and use the multi-city tool on Google Flights to do that. Again, I'll come back to that a little bit later and why I did that, I think, too, when we talked about some of the tricks we discovered. So in Belgrade, I stayed at the St. 10 Hotel, which is another boutique hotel, small luxury hotels of the world property,

right in the kind of center of Belgrade, right where you want to be, the neighborhood where all of the cool stuff to see is. So it was a great place to stay, and it had a cool backstory because it used to be the host of what hosted many MI6 spies

so it has a history of one of the characters that inspired Ian Fleming to write the James Bond story Casino Royale stayed there apparently numerous times as did other MI6 agents

and it was just kind of a place where some of the wealthy and powerful ambassadors and politicians used to hang out back in the day I guess so very cool place that has that feel the Wi-Fi password

in fact was James Bond so they're leaning into So that was a lot of fun, and I met up there with a friend. So I had met a guy from Serbia years ago at a work event for a job I did previously, and he really intrigued me about visiting Serbia because it was a place that had never been on my radar before I met him. It wasn't a place that I thought of as a tourist destination. And I realized as I talked to him, I had an image of what I thought Serbia looked like.

And as I talked to him, I realized that my image was probably wrong. And so that to me is one of my favorite things about travel is kind of challenging the assumptions that we have about people and places and things. So I have wanted to visit him in Serbia ever since because I just thought it was interested in to learn about a place that hadn't been on my radar. So I was very excited to meet up with him. He showed me around, told me all about the history of Serbia. It was really interesting.

We had a great conversation about all sorts of different stuff. and then you get to a great dinner there in Belgrade. And from Belgrade, I flew on to Sofia, Bulgaria. And I picked Sophia Bulgaria because I love to play poker. I don't get to do it very often. I'm a family guy these days. So I'm not taking off to casinos very often to play poker, but it's something I really love to do.

And I've always wanted to play a big multi-day poker tournament, but they're usually really expensive. And so I found that there was this Vamos poker tour that goes around Europe, a lot of times to some of the kind of more budget-friendly, destinations in Europe. And they host these relatively large, guaranteed poker tournaments for very reasonable buy-ins. So I went there to play a two-day poker tournament and made it through the first day. It lasted until they cut off play at about 2.30 a.m. So played until 2.30 in the morning and hung in there, didn't get knocked out. And so I got to come back the next day and continue

playing. And that was really cool. I was the only American playing the tournament. It was mostly people from Bulgaria and Spain, but that was a lot of fun because, you know, you have a lot of interesting conversations then and you get the energy of it. If you're not a poker player, I can understand where you might not imagine why that's kind of exciting and cool, but it is to take my word for it. It was a lot of fun. So that was a blast. Had a great time. I also did their free walking tour in Sofia and learned about the history of Bulgaria, which is another place that I knew very little about. I discovered the more I learned about it. So that was also very interesting and cool. We had a great local tour guide tried some local food there and so it was a good time and then i flew back to boston and

i got to boston just a couple hours ago landed around 7 p.m. local and by 8 p.m i was in my hotel waiting for this live stream uh what about the highlight and low light really tough for me to pick a highlight i mean you know literal high i guess was uh sort of coming into del re because that was the 300 feet above the ground at the points there. But I've always wanted to windsurf. So when the board started moving and I was holding the sail and not falling, that was awesome. But I was so jazzed up about the poker tournament, too, that that to me probably was the highlight for me. But I, you know, I think that before the trip, I was equally excited about windsurfing. And I enjoyed the windsurfing very much. It was just the poker tournament. I felt it was very unique and not necessarily in the

broadly interesting way for many, many folks. But for me, it was a lot of fun. I think our viewers enjoyed that, too. I think viewers were interested. I mean, it was kind of a cool thing. If you saw on Instagram, they did a reel, the Vimal Spoker did a real and I happened to make an appearance in the real. So it was just kind of locked at that got featured.

Looking so serious, like such a spy. He was, yeah. The spy with the freaking Milo head on and myel sweatshirt. Well, I don't know if Carrie told you, but I asked her to design the hoodie specifically because I know that, I mean, I knew they had social media and they record stuff and I was like, I want something that says Freakomiler right here so that if there's a camera, you know, it gets caught on there. No, that's awesome. No, I did not know that. And I'll tell you, I had made the decision ahead of time as a judge. Like, I wanted to be surprised by what the guys were happening. Like, Carrie needed to know for

various reasons, like at least outlines of their trips, but there was no reason for me to know that. So there's also no particular reason for me not to know it except for my own enjoyment, I guess. But that poker tournament thing was such a great surprise. It was so much fun to see that. I also love the, you know, the drama of, you know, when things go very wrong, like so you have a budget constraint and going in to bet it all. in order to get into the tournament. The one thing, I was a little disappointed. We didn't hear much about how you won at those first games in order to move on to

be able to get enough to move on to the tournament. Yeah, I mean, I had to play pretty aggressively. So what Greg's referring to is the fact that I missed that Iberia flight in the beginning. So I had to make a save to get that figured out to fit into the budget still. And I had originally budgeted for the poker tournament I wanted to play. But when I missed that flight in the beginning, that caused a problem because I had to reorganize stuff in order to pay for a makeup flight. And so that left me short of the amount of money I needed in order to buy into the poker

tournament, though I still had money and just not enough to buy in. So I said, you know what? I'll sit down at a poker table with $100 and see if I can make enough money. I needed about $200 to register for the poker tournament, see if I can make enough money to get into the poker tournament. And it was a pretty timid crowd, to be honest with you. So it was, it was kind of easier than I might have expected to push around and get people to hop out of pots. But, but ultimately, I got very lucky with what's called set over set.

So I ended up with a set of jacks and another person had a set of eights. And that's a situation as a just sometimes the stars align like that. I've been on the other end of that same thing before. Both players have a set. And so the chips are going to probably go in no matter what. and I just happened to get lucky. I was on the right under the left. So that bumped me up over the edge.

And then I was able to, it was really happened quickly. It was less than an hour. And I was into the poker tournament. So the many poker tournaments allow late registration for quite a while. And this one actually allowed late registration the entire first night and into the next day. So more people joined that next day.

It was a little crazy to join at that point because the lanes were so high. But at any rate, so I had plenty of time to make the money, but it was less than an hour. I was in the Punkert tournament. So it was a lot of fun. That's an amazing, amazing story. I have so many questions about that still. But low light, we need to know probably missing that flight. Yeah, low light was certainly missing the flight.

And that was so disappointing because I got to the airport in Boston for my flight to Madrid. And when I got to the airport, I was looking at my flight, my Bay Area flight in Google flights, you know, on the phone, taking a look to make sure everything was scheduled and going on time. And it had it scheduled to arrive 20 minutes early when I arrived at the airport. So I thought, oh, great, I'm going to get to Madrid even earlier than I expected. I'm going to have time to go to a priority pass restaurant and pick up some snacks and whatnot, which I did end of time for that. But at any rate, so I was excited. Everything was going well. And then I got to the gate for boarding and they weren't ready to board yet.

And then they still weren't ready to board. And everybody was standing around wondering what's going on and people were starting to get a little upset. because nobody knew what was happening. A couple times they announced they were waiting for the cleaners to get off the plane. And so that turned into, we went from supposed to arrive 20 minutes early to arriving more than 90 minutes late. And so that was, that was very unfortunate.

Yeah. Especially because, like, as we're in the air and I'm trying to figure out when we're going to get there, am I going to make it? I'm realizing it's very unlikely that I was a bummer because I knew that was going to make everything else harder. Yeah. Yeah. One other thing I want to say about the gambling part is going back to that is that it's also been fun reading the comments in Next Journal because people take these games, meaning the team challenges. Some people take them very seriously and care about the rules, you know, very much. And we had rules, we had rules, but this was such a great.

area that like when I saw what Nick did I was like oh yeah that that works within the spirit of their rules but I could see why if you read the rules you might not interpret the rules that way and we certainly didn't anticipate that situation when we were writing the rules right like that wasn't something that came up um you know Nick from the beginning it's not like I came in thinking oh this is what I'm going to do so I'm not enter a thousand dollar poker tour and I'll see if I could make the money you know it wasn't like that right right right let's if I could win, you know, $10,000 and then go to, you know, the four seasons and look how I get to the four seasons for only $1,000. You know, that, that's not what was happening.

Anyway, so anyway, I love reading all that. I love how people like to point out those issues, but it was not just with next situation where people were pointing out issues. We collected some of the red flags that people have thrown out there. And, Carrie, do you want to tell us, like, What are people saying about all of our trips that maybe wasn't so kosher, according to the rules? Right. You guys are good judges, all of you out there. Or rather, I'll say you're all strict judges. And so we've had little nipicks about everybody's trip, for instance. Greg, not all of you thought it was in the spirit of replicability to use a chef to prepare a picnic on the beach ahead of time. and then only account for the cost of the food.

So, fair enough, I guess. Yeah, I take that. You know, that's not something I thought about at the time. Not everyone has a chef friend right near them. And so, yeah, totally. In your defense, though, you did meet that chef on the free website, the free couch surfing forum. So, I mean, it's replicable and not replicable at the same time.

It's like, it's imaginable. I mean, not only is it imaginable, but like the first time you didn't pay him. Exactly. You did it the first time. That's right. So I've done it twice. Right. He's chef for you for free, basically.

Just getting more used out of the same chef. For those who didn't watch our challenge six years ago, 40K to far away, Greg met this chef that he reused this challenge. originally on a couch surfing forum and the guy just created that literally for the cost of food, that picnic. Yeah, well, and so during the 40K to far away challenge, he had, it was his idea to prepare a sunrise breakfast looking on a sort of hilltop

looking down on Johannesburg and so that's what we did and that was amazing. So the sunset picnic in Malta was a, you know, very deliberate nod back to that picnic from 40K to far away. Now, I do think you could replicate a trick that Bjarno, the chef, used. He had some conversations with the chef working in the lounge at the at the restaurant, at the restaurant in the Hyatt. And so, you know, you could do that.

You could chat with the chef at the restaurant and get some ideas for your own picnic. Anyway We're not going to litigate all these things That was Craig's red flag You guys brought up some red flags For Stephen as well Everybody loved Shea's Monopoly Tour

A few of you said Now wait a minute Shea's activities Are not included in Stephen's budget Only her flights So should her creativity Around this Monopoly tour Really be going

to Stephen's destination wow points I mean I think y'all are being a little strict there he brought Shay along and I think most of those activities were free

and they could certainly be free basically like pretty much everything she did could be recreative for basically the cost of a one day travel card the main expenses for her were a lunch at a restaurant called rules which is the oldest restaurant joints in London. And because that's a super fancy place, the price is accordingly quite high.

And then she went and had a drink at the Great Scotland Jard Hotel. And again, like a cocktail at a really nice hotel like that is also expensive. So that was the vast majority of her expenses for that. So if you aren't worried about doing that, then yeah, like her stuff would be easily replicable because everything else was like pretty much free. Yeah. And literally replicable because I think she's putting she's publishing it in your journal right the yeah she's going to be inviting a separate post like explaining about everything that she did and how to get from like place to place and stuff like that so yeah once she's feeling better then yeah we'll definitely have that up on the blog perfect but some of y'all thought a little cheeky to use shay's creativity there

for stephen's destination wow since she's not fully enveloped in his budget but um okay we hear you um and then nick even though gregg and i got an absolute care out of the whole meta Mr. James Bond trying to turn $100 into a $200 buy-in. Not all of you guys

thought that that was above board. Some of you guys thought that that was a little cheeky as well and against the sort of spirit of the budget and the general rules. So, yeah, we're listening to the red flags.

The judges have taken it into consideration. It's going to be to put it. but now we want to get into our main topic right Greg yeah well so the reason one of the reasons we do these challenges every year is because it pushes us to um you know find great ways to use points and miles and other travel um tricks to save money or to um do things better and so the this part of the show is going to be travel tips revealed. What did we find out during this challenge that, you know, that's worth highlighting. In some cases, these are things we already knew, but it's just worth pointing out what a great deal this is. And in other cases, it's things that truly are new, at least to us. So, Stephen, tell us about how much it costs to fly from London. I mean, from New York to London. So from New York to London and also for Boston to London,

you can book Virgin Atlantic from only 6,000 Virgin points one way. It depends on if it's off-peak or peak during peak times, the cost is 12,000 points when it's at its lowest. And Virgin does use dynamic pricing, so sometimes you'll see it's much more than 12,000. They have like all kinds of weird dynamic pricing where sometimes you'll see economy ridiculously high, say like 57,000 points. Well, premium economy will be 14,000 points or something like that.

Premium economy has higher taxes and fees, but yeah, it's a no-brainer which one to go for if you find yourself needing to travel on a fixed date in that particular situation. But, yeah, you can find a lot of 6,000-point award availability. And Virgin has a reward seat checker where you can scan by month, any particular route from the U.S. to the U.K. or vice versa, just to see what the pricing will be and how many seats there are. And that's a super useful tool. So, yeah, check that out if you're interested in taking that kind of flights. Great. Now, Nick, you've got a different way to fly cheaply to Europe. Tell us about that. Yes. Well, so I used Iberia obvious to get to Europe.

And like I said, before, they had a great sale. And sometimes Iberia does run great sales. We've seen them run fantastic sales on business class before. I remember some sales we've seen where they've run business class for around 25,000 obvious one way. It's not common, but when we see it, it's oftentimes in the fall, from my recollection, from past sales. So they had a sale, and it was an advertised sale. It wasn't a mistake.

It was an advertised sale. It was advertised for a certain time period. And so it was 6,400 obios for what is the equivalent of sort of a basic economy from New York or Boston or Washington, D.C., and I believe Chicago, to Madrid. It was, again, 6,400, obvious, an economy, or basically economy, 10,000 in sort of full economy. And so I used 6,400 on the way there and 10K on the way back. During that same sale, there was some premium economy availability, too, for a couple thousand points more. I saw some from Chicago, but it just didn't line up perfectly.

I think the availability I saw from Chicago was actually on the day of our first live stream. And so I couldn't have made the live stream and taken the premium economy. So it just wasn't available in the right day when we needed it. So that's a program to keep an eye on though, because Iberia tends to charge

less in taxes and fees than British Airways does. And so if they run a sale, great. And if not even, so I paid again about 16,400 a Vios altogether around trip. But the normal economy price, I believe, is 16. thousand on all of those routes. So I paid about half place, but still for about 16,000 avios more than what I paid, you could build the same exact trip. Great.

Stephen, tell us about flying from Europe to the US. What did you find? Yeah, when I was looking into flights, I'm from Prague to JFK, came across the fact that with Virgin Atlantic points, you can use only 16,000 points plus just over $200 in taxes and fees, at least from Prague anyway, to fly on KLM. And that's particularly interesting because usually if you want to fly from KLM from Europe to the US, you're looking at 25,000 flying blue miles. And you might get it for a discount during flying blue promo rewards where that'll get discounted by 25%, which makes it 18,750 miles. But yeah, this Virgin Atlantic pricing is even cheaper at 16,000 points. And because, I don't know, I've never actually checked all the data on this. So I could be wrong on this, but I feel like we have

proportionally more transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic than we do with Flying Blue. We get a decent number of Flying Blue, but I feel like Virgin Red and Virgin Atlantic show up a bit more frequently. So you can get that kind of price for even cheaper. Yeah, very good. Okay. And I'm going to talk about my premium economy flight from London to New York. Virgin Atlantic, if you could find them, they actually have a lot of availability when I've been watching for only 10,500 Virgin miles to fly premium economy from London to New York. That's the good news.

The bad news is they're going to charge $500 in surcharges on top of that. And so the thing I found was that by starting your flight elsewhere, specifically I started from Amsterdam, still using Virgin Atlantic miles, I was able to search from Amsterdam to New York, and it was able to route me on KLM economy from Amsterdam to London, so that really short flight. And then London to New York, it only cost $4,000. additional miles for that little, that extra hop. So it costs 14,500 miles, but it dropped the surcharges down to $277, so almost in half to add that extra leg in the beginning. So that is a fantastic deal to fly, mostly premium economy from Europe to get to New York. Okay, Nick, tell us about

multi-city and why you'd want to do that. Yeah, so I kind of discovered or, or kind of reminded myself of Google's multi-city functionality. So originally I was looking at, like I said, flying from Malaga to Sofia, Bulgaria. And the cheapest itinerary that came up was on Air Serbia. But the connection was awful. I would have been arriving in Belgrade at 4.10 in the afternoon and then connecting to go to Sophia after midnight, like almost 1 o'clock in the morning and arriving at like 3 o'clock in the morning.

And that didn't sound like fun to me at all. I wouldn't have really a chance to do anything in Belgrade, and I'd be getting to Sofia at 3 in the morning, and that's kind of a tough time to be checking into a hotel. So that didn't sound good to me, but I realized, well, they probably have a daytime flight, I would think, if they have a midnight flight. They must have a daytime flight.

And oftentimes, if you have a connection time of less than 24 hours, it's still kind of chises as though it was a single one way. So even though Google flights only showed me one option on Air Serbia, the one that I just outlined for a one-way search. When I changed to a multi-city search, and I put in that first day that I wanted to fly to Belgrade, and then I put in the next day for the flight from Belgrade to Sofia to see if there was a daytime flight on that.

And sure enough, there was. And so, spoiler alert, I was able to spend about 21 hours in Belgrade, and it priced exactly the same as the awful conviction did. So it was the same exact price to the penny as the flight that wasn't very good. So I think the takeaway there is sometimes to look at those multi-city routings because there are times when I'll look up a one-way ticket and the connections just seem unpleasant. And so it might be worth checking out that multi-city. So it's a drop-down where you look at round trip one-way or multi-city and then just put

in the different dates to see what comes up available. Sometimes you'll be surprised, and that's a trick that I've used also. Sometimes when you're doing a round chip, so to speak, between the U.S. and Europe, but you're flying to and from different cities, sometimes the pricing can be much more favorable on a multi-city bookend than on two separate one-way bookings. So that's also a little chipping. Yeah. All right. So that was great.

Those were some flight deal tricks and tips. Now we're going to talk about some other airport tricks that we learned or were got to use on. this trip, on these trips. So first on my trip, I didn't even mention before that Kerry went with me on my trip. Not as part of my budget, but on a sort of separately, but, you know, we flew together. When we got to JFK to get to security, I remembered that Carrie does not have TSA precheck. And there's no freaking way I'm going to I'm going to wait in the regular line. And I didn't want to separate with care. No, anyway, I remembered that Nick had had told me about this VIP1 lounge that's at JFK, at Terminal 1, where you can use priority pass to get

into that lounge. The lounge is. itself is terrible. I mean, you don't use this for the lounge. You use it because it has a magic doorway. So when you go in, you could go left into the crappy lounge or you could go right through the magic doorway. You want to go right. And what the magic doorway does is there's a person there that escorts you, well, you come out right at the front of the line where people are putting their bags on the belt. Like that's where you come out. And, and, and, And the person who's like assigned to do this kind of blocks the people who had been standing in line for an hour and a half and lets you in front of them. And you feel like a total jerk.

But at the same time, you get through JFK security. And it took us like five minutes flat. And that was, that was awesome. So why do you pay for a precheck, right, Greg? What was that? Who needs precheck? Who needs free check? Yeah.

If you always fly. Out of JFK Terminal 1, no need for P-check. Writing along with you, like, it felt like it just materialized in front of you. You were like, oh, let's try this thing. It's like, okay, we can go inside, and five minutes later, I just thought you created it there out of manifestation powers. Oh, I need to quickly tell. So, Maisie, who also joined us in Malta,

was the culinary concierge as a throwback from the three, Card Street Continent's trip. She has a great story about this VIP1 thing, which is she was at JFK once. The lines were super long. She was going to miss her flight. She saw some famous person in the like food world, I can't remember who, that seemed to know where she was going. And she decided to follow that person. She was like, surely this important famous person does not have to wait in these lines. And that person went to the VIP1 last. And Masey followed her right in and saw the priority pass thing and used her priority pass, which he has because being friends with me, she ended up getting Amex Platinum card and whatnot.

Anyway, and so she got right through. So that was her way of discovering it herself. I just thought that was such a funny story. It's definitely a VIP experience. The VIP1 Lounge is not overselling on that one, right? The lounge part. remove that one. Allow it just like an office party.

Anyway. Okay, Nick, you have another sort of security thing. Yeah. So I was in Madrid this afternoon this morning, this, sometime today I was in Madrid. And I noticed signs for a fast track for security that had an American Express logo on it. And so I stepped out of the line I was in to figure out what that's all about. And I hadn't realized or had forgotten. I don't know which at this point,

but that MX platinum card holders get expedited airport security in some places. And so they have it in Madrid and I think a couple other places in Spain from what I've heard from readers now. So if you have an MX platinum card theoretically, you can get expedited security. Now, my understanding is that in Spain that's supposed to, to be for cards issued in Spain. But I went to that security checkpoint, and there was no line. And there were a few people I saw going through that presumably had airline elite status

that were going through that fast track, scanning their boarding passes and going through. I scanned my boarding pass, and it wasn't a surprise to me that it didn't work, but there was an attendant there. So I asked her how it works, and I showed my platinum card. And she said, oh, you're a platinum code older than she took my platinum code and looked at it front and back and handed it back to me. And then said, okay, go ahead and go through. must have pressed some button somewhere because then I was able to scan my boarding pass and

go through. And I, like I said, she looked at the front and back. She didn't ask me where it was issued, but I mean, it does say you ask on the back of that thing. She didn't seem to care. So anyway, I went right through there again, no line at all for security. I got in there and people were super friendly. In fact, my water bottle still had water, I realized. And I was like, oh, and I was kind of looking around for a place to pour it out. And the security lady said, drink, drink, chug, chug, chag. You, I don't tell you a bit better. I know.

I was like, who are you? No, so yes. That was very easy. I was through security in two minutes. So that was awesome. And apparently there are other places. Greg,

you said that they have that in, I don't know if it's the same thing, but in Toronto for certain, it depends where you're going, I think, from Toronto Airport. But there's places where the platinum card will get you through a priority plane.

Yep. That's great. That's a good tip. Okay. And, tell us, I didn't know where else to put this, but talk a little bit about priority pass restaurants. Yeah, so most cards that have priority pass access have cut off the ability to use it at restaurants. However, the U.S. bank cards maintain restaurant access. And so if

you still have an altitude reserve card, you'd get access to priority pass restaurants. But the part that's still available now, the U.S. Bank Altitude Connect Connect card. It has no annual fee, and it comes with four priority pass visits per year. Now, You could use those at regular priority pass lounges, or you can hang on to them for priority pass restaurants, since that one still has restaurant access. So that's what I do. I have the U.S. Bank priority pass earmarked just for restaurant use, and I use a different priority pass when I want to go to lounges.

So in Europe, there are quite a few restaurants. In fact, several of the airports that I went to had priority pass restaurants in some cases more than one of them. In the United States, priority pass restaurant access gives you a credit of $28 per person. person. And with that U.S. Bank Altitude Connect, your four visits per year, you would use one visit for each person in your party. So if there's two of you, it would use up two of your visits. I was by myself, so I was only using one at a time. And in Europe, you get 23 euros. And a nice difference in Europe from many of the priority past restaurants that I've seen in the U.S. anyway is that the ones in Europe that I saw were almost all takeaway places. So they weren't places where you had to sit and order and wait. And, and, then eventually tip also. Rather, they were just grab and go places where you could get sandwiches and pastries and coffees and whatever it is you wanted to take with you. So I went to several of those and I loaded up on snacks that I brought around with me as I traveled that I ate

to tie myself over in between activities or whatnot. In fact, today when I went to get on the plane to fly back here, I got a coffee, I grabbed a ham sandwich, I grabbed a muffin for the plane and I ate that stuff on the plane, so it was, uh, I don't know, it was great. That's awesome. Um, all right, let's switch gears into hotel deals. Um, so again, these are, these are not necessarily things that we, uh, discovered as much as that we got to take advantage of during, during this trip in, in many cases. Um, Stephen, um, you got to take advantage of a nice quirk of the choice privileges program. Yeah. So in, um, Prague, I had quite a few different hotel options. Um, they're, both with Choice and with Wyndham, but I specifically picked Choice because the Clarion Prague Old Town

let you book straight into the one-bedroom suite if there's a ward availability. And that's often, well, I was going to say often the case, that used to be fairly frequent with Choice, where if they have one-bedroom suites and other kind of like special room types available, you'll be able to book those were the standard number of points. I found anecdotally over the last year or two that that doesn't seem to be quite as prevalent anymore. You can still find these deals like I obviously did now. And so it's absolutely worth checking out the hotels where you're going to be visiting with choice just because you might be able to snag a much better room than you would do otherwise. But it does seem like they've cut out some of those avenues, both with choice properties and the

Braddison properties that they absorbed in, what, two or three years ago now. So it feels like some hotels are clocked on to the fact that, okay, we're letting you book with like 8,000, 10,000, 12,000 points, these absolutely amazing rooms that should be going for like hundreds of euros or something like that. So, yeah, check it out because there are some absolutely amazing deals. This was one of our favorite hotel room stays that we've had for a while. It was just incredibly impressive. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that looked wild. Awesome. Okay. And Nick, a couple things I'm hoping you could talk about. One is both involving using Hilton points. One is about booking relatively cheap SLH stays that seem luxury stays relatively cheap with Hilton points. But also what you could do with Hilton points in cash, which is a little different from most of other hotel programs. Yeah. So I had kind of set my sights when I decided I wanted to go to Europe. I set my sights on looking for reasonably priced, small luxury hotels of the world properties because I think most of us tend to think of the SLH properties as being super high end and therefore costing tons and tons of points. But Europe actually has quite a lot of reasonably priced SLH properties. When I say reasonably priced, I mean reasonably priced awards. So the place I stayed the first night was 60,000 Hilton points per night. But thanks to. a transfer bonus. That was only 24,000 amex points per night. And the cash rate for my room was $511. When you look at my numbers, that's what it shows. But I explained probably in the real that I did that I booked actually a single room because that's what was available the night that I wanted to stay in that place. The next night, I could have booked a double room for two people. And that room

was even more expensive. So that room would have looked like an even better volume, more like $600 a night. So well over two cents per AMX point at that particular property. And then the St. 10 Hotel in Belgrade, if you look up best hotels in Belgrade, they're going to be in the top three or four in almost every list that I saw. And rightfully

so. It's a very nice hotel. Very good service. So both places were great, and I concentrated a bit on looking for those types of places. There were others I consider them, too. There's one in northern Italy that looked really cool. There were some food festivals in Italy that frequently happened.

during that first week of October that just weren't this year there were a bunch of food and wine festivals and one after another I was like oh this sounds so good that's awesome that's going to be the trip and then I found that it was happening like the week before the week afterwards

yeah several times for that but anyway so that's that's one tip look for those reasonably priced SLH properties in Europe but the other part you were talking about is points and money points what we call points in cash usually but I think Hilton calls points in money specifically and that's

where you can pay fewer points and pay a cash copen. And so I wrote a post a while ago about how the value you get or the price you pay depends on the value of the points for the stay. So Hilton actually does the map to figure out how many cents per point essentially you're getting when you redeem points for the full cash rate. And as you decide to pay fewer points, then the amount you spend in cash is going to be essentially buying back the points for the same cost. And so I wanted to sort of buy back some points in the sense that I wanted to free up more points for other things. And so I wanted to use fewer Hilton points in a couple of situations. So I picked hotels where I was able to do that essentially pay less to keep more points in my pocket.

And so if you check out that post, I wrote a while ago about points in cash and how to kind of game that system with Hilton, that'll help you there. The other reason I did that is because readers that pointed out that this could be a potentially good way to use your quarterly Hilton credits if you've got a card that offers those or several codes that offer quarterly Hilton credits. And so I paid about $50 out of pocket at two different places and I put those on cards that get quarterly Hilton credits. So that, of course, didn't count in terms of reducing my out-of-pocket spend for the purposes of the challenge. It still counted as though I was spending that, but it's nice to be able to get those rebates and save yourself some points

while you're doing it. And it counted towards your sort of net costs for the overall trip, but not, yeah. With those $50 credits, have you had a chance to check if they've actually credited yet? One has. The other one hasn't yet, but I assume it will. I assume it just takes a couple of days. So the one that hasn't yet was the Belgrade. And that was, what, two days ago I checked out of them. So I just assume it hasn't, the charge has. been on my card enough days yet for that one day. Because one thing I was curious about was whether or not that would work, because with Hilton Amex offers, it always says that you can't book an advance purchase rate.

So basically where Hilton is charging the money up front, that doesn't trigger amex offers, whereas if you pay it the property, it does. And so I was figuring that in this case, if Hilton is the one processing it, I wasn't too sure, but because it's also not an Amex offer, it's a credit, it's a little bit different. So I haven't had a chance to this happen. you pay it at the hotel it's not paid so when you're when you're booking a points in money stay with with hilton uh steven was assuming that you're pre-paying that money to hilton but you're not you pay that at the hotel so that's why it does work to trigger that that's a good point i understand what

you're you were thinking there but yeah so it also means you end up earning points on the cash amount that you pay out of pocket too so really that reduced the number of net points i had to used by a little bit. I didn't get too into the weeds and not in terms of the clinic from costs. But yeah. Yep. All right, cool. So another great use of hotel points is often, it's often the case that when there's something happening, when there's a event going on in a town, or it's a certain holiday or whatever, cash rates go way up, but the point prices don't necessarily change to reflect that. And in those case, you can often get outstanding value. And real briefly, both Stephen and Nick, you both saw this

happen in your trip. So, Stephen, why don't you go first? So yeah, with the remandah that I stayed at in Munich, it was only 7,500 Wyndham points. And because I have a Wyndon business owner card, I get a 10% discount on that, which reduces the cost to 6,750 points. And the cash rate for that hotel for my dates was just over $450 per night. It was absolutely insane. Like, it was a nice enough hotel, but it was not $450 per night, especially because it wasn't even kind of properly downtown. It was easy enough to get downtown for October 1st. It was only a like 10 to 12 minute walk to the local tube station and then just two quick tubes into the city. But yeah, it wasn't worth, it wasn't worth 450 bucks, but it absolutely was worth the 7,500 points or 6,750. So yeah,

it's amazing what you can save. And the fact that Wyndham hasn't yet gone to dynamic pricing or something like that for when cash rates are high. So it's one of the few programs where you can generally get solid, outsized value from that kind of thing. Great. Nick. Oh, yeah. So I booked the Hilton in Sofia, Bulgaria that was essentially very close to the place for the poker tournament was, the hotel where the casino where the poker tournament

was, and it was expensive by Sofia, Bulgaria standards anyway. That hotel I've seen other times when I looked around, it's really reasonably priced, but that particular week I wanted to be there and it was more than $300 a night and that was

more than $300 a night when it was still available, and then it sold out, and And then actually, I don't even know if I told this part of the story, but it was showing up as sold out when I looked up the nights for cash individually separately, but I was able to book them together as an award. And so I was able to book it for 40,000 points per night, even though, like I said, one of those nights was showing up as sold out entirely when I searched for that night by itself. So that's another tip I think with Hilton sometimes is that looking up a multi or really any hotel chain, sometimes a multi night stay will be available. even when the individual nights are not. And so, yeah, I get a great value for that. And it was exactly where I needed to be. That's one of the things I love about my Allison points is that you can often book these places that are where you want to be.

And at times you want to be there when the cash rate is a rate that you don't really want to pay. So it came in handy, I think, for both Steven and I don't. All right. So in order to save a little time, we're going to cut out the rest of the tips that I'd outlined except for there's one that's too good not to go so nick why don't you at least cover that briefly i'm too good to go yeah so too good to go is an app that the aim is to reduce food waste and so you could load it on your phone find it in the app store too good to go the just

the words no numbers they were too good to go and so depending on where you are you may or may not see restaurants on there but in places where they are available you'll see pickup times and And every place charges usually three or I guess it's four or five, maybe six dollars, somewhere in that range, four or six. I don't think I've seen more than that. I don't think I've seen less than four. And so you pay and you choose the pickup time. Again, it varies by restaurant as to what pickup times are available. And then you show up and you get whatever you get, you don't get upset. And they give you something that they were going to probably get rid of otherwise. And it varies from restaurant to restaurant. probably day to day in terms of what you'll get. There are sometimes grocery stores involved also. But this is an app I've talked about before and I've used in the United States a number of times, but it's actually a European company. So it's much more widely available in Europe.

So for instance, one day I went to what seemed like sort of a fast foody type place, but also like a grocery store called Masi Go. And they gave me a chicken meal of some sort and I had some cook. and some other things. And so it was quite a lot of food for four or five, I think it was four euros, that first one, right? Something along those lines. And then the next day I went to a bakery,

a really nice bakery. And my goodness, I got tons of bread for five euros and several chocolate croissants. And I mean, it was way more than you would get with five euros if you just walked in there. You can see reviews for each individual place and kind of get an idea of which places probably do a good job of providing stuff

because I think quality in terms of what you get for your money varies a lot from one to another. So it's worth checking the reviews first before you do it. But I did this in Vienna during our Million Mile Madness and I'll have done it in a number of U.S. cities. And more often than not, I've been pretty pleasantly surprised both by quantity and quality of food I've gotten, especially for the price. Yeah. I keep forgetting about that and I really need to try it out some time. All right. Let's move on to actually crowning the 100KVK winner.

We're going to go through our scoring protocol and then talk through the scores. Yes, all right. So if anyone needs a refresher on how we decided to do the scoring, we love acronyms, so we decided to use one again. This time, waves for no reason. W is Destination Wow, how much did their destination wow us? applicability we wanted to make sure these are trips that are useful for y'all value we want to know it's a good value and extras that's all the little kind of did they stay on budget did they

update their blog posts things like that and of course style and then our scoring because we had a benchmark trip was also a little different than usual so most of our subcategories are scored with four different levels. Zero points if the traveler did not meet their target as well as Greg. One point if the traveler met the target as well as Greg. Two points if they met the target better than Greg and three points if they met it better than everyone else. And there are a few that we thought should be weighted more heavily. And so those go in increments of two or three instead of one. So I just said one, two, three, but those would be, you know, zero, two, four, six, et cetera.

Anyway, all right, not to overcomplicate it. That's what we've got for our scoring, so let's go through it. All right, let's start talking through these. So Kerry and I met earlier today and went through all the categories, subcategories, and scored them all according to those rules that Carrie just described. We're going to go through them not in the order of waves just because it just because it doesn't actually make sense to do them in that order. We're tired of that acronym. Yeah, we got that acronym.

Screw it. But in the category that was labeled extras, that's sort of the most basic stuff. Did they meet the budget? Did they actually stay in lodging for at least three nights? So the basic rules, how did that work out? So let's go through, let's go through those first. Carrie, do you want to read the, the budget one? Yes, all right.

So budget, pretty simple, 100,000 points, $1,000. Stephen spent $89,900 points, and $903. Actually, was that updated? That was updated. Yeah, it was not. It's like $20 more than that. I have it somewhere. 928.31.

Yes. It doesn't matter. The point is he was within budget. Well, within budget. So this one, we're actually scoring the way we organize this. It's a pass fail. And you don't get points for passing. You only get negatives for failing.

So we gave a serious negative 10 if you failed this. And no points if you got it. So sorry, no point, Stephen. But that's a good thing. and then Nick spent 100,000 points spent every last drop of pointage he had every single point if you wondered which piece of the budget was harder for him

and then $979.63 cents so a little bit more than Stephen but he was under budget and so he got zero again a good thing no negatives yeah okay So they're tied now, zero, zero. No point. The next category is proper lodging for three nights.

And the way we did this is if you had fewer than three nights, you would be docked. So you'd get minus 10 points. Three nights is zero points. Four nights is five points. Five nights is 10 points. And it keeps going up from there. Both of you did five nights. So you both got 10 points.

So, Kerry, who's ahead now? So 0 plus 10 is 10, in both cases 10. All right. We got another tie. All right, check-in attendance. You know what, let's breeze through check-in attendance and daily post updates. Both guys hit all of the, they attended all the live-stream check-ins. They did all their daily post-up dates they were supposed to do, so they both got the same

number of points for both of those categories. They both got three for the one and then six for the other. So still tied. Super duper tied. And then we had a secret destination point for possible points if they went to a secret destination, which we determined was going to be any place that had not yet been featured in a travel challenge. So for Stephen. Yes, any country that had not yet been featured by one of our travel challenge.

challenges over the years. So for Stephen, that was Czech Republic, and for Nick, that was Serbia. And so they both got the four points for that. So again, we're tied. All tied. Now what? 23, 23. All right.

Now, style. Luxury flights, where there's six possible points for this category, where the flight's comfortable and luxurious. And remember, the point system is as compared to what Greg did, what I did on my trip. flew business class and premium economy. Nick and Stephen flew economy. So they both got zero points for that category. I almost feel like I should get negative one because I flew on my parents.

Okay. You sure you want to lose your tie steps? Imagine if there's one point ditch ones like many of my own madness. I flew it again today and man, nobody on the plane was happy about it. That is not a good way to fly. Like I was in an aisle seat today, so it was much better than on the way out. but nobody else around me was particularly happy

so don't take those 8321 XLRs on I bearer exhausted as you were you exhausted enough to sleep hopefully no I didn't sleep on the way back but that's all right it's just it's hard just getting through the aisle to the bathroom and back

because passing by other people is I mean it was such a problem so packed down like yeah and the line was forever it was like halfway up the aisle of the plane yeah it was it does sound off It's not a good way to fly.

Sounds dramatic. Okay. Let's subtract a few points from me. We'll try, though. All right. Officially still tied. Luxury accommodations, again, in comparison to Greg. So we thought that both of them, so both Stephen and Nick had at least two nights that were luxurious looking out of their five, which got them both four points.

So we're still tied. We couldn't quite, like, decide if one of them was necessarily, like, so, so, so, so I would lean towards Nick as far as the hotel, like, um, luxury, the hotel overall, but then Stephen had that, like, incredible suite with that huge balcony looking out over, um, awesome, uh, I was about to say Sophia, but now I'm getting all my cities mixed up in my head. So anyway, yeah, so we ended up, uh, having another tie. Don't worry. This whole show won't be all tie. I hope. Other points driven luxury, so that's like lounges and whatnot. Greg, you want to talk about that one? Yeah, I mean, we felt like everybody did a little bit of that, but we didn't feel like it was like more than I did. So we just said everybody got a two for that.

So still tied. So at the end of the style category, we're still tied. to 29 now. Things are going to get more interesting now as we go into applicability. Yeah. Okay, so applicability was divided into two categories. First of all, replicability

is the traveler's use of points reasonably repeatable by others? So you're not using temporary sales, for example. So you see where this is going. Stephen did equally as well as Greg, we thought, which in this category gave him three points. That was the, um, as well as Greg. And Nick, because of that temporary sale, we didn't think so. So you got zero. So now Stephen is pulling ahead. We're no longer,

he's pulling out of the tie. All right. How about applicability, Greg? All right. So applicability is like, is, is the trip you put together applicable to large amount of the audience? So for example, the more you took advantage of elite status or, um, special credit cards that you had to have, you know, then the less applicable it is to more people. Neither you did very much of that. So you did like a little bit, like, so you took advantage of, so like Stephen took advantage of elite status to get in lounges, but showed that you could also use priority pass to get into other lounges. Nick obviously talked about using priority pass to get food and into lounges used as platinum card. None of that, to me, really affects the outline of the

trip, though. Those are like details along the way. So really the thing is like both trips were about, you know, could you get from Boston or New York and do all these things? Like, would you have to have any special stuff besides 100,000 points? And we didn't think there was. We thought in both cases, you did a little better than me because I think it's because it's not very applicable to bring along like a chef and a culinary concierge. That doesn't apply to very many people. So there's things like that that I definitely got dinged on.

But also, I used like a sweet upgrade certificate at the Hyatt. And that, you know, that gave me more luxury. I used my elite status to get free breakfast, which I know that there was a little bit going on with your trips, but less of that. Like, so, you know, the SLH properties, I think, had breakfast anyway. I think the Hilton Gold got you, got Nick breakfast and a dinner. But I don't know if Stevens, if any of his were from, I think they just had free breakfast, right? Yeah, the Vermado nor the Ibis included breakfast, but the Clarion did include it automatically. Like, that wasn't anything to do with that.

Right, right, right. So anyway, we just gave you guys a tie of six points each for that category. So we are now at a subtotal across the board of Stephen has 38 points and Nick has 35. So Stephen's creeping ahead here. Next category, destination, wow. So how much, how impressive was your destination in comparison to Greg's? We thought that both of your, Greg's destination wasn't less impressive than your destinations, but you all had plural destinations, whereas Greg only had one.

And so for that reason, we gave you both, you know, scores one notch above Greg's, but neither one of your was more obviously better than the other ones. So again, we had to give you a tie. So tune to now Adventure. What do you think, Greg? Yeah. So Adventure is, did the traveler include an activity that was exciting or pushed them outside of their comfort zone? So Stephen definitely went outside his comfort zone with some things like the singing in the October 4th.

Fest crowds. And so there was, I think there's quite a bit of adventure in his trip. And it certainly exceeded the amount that was in mine. So Stephen gets two points. So this category is out of three point total. Nick had nothing but adventure going on. There was pretty much, as is typical, of a Nick Challenge trip, the adventure starts. um the adventure starts when his plane is late um and uh um don't change me don't jinx me so by by the um by the

the ruling rules he would get three for this but there was so much adventure from the from that that uh hike 300 meters in the air whatever that was uh the wind surfing the uh the the big bet on the poker tournament all of that stuff. I found that very adventurousome. We agreed to actually double this to six points. So. I'll take it, judges. I'll take it.

Things are getting more interesting. All right. However, next category is relaxation, and you know what the opposite of adventure is. Relaxation. Stephen went to a spa, a beer spa. So Greg's trip didn't have activity that was specifically planned for the sake of relaxation. So Stephen exceeded Greg's trip there by having an activity that was actually planned for relaxation and exceeded Nick's adventure pack trip quite easily that way also. So Stephen got the three for beating everybody in that category.

Nick got a one for being as, you know, negligent towards that category as Greg's. I'm pretty sure. sure Stephen slept more of that one night than I did all five days. So he definitely gets the realization. Yeah, we weren't even counting that. No doubt. Yeah. All right. So food, Greg. All right. So did this traveler find a way to engage with the local cuisine in an interesting way? And I thought you both did a fantastic job with that. So I don't want to reiterate all the things that I saw you do. By the same time, I set a very, very high bar for that. that, I think. And since this is all comparing to my trip, we just said, okay, you both equaled my trip, and that's one point each for the food category. Yeah. All right. So food,

local exposure. Boy, let me think about this one. So you guys both did more local exposure type activities than Greg. Neither one of you did so much more that exceeded the other person. Kind of each thing we thought of that like, well, Nick did this. We were like, well, Stephen did this. Stephen did a beer-making day.

Learned how to make beer from a local. Nick met up with a local friend. Stephen sang German song. And Nick played poker with locals. So anyway, we had to give you a tie on this one, too.

two for both. So you beat Greg, but not each other, basically. Out of the box. All right, out of the box ideas. Do this traveler do something that surprised us and maybe gave us good idea for our own future travels? You both surprised us a lot of times. And I don't know if they were all good ideas for future travels, but there's certainly ideas. You know, Pam wouldn't be happy if you play poker and drink beer the entire next. So, anyway, this was very similar to the local experience thing that for everything we could think of on one trip, we thought of like similar level for the other. And we ended up just saying, okay, both of you had more of that out-of-the-box thing than Greg's trip.

But we couldn't pick one that was better than the other. So we gave you both two for that. Okay. So the subtotal, so for the wow, the destination category, Stephen's subtotal in that, just that category is 12 and next was 15. But that brings the overall total so far to Stephen has 50 points and Nick has 50 points. We're back to a tie. Back to a tie. And we promise we didn't do this in purpose. This all happened organically. Greg and I were laughing the whole time. We were just like going out, so when we were counting these up, we're like,

oh, tie again. All right. Okay, so value. We're going to start with pro behavior in that category. Six possible points here. This is stuff that impresses us with like, you know, pro-booking, you know, redemption stuff. So Stephen, we gave a two, which would be, better than Greg, I think.

No, equal. Equal to Greg. Yes, that's right. So this is weighted. Equally, tricksy as Greg was booking that massive suite directly with the same number of choice points as a regular room. But then Nick found two SLH properties bookable for extremely reasonable points. So we thought that was also worthy. So again, we've got a two-and-a-two tie.

How about frugality, Greg? All right. I think things will finally spread out maybe. Let's see. So frugality is based on, like, what's a total you spent after rebates and things? So I didn't have any significant rebates. I probably earned a few points here and there, but I didn't try to count those up because they were so little.

So my net spend was the same as my spend towards my budget, which was $968. So the question here was, did anyone spend at least $100 less than that? Because the way we're scoring this one is if you were $100 less than me, let's see. Then you'd be considered. No, if you were within $100 of me, you get two points for kind of equaling me. Um, if you were $100 last, you get four points and, um, more than that, uh, or better than everyone else. More than that and better than everyone else. You'd get, uh, six points.

Um, the, um, the, so, so I was 968. Stevens net spend, uh, was 9.28. I think this was updated. I don't know. Anyway, it's one. Yeah. And then, um, Nix 872, which this is based on, um, getting two $250 rebates from that Hilton spend that he talked about. Otherwise, it would have been $9.72. So, 872 is just shy of being $100 less than my $9.68. So Nick does not get the extra points for that, sadly.

So both- You should have won a little bit more at poker. Well, Stephen and Nick get the two points for being roughly equal to Greg's. Right. So that did not help us. Let's fix our tie. All right, dollar value. This is the final subcategory.

So this is how much the trip cost if they would have booked it with cash. So I want you to outline this, Greg, because I feel like you'll deliver this all better. So we did our best to figure out, like, so how much did the flights and hotels, how much were they charging in cash when you book them with points? So we took those numbers, and then we took everything else you spent that wasn't for flights and hotels and just add that on top to say, okay, the total cash value of this trip. So, you know, if you were to pay for everything just with cash, it would have cost this much. And my total came to, well, actually, let me back up and say how we're scoring it. you have to be better than my total by, um, let's see. $300.

By $300. Wait, no. If you're less, sorry. If, if you're less valuable, if your whole trip was, was more than $300 less than my, my trip's value, you don't get any points because it was not, not worth as much. If it was within $300, you get three points. If it was more than $300, more valuable, you'd get six points. Mine was $4,341.

Stevens, as we calculated, it was $3,622. So he wasn't within the $300, so he has zero points for this category. Nick's trip value was $3,973. Again, it came really, really close, but it just didn't hit that that $300 threshold, and so both guys got zero points for this. So you might think, well, wait a minute, that was the last category. They're still tied. What's going on? Who won? Don't worry. It's true. What we've read so far is still a tie. We're at 54-54 right now. But when counting the total value of the trip, you have to remember that still,

Stephen included the flights for Shea, his wife, he used his points to book her flights. So I added the value he got from his points. And the way I did that is I took the dollar value of the flight and subtracted out the taxes and fees that was paid for the award and said, okay, so this flight to Europe, you know, was worth that he used his points and got like for Shea and got like $400 from this flight and he got like $200 from this other flight with his points because those points were within his budget. So that added $590 of value to Stephen's trip bringing his total to $301 away from your money. It brought you to $4,187, which is with in the 300 and that gives you three points and that means that Stephen is the winner of the

2025 team challenge 100 KVK congratulations Stephen but you really owe a big thank you to she I do you yes she absolutely did make the trip like what if she'd said no uh she would always say yes you weren't worried yeah so this is stephen's first uh challenge winner finally congratulations congratulations that's exciting you guys had a fantastic trip and i think that that we all probably owe thanks to shay too for like not only going along with it but also she did a great job helping you with some of the social media stuff i thought that videos and things were fantastic too i don't envy you having to have done all of the videos yourself because she did she's just switched on a lot more when it comes to social media stuff and recording videos and

things like that. I'm much better with, like, taking care of photos and, like, documenting things that way, but she's so much better with videos and live kind of stuff. So she did certainly make the difference. Right, right. So what we've learned is, as a general rule, if you want to make your life easier on one of these challenges, bring Shay or, or Carrie along, as I found was also very helpful. Bring someone to film. Yeah. So somebody pour a big thing of Gatorade over Stephen's head. I have like a little bit of like water down soda but okay I'll do some water on myself all right we're going to we're going to read a question or two a few questions from the audience but first I want to mention that we're going to post tonight the scores and the winner but also in

that post is going to be a audience choice vote so you'll have a chance If you didn't like how we voted, or maybe you did like it and you just want to give another vote for Stephen, whatever it is, there'll be a chance to vote yourself for that. Think of it as like, not that you didn't like who we picked as a winner, but rather maybe you didn't like our scoring rubrics, which I don't claim it was very convoluted. Yeah. Worked for us. Yeah. All right. So now we're going to go to a few questions that you've been sending us here throughout this.

live. First one for both Nick and Stephen. If it weren't for this exact challenge, would you have wanted to do the trip you did? Would you recommend your exact itinerary to the rest of us? So let's start with Stephen, the winner. Would you replicate this exact trip if it were for the challenge, or are there things you would have done a little differently? Would I replicate it? I've already said to say, like we have a couple of friends who we've traveled a few times. with before. And I feel like we definitely need to take them to October Fest and we definitely need to take it, take them to Prague because I think they'll love both. And so I think I would definitely replicate it and do pretty much the same thing.

Like I'd probably try and book accommodation in Munich much earlier because I didn't end up until March and so there were very few options left. So I'd love it if we could be within walking distance of Octoberfest. But otherwise, I'd be more than happy to like stay in the same place again, I'd probably just do like maybe one or two more days in Munich and then one, at least one or two more days in Prague, just so we can see even more, just so it's not only like two nights and two nights in each of them. But in terms of the trip, and like I'd be perfectly fine, like taking a flex bus again there rather than I'm like flying from Munich to Prague or taking a train or something like that. But yeah, I would be

more than happy to replicate it. And Nick, how about you? So the first part of that question, if it weren't for this exact challenge, would I want to do the trip I did? Absolutely 100%. It was a lot of fun. It was the trip I wanted to take and I was excited about the trip ahead of time. I think the challenge in doing these is that you're not just taking the trip when we're doing it because, as Stephen kind of alluded to before, you're also putting together to the videos and trying to write about it. And so would I do it in that way? As much sleep as I might have like. sleep a little bit more. Then I would have slept a little bit more. And yeah, I would totally have done it. Would I recommend it to somebody else? I don't know that everybody wants to switch hotels or switch cities every couple of nights. So it's part for me to recommend that broadly for everybody. But I certainly enjoy traveling that way sometimes. I wouldn't mind staying five nights in one place, but at the same time, I don't have anything against spending one or two nights in place and then moving on to the next spot.

So I think it's something I would recommend to somebody who doesn't mind being on the move some like that. So that's my story and I'm stuck in to me. Yeah. And I guess I'd also add that with my trip, it was very heavily beer themed. And that was why I kind of like, like once I've done October Fest, I was trying to find other beer themed things. Even if you don't like beer, you don't have to make a beer theme.

Like you can go to London and do any number of things. And then October Fest, I would still recommend it, even if you're not a beer drink. like it's a lot of fun like it's basically just a massive carnival it's a state fair effectively and if you can drink beer then you can um if you like wine and cocktails and stuff like that they do have some like wine and cocktail places so you're not only um stuck with drinking beer although that is obviously the most predominant thing there um and Prague yeah you don't have to do anything beer wise if you don't want it it's just an absolutely stunning city so you could absolutely recreate our trip and do none of the same stuff but still have an absolutely incredible

time doing it. Yeah, yeah. All right, we're going to do just one more question so that Nick can get the first hour of Sleepy's head in a straight week. If you can real quickly summarize this, Nick, people want to know, I'm curious to hear the hand, the story of how Nick lost on the poker tournament. Is there a quick way to tell that to those who understand? Yeah, yeah, to be a little like to play poker. Yeah, so the short version of the story is that it was in it. If you're no poker. I was in a big blind. I had pocket queens, which if you don't know poker, it was a pretty good hand. And a person in early position, a young lady went all in for, she had a relatively small stack. And because of the situation, blinds were going to eat

a bunch of her chips pretty quickly. That was the right move for her to make with a wide range of plans. And she had demonstrated she was a good player and would know that she should probably push with almost any face card with another decent card with it. So I didn't imagine that she had a great hand, just something worth pushing. So I was pretty confident. I had her beat. But then another player pushed all in after her. And he had a few more

chips than I did. It was really close. Just a few more chips than I did. And so I had to decide did he have a better hand than pocket queens or not. And so poker players out there, probably most of you would think, well, he probably had somewhere between pocket jacks

and pocket aces or ace king or ace queen. And so I had to sit there and try and figure out what do I think is most likely he has and and then you know to decide from them so I I in hindsight I feel like I should have seen that it was probably aces or kings because he was risking a lot and but I decided that I thought there was a good chance he was just trying to isolate because he knew she didn't probably have a great hand too so anyway I called it and because I figured that if I won that hand between his chips and her chips it would put me in the top 10 so I'd be in good shape to go on to have a good shot at winning the tournament anyway.

So I went ahead and called and, of course, it turned out he had pocket aces and she had Queen Jack. So like I thought, she didn't have nearly as strong a hand. Unfortunately, that left only one queen left in the deck for me to catch to try and win. And the guy with aces hit an ace on the flop. So then I was drawing dead effectively after that, although I should know that the young woman who went in, all in first, had a Queen Jack. and she ended up with a straight.

So she stayed in. And then the other guy took the rest of my chips. So I was out. And that young lady who went all in with the Queen Jack ended up winning the tournament 7,300 euros

and a 7,300 seat in another tournament in Cyprus in January. So she took my chips and did well with them. I saw that actually. I saw you mention that. Yep. That's exciting,

even without understanding any of it. Please some of my chips went somewhere that, you know, made some manuals. Your chips won with. without you. My chips won. A reader or a blog reader actually reached out and said he's a professional poker player

and he asked me for the details. And I explained and he said he probably would have called us on that situation. So that made me feel a little bit better. That feels good. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Nick. Bring us home with your normal goodbye song.

All right. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give us a thumbs up. Give us a like. If you've enjoyed what you've been listening to today, don't forget, you can join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. You want to go to Frequentmyler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on social media. Join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions like this all the time.

And if you have a question that you'd like to be featured or considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our mailbag, you can send that to mailbag. You can send it to mailbag at Frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody. Hi, I'm David Brody, co-host of the Travelin'10 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 foyescape.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.