Lessons

Lesson Info

Activities and Transport on the Ground

We are in week five lesson twenty three if you've got your workbook what page are we on their fifty paise fifty six in all week we've been talking about upgrading your experience so you've got your flight booked you got an awesome hotel taking care of what's next you know how can we do something more like you do when you get exactly not just about orrin miles and points and buying a flight? What you going to do so with that in mind today we have three goals like we do every lesson and most important goal is to apply these dream trip skills that you've been learning to the full experience of travel not just the flight not just the hotel but everything else adding activities to your travel plan activities explorations, excursions, adventurer's, whatever that is for you and then leslie get the best ground transportation you got your flight got your hotel but then how do you actually get around when you're there so that's what we're talking about I really liked this photo who's who's in th...

is photo what's going on anyone know where that is? Rio you're right that's me paragliding over rio and I I love this picture because it was really fun to do and I think it's awesome that I did it I know there's lots of people who have probably done this but I put this picture up here because I think one of the coolest things about using points and miles for travel is any money that you have already budgeted in your head for trouble you don't have to use on getting there and staying there so I like to think you know you can kind of split your budget into thirds you have your how you're going to get there where you're going to stay and then what you're gonna eat and what you're going to dio and a lot of times especially in budget travel we spend most of our budget on these two pieces and then that what you're going to eat and what you're going to dio that's where you have to scrimp and save and you're like I really would love to go paragliding in rio but I think maybe it cost a couple hundred bucks and yeah but if you got a free ticket to rio you could spend your couple hundred bucks paragliding over the city and so I want to introduce you today just to some kind of ideas of different things that maybe you could you know spend your travel budget on we met kurt and uh kurt's when we asked her to send us some pictures of him traveling he sent us this picture of climbing mount kilimanjaro you're not in kim did you climb kilimanjaro no but I have a lot of friends yeah thea was our adventure travelers ever she climbs she doing whatever space camp and it cost you know, it cost probably three thousand think I paid three thousand dollars when I climbed kilimanjaro two thousand dollars, maybe, and that's a lot of money, and you can't really, you know, travel hack your way up kilimanjaro. In fact, I remember when I paid for my kilimanjaro trip, I actually had a wire money from my bank account to the company that I was that my expedition company I was doing it with because you have to go with some kind of expedition company to do it, and they didn't take credit cards, and I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm spending two thousand dollars, and I'm not getting any points for it. It was really stressful, but if you're flying all the way to tanzania on your points and miles it's not as big of a deal that you're gonna be paying, you know you're gonna be paying to actually do your activity. Anybody know where this is? Someone said, it's, good. Can I get a ballooning over capital? Your photo you looked me in the blue capital is a beautiful place. When I went there, I was a budget traveler, I actually didn't fly there on points and miles, I took a a bus there really long, but took a ferry to turkey and then a bus across a a cross turkey and I didn't have any money to go hot air ballooning, so I personally haven't had this experience, but it's something I would love to dio safari is another really good option. Linds dream trip that we've been working on is to take her back to tanzania to do a safari in the serengeti it's another one of those things that is a little bit more difficult to travel hack your way towards we are going to talk a little bit. I believe in our next lesson about using cash back cards and symbol what their value is. There are some cases where if you have a trouble rewards cashback card, you can use some of those cash back points to pay for travel experiences if they are coded as a travel experience of your credit card charges them as a travel experience. We'll talk about that tomorrow, but safari, another great experience that cost a lot of money a spa day. I actually haven't been to this spot, I would love to go to the spot we showed you, that hotel where you can go to get tea, but it's really hard to get into. This is the father, it probably cost, like nine hundred dollars to get a massage, but still out of my tio, or you go to a different kind of fun, but as we kind of like put out all these different ideas again, we just kind of want people thinking we wanted people inspired and say, I'm going to make this part of my my dream ship. We haven't talked about golf, a lot of people are really in took off. We haven't talked about luxury food experiences for all the food he's out there, we haven't talked about diving, you go diving, I've quite a lot that's, right? Or skiing or skydiving or it's? Not cheap, but something you've chosen to invest in a zen experience that that you believe in so love to actually just talk to the studio audience. Now, you guys have had some time to think about how you're getting to your dream destination, and you're staying there, what kind of activities that you enjoy going to go on a big trip or vacation or an adventure? What would you like to do is you're kind of moving from conception, teo actually putting this dream trip into action, so if you don't mind, I'd like to just kind of go down the line. I'll start over here with lynn, so it's definitely said, we're looking at how we could do ah safari that's more than just a couple of days, and that does take a fair bit of money and we're usually budget travelers that's the goal uh, well, I'd like to go pru pru one day and do too much of a teacher, so I don't really know if it's, right? So I don't really know what entails in terms of ground travel for that so much of teachers like it right now, I want a high pain. Yeah, you can't you hike one way and take the train one way you could take the train, you would you take the train both ways? I think I actually haven't done that in a trailer. Any of much should also be oh, so that's a great example, just like kilimanjaro, you can't really travel hat kilimanjaro, that part of it you can't really travel much impeach you, but he can get there with his miles and points machu pichu safari much impeach you. South africa is replete with a lot of natural beauty there in kruger national park, particularly got my idea to spend several days there. There's, also a luxury train that goes from cape town to johannesburg, training new trainer that's also on my list and also just see some good friends in cape town. For me. I am looking at you doing a walking tour of as many of the markets I'm not a shopper, but that kind of open market is really looking very exciting to me, so it's a great way to delve into the local culture by finding the right market and I hope you're practicing your skills because it's really hard to not buy carpet no, but I was in turkey before I went to morocco and so before going to morocco was like the one thing I'm not going to buy is rugs because I have three from turkey I came home with three rugs from rock think if you go to the airport like leasing morocco, you don't have a rug thank you smugglers hard to not come home okay from either control so good luck with it. Um I think two things like it's so cool to see that for all of you doing the hang gliding that's the kind of stuff that makes me just like so pumped about going places that offer that, but yeah, I think I would love to do some sort of maybe like uh, helly skiing or like big mountain skiing, big powder skiing that would be really cool or skydiving is also really nice that's a cool idea and even just like guiding through the mountains and doing it camping trip from someone who knows where they're going that would be good, but yeah, the all those things like this is one of those ones where your brain just goes crazy thinking about it so that's really cool for in nepal I want to do a lot of tracking I would like to get up to the base camp uh um see everything and stayed there for a couple days like you said on duh just experience all the culture so my dream trip is tracking through mongolia horse track and so that's pretty isolated so that add on to that is that I've heard that hula ba tarr is pretty cosmopolitan and I think would be really awesome toa you know, wander the streets a bit and explore and sit and have tea and watch everybody. And so that irish pub there's a lot of genghis khan irish pub bakery lithe on ly vegetarian restaurant they are not easy to come by in mongolia yeah that's funny and I think you're going to bali at some point as well since it's practically next door yeah there's lots of lots of things that's on our dream trip teo hong kong um having been to hong kong myself but I've been to so many places that I've never really seen because I did on business and you just learned about, you know, hotel conference rooms are in office conference room so my wife and I we just really want to get out and walk and really get to know the city so we'll come up like the story of just looking away are very across from paris not only cost about two dollars though show so it's taking a lot of money that's great as you guys know I'm a sucker for a pool so with iceland I'm particularly excited about the geothermal experiences there and maybe collecting as many as possible but also walking through the landscape because in my fantasy of the country it's all about the landscape in the natural features right a picture for your slide that's pretty sweet um I have a big fascination on like blue water so when you talk about like when you close your eyes what do you see like it's bloke water so you know when when I think about greece I think we're like the amazing views so I would love to do some former like water activity um just to be to take it all in that's phenomenal sailing around grief it's amazing actually making I think you guys actually made a really good point that we didn't make in the slides that I showed and that is not all of the most amazing experiences cost money across any money at all I think sheri wandering on the markets and still wandering around the streets of hong kong some of those air the most rich experience is one of my favorite things that I love to do when I travel is sit on the corner in cafes and just watch people and you learn so much about the people in about the culture but I think that the biggest point is whatever your idea of your dream experience, it doesn't have to be limited because you've got some some new tools, absolutely so when you're kind of looking ahead to your trip and you're thinking, ok, do I wantto pre book some of these experiences? Do I just want to get there and kind of figured out when in there something that could help a lot is emailing your hotel's concierge? We talked about this briefly the other day, and I should probably just ask russian just explain what a hotel concierge is because I realize not everyone knows actually talked to someone recently who's who stays in hotels a fair amount but didn't realise that the concierge role is different from the people who work at the front desk. So anyone at a nice hotel or large hotel can help you with all kinds of things, but there's usually a dedicated person or dedicated desk with multiple people who are specifically designed to enhance guest experience in the local area so you can always get dining recommendations by talking to someone at the front desk or even just someone around the property. Sometimes you have a story about that, but the concierges roll their whole job is to provide some specific recommendations to be available to you. To help with fun things or even just some kind of typical things and usually if you have a reservation and you can you can email ahead of time and say I'm coming in and here's what I'd like to do can you provide some tips for me so couple of things you can ask the concierge I'll do the bullet points here by the way, you guys may have noticed that how we divide our content you know I do the bullet points and she has the great stories so we were just talking about that so all these and bullet points and give you some great stories it's helpful to ask the concierge not just where should I go for dinner but where do you guys eat like where did the staff eats like aa lot of concierges we're kind of in a network just like chefs aaron a network they know people working at the other hotels they tend to go out to eat in groups sometimes they talk about, you know, tips and things and share information. So I was asked where do you eat? Right? And we can kind of be right down but sometimes if I just say where should I go? They're gonna point me to a tourist place that's what a lot of people want, but if I get a little bit more specific that helps similarly what's a fun neighborhood to walk around I often end up staying in city centre of places and that's fine, but actually usually like to get out a little bit and find a real neighborhoods. I try to focus on that and say it could be a local neighborhood doesn't need to be there commercial business district in fact, I would prefer it not to be so I just kind of asked for, like where's, a lively neighbourhood, where's, the arts district where something fun that I can go, and if you're looking to do a spot visit, or if you want to have a massage that doesn't cost one hundred dollars, it may be helpful to ask specifically, can you recommend a local spot that isn't in a hotel? And if you ask that they'll be usually be happy to recommend a place even like away from their own hotel or something, but the reason that's important it's kind of like asked me where the you guys eat if you just asked for a recommendation or you say, can you set up a massage? You know, for my trip to bali or something? They will usually either book it with the hotel or they will book it at another hotel on the local spots khun b just is good, and they're half the price, sometimes even less. That's one good option and then if you're really trying to plan things, ask them who else would be good to talk to you? So here's, what I like to do is there is there someone else that I should chat with is their travel agencies or just someone who works around the hotel? What would what would you what would you recommend for me and here's? A kind of who I am and what I like to do? I think matt made a really good point about this when we were talking about hotels in week for just about the personality and having conversations with people who are in the hotel can you kind of break that wall just like customer, customer person working in the hotel and you get lots of really great recommendations, and I do have a couple of stories to tell, too. You can tell teo the my first or I'm gonna tell actually just happened last night. Yeah, exactly, I think you know, for me sometimes when I travel in different places, even though I travel a lot, so I get in I'm kind of an introvert believe it or not, and sometimes I get in this movie, I'm like, I don't really want to ask where to go, I'm just gonna, like, look it up here on my phone and try to find the best place but it's a lot of the best experiences I've had have actually been when I met some time I asked the concierge or on unofficial concierge so my first story last night in the hyatt here in seattle I said excuse me, a hotel concierge actually in that voice I said it's a beautiful, sunny day in seattle the sun never comes out I want to sit outside I have something to read I want to have a glass of white wine and I want to sit outside for the next hour where should I go? And I have to walk from the hotel and get there before the sun goes away and he was like a specific request for the sunspot thought it's not just that it's sonny, I want to go to a place where the sun spot can hit me and have a glass of port side it has to be walkable. You know what I said? And there cannot be a building blocking son because downtown seattle has a lot of buildings and he thought about it and he thought he said, okay, well, let me think and he showed me on the map will you go to the market and I don't really wanna walk and I know exactly the place for you and he sent me there it was seven blocks away, perfect in my walking zone I got there it was a tiny restaurant with three tables outside and the most perfect sunset sun spot and the best food and I would have never, ever found that on yelp for trip advisor or anything I could have like google by myself. So my second story, maybe just one good point on that I like what you just said about how you never would have taken a bullet point yeah that's right here's a booth bullets killed this's company, anecdote, this's a supporting point alright, you just you just made it very briefly I just wanna touch on it because a lot of us do all our trip planning through trip advisor and through yelp and things and we use our phones all the time we were there, so this is actually an example of kind of getting out of that because you could have actually just looked on your phone like yelp or should I go? But because you had such specific requirements and you're dealing with a human being, you'd actually have this conversation and that's what enabled that to happen because it otherwise wouldn't have so it's. So maybe the relevant point is you're kind of, you know, engaging more with community and having conversations and seeing where that leads and my second story way second story is the unofficial concierge chris did make a really good point who else would be good to talk to one of the best? But one of the best thing is to talk to the people who work in the restaurant, especially when you're outside of the u s a lot of people are just interested in talking to you. They are interested in talking to the guests. They want to practice their english if it's a country where they don't speak english, you know, your taxi driver, the hotel staff, a lot of them have really great recommendations, and when I took my mileage run, we talked about mileage runs briefly. I can't remember which lesson, but I told the story about how I went to hawaii on a random trip for christmas, and I went to a political why on christmas night with no plan of what I was going to dio I had a hotel night book for one night at the andaz in maui, and it was a great hotel and it was really nice and it was twenty five thousand points. That was fine, because it was a nine hundred dollar hotel room on christmas night, and I thought, I want to stay somewhere on christmas night, but I'm camping the rest of the week because I'm a bad hacker, so I packed my hammock. And I stayed the first night at the hyatt no idea what I was gonna do the next day I just knew I had my hammock and I was gonna camp somewhere and so I went to the bar with my friend who was traveling with and we were chatting were like I wonder where we should go what should we do and I started talking to the bartender and he said how long are you staying here and I was like oh we're just staying at the resort one night we're camping the rest of the week and he was like really like I don't think many people go to the andaz for nine hundred dollars a night in the camp the rest of the week but he was like really I can't every weekend in maui I know everything about camping in maui do you have a map and he pulled out a map and put it on the bar and he basically drew on this map everywhere we should go to you know where you're camping you should camp here stay here one night go here there's a secret waterfall around the left hand corner behind the stop sign and I had the most amazing three days in maui because of those tips I got from that bartender so ask the concierge but also asked the other people because they have lives outside of their hotel and they have some really great tips for you they have lives outside of their hotel and they're also interacting with guests all the time and so when you put those two things together it's great I was going to add another unofficial concierge the flight attendants on planes I've chatted up and found it best restaurants they have their spouses come into town and know exactly where to go with note you know, ground transportation just walking distance from the airport or wherever your location is they're also usually only staying for a short period of exactly which is really critical so they kind of know how to maximize that and also if you are on a short trip I often have really start trips so somebody who could just tell you right away like here's what's great if you only have a day or two maybe you could come back later for a longer trip but we only have a day or two here's how you can get the most of it so great recommendations got funny story I'm here stay in seattle was meeting a friend at a restaurant and did my research on my phone about how to take the boss and stop my went down to ask the front desk persons that can I get some bus fare and she said, well where you going? I said this place over by pioneer square said I'll take you there okay great I didn't even know her and so tipping the shuttle drivers is pretty consistent, you know gave her a couple of bucks on the way out the way and then she came and picked me up two amazing but for a hotel cost years guidelines on on how much to tip him it really depends based on the local area of the local market and and also maybe what they do for you and how much you engage with them I don't know I tend to kind of do those things on just how it feels on the right judgment situation I'm definitely in favour of tipping service personnel who are working to make all these things possible, especially in north america I mean that's like the culture here in different cultures it's not always something that even accepted in japan there's no tipping whatsoever people can do amazing things for you and it's it's kind of rude to operate a tip, so it just depends on the local market chase sapphire or something about the concierge and get it so you get a concierge with certain credit credit cards actually service that a lot of people don't take advantage of. You know, we talked a lot about things that you get from your credit cards you might not know about the concierge services interesting american express has the concierge service for their platinum guest and some others that when you actually have to call and ask but if you have a visa signature card and if you got the chase sapphire card that's actually a visa signature card you should just take a look at some of your credit cards because you probably if you have more than one credit card there's a good chance you have one that's a signature card and you can send questions to a just on the line you know when I was in buenos aires this year I actually asked that spot question to my online concierge mostly because I was trying to figure out what they could do for me but I said I want to get a massage I want it to cost under fifty dollars I don't want it to be in a hotel and you know I could have researched some of that but one of the really great things is a lot of those places that are local are in spanish everything's in spanish I don't speak spent I speak carol very terrible spanish and so it was really hard for me to do that online research but they came back to me and gave me a couple options around the place I was staying I also had them research pair of shoes for me once online you can use them day today you can get them to send things for you it's interesting servant I haven't actually tried it that much so maybe I'm gonna go back and try it people sometimes ask about using miles and points for things other than flights and hotels were going to talk about that directly in the next lesson we get the cash back cards we have a fun interview with somebody skyping in s o most of the time you know the airlines and the flexible spending programs in the hotels they make it possible for you two spend your miles and points on all kinds of things that have nothing to do with travel most of the time it's not a very good deal most of the time the rate that you're paying for the miles and points it's just incredibly inflated if you have american express points, you could use them to purchase the laptop from the apple store we're gonna be paying a huge huge number you could probably much, much better value for your points your actual travel there may be a couple of exceptions so that though and I've actually started looking into this more myself recently because I used to just be totally skeptical about it, but when I looked at some of these offers that are available and how many points they cost the kind of interesting we talked a lot about starwood points, a lot of the audience here has starwood points eso spg starwood preferred guest has a program called starwood experiences on what they've done is they actually like curated some very unique experiences or opportunities that aren't available to most people and you can use your points for them and sometimes they're usually like capacity limited so you have to kind of get in early but they don't usually cost a huge number of points, esso they have things like where you can go to the u s open and you get really great seats there you could get tickets to see billy joel or taylor swift I'm a big taylor swift fan myself like I keep trying to bid on that, but it's always like gone you can get seats to a sky box for a basketball game like in a luxury suite with with drinks and all this stuff I think delta has a similar program I don't know if it's called delta experiences or whatever it is you can actually use your points to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game, so I haven't done that yet, but I might at some point and so it is on my bucket list I don't know mostly the taylor swift thing on my bucket list, but if you're planning something like, you know, really great it's good to just look at it, I just sort of looking at it myself, I'm seeing some interesting things so that's one thing for you and since we've been talking a lot about activities and excursions, if you look at your work quick nice picture of the virgil arab there at the big fancy spot, a nice afternoon tea service our workbook activity day is what activity or excursion would you add to your dream trip so you can fill that out their age fifty six on the workbook? And I think before we wrap, we have a couple of notes on transportation makes people ask us about that. So what all did we want to say about that? We have a quiz for kenna where's our transportation slide from that's in havana, cuba was your clue about that besides the cuba license plate? Broader taxi that's, right? So cuba hasn't had any imported cars since I don't know fifty nine, nineteen, fifty nine every every vehicle in cuba is his old american, then that hasn't had any american cars. They have a lot of these old cars, they're so lots of great taxis for photographing we don't always want you to go in a in an old taxi there's lots of really fancy ways to get around way talked him in one of the earlier lessons this week in the hidden the best tender redemption we talked about the chauffeur service on certain airlines that's a really great way to get around, but you already know about that exactly how many of you guys use uber couple couple ofyou uber's a a car service that started I believe in the states, right? Yeah, I think so. And that was everywhere, more or less and now it's pretty much everywhere. You know, I realized a year and a half ago when I was travelling in shanghai that uber was really, um I don't use it that much in the u s because you were actually just got into portland, but when I was in china I was having this problem where I would get into the taxi and every time I got into a taxi, the taxi driver would throw me out he would like drive a block and then like, yell at me and I like, drop me off because I couldn't communicate with him and so I found the solution and I could like call up a car on my phone and I could just put in it. The pin showed him where I was and they dropped the car would come and pick me up and I could put my destination in it and it would show him in mandarin where I wanted to go and he would just drive me there and drop me off and it really solved the problem I was having because the friend I was visiting in shanghai lived outside of town and it was really hard to communicate where it was going plus the it was paying with my credit card, so I didn't have to worry about having currency and having the argument about how much it was gonna cost. So you bers been really a fantastic on the ground transportation solution for me in a lot of cities? Yeah, absolutely. I just tried using it more myself. I think it's a great tool to have even if you're not using it frequently yourself, just to have the option to be able to have that app on your phone, to have the accounts that up and you can call a car and the prices are actually can be very affordable, they can be a lot less. I took I used uber to go to the airport in paris, actually, and I think I took the train in from the airport, but then I had a really early morning flight on the way out, and I think I kind of research the prices and the taxi was going to be something like eighty euros on and uber, a black car like a nice uber was, like sixty year old, so that was cool, but then just uber acts like that, you know, service of regular drivers with something like thirty five. You know and I'm like great, you know that the train ticket was ten or fifteen year olds I had to pay a bit more sin to a super early might as well do that so save half price there's also a referral program there are travel partner bonuses mover partners with starwood american express in general and star burns and capital one so you actually earn extra points if your cards are linked on that way and then stephanie mentioned the worldwide payment, which is great you don't have to worry about all these different currencies no argument it's a fixed price can I just give a shout out to the referral program if you you know, in kind of the travel the travel hacking space? Another great thing to do with uber is referred to your friends like when we talked about rocket miles because if you for for cooper to your friends you get, uh normally it's a twenty dollars credit or one ride twenty other credit and they get a ride credit as well. So you could be by telling other people about it you could be kind of earning a bank of free uber rides, which really comes in handy for you absolutely we don't talk about carver knows a whole lot of course you're gonna shut up that's, right? I just wanted to mention that jump in and say that that when you buy this course you do get also a discount packet that has been created and uber is one of the one of the fighters one of the companies that has given us a discount giving you a discount when you buy the class also good point thank you so we don't talk a whole about carl reynolds, but just a couple of basic tips you can use your miles sometimes for cardinals it's like a lot of things were not always a good evaluation it's often better just to pay for it but almost always you could earn miles for carl reynolds and this is just on top of if you're part of the car rental membership program which they all have programs as well you can usually lincoln airline or sometimes a hotel I just do an airline myself and then whenever you rent the car then just get some bonus miles added into your account another great way if if you need to have miles and points added to an account to keep it from expiring, which we'll talk about, you know a little bit more soon that's a way to just do something quick car rentals all have elite status programs just like airlines and hotels it's actually very, very easy to become an elite member of most cardinal programs there are status match opportunities that credit card opportunities will share maybe some more detailed information in a facebook group when this lesson ares but it's usually something simple you just kind of register and all of a sudden you know you're a gold member on dh then you have priority whenever you go teo there's also business business account discounts we talked a little bit about discount codes for hotels the other day and this is not even really a black hat thing it's just something like there are a bunch of business accounts out there and you feel you can sign up for your own business account as well and a lot of time if you have a business account number I have a personal business account with some of my car rentals and every time I go I actually get it upgrade if I book it with my business number interesting trying to favor business travelers but anyone can be a business traveler right? A couple of of alternatives silver cars and new service I'm kind of in the uber space but a little bit different actually trying teo create some disruption in the rental car space because what everybody hates about rental cars are the shuttle uh you know had the whole process of getting to the rental car lot khun ad like an hour or so each time a cz well is kind of the up sell or the like hassling you about your insurance and ask me about your coverage you know that I always hate that myself so silver cars created this solution where like all they worked with our luxury cars every car is the same it's an audio for a five I believe on at most airports that silver is it like it's silver yeah me otherwise I'd be like a branding like a branding problem if it wasn't most airports that actually pick you up curbside if you have a silver car rental they will pick you up curbside don't take you to the the silver car station where they kind of finalize things they send you off you don't have to refuel the gas they will do that for you and they charge you like a five dollars fee plus whatever the local market issue don't have to worry about paying, you know eight dollars to some eight dollars a gallon for your gas that's when anything it's interesting, it costs a little bit more than most cars but not nearly what like a luxury car window would normally cost drive away I just thought I would throw this in if you wanted to upgrade your bucket list I think there's drive away dot com and drive away dot ch there's a few of those things if you just google auto drive away some services in which someone might be moving across the country on they need to relocate their vehicle you can actually in some cases drive that person's car for free I will compensate you for the gas, so this is like a way to do like a national park trip or your across country, you know, trans canada trip or whatever cruises we had a couple of questions about this before us, we just wanted to kind of throw this in. I was actually talking teo, one of the creative live crew members a few minutes ago, he was asking about this. He said his wife works for a cruise company, wondering about any special deals. I think he has the best deal because, like, works for the cruise company and they cruise for free eso cruising, you can use miles and points for cruises, but just as I said about running cars, it's really not the best use of your myles and points in most cases, what I think is better is to look at just cruise deals in general, cruises can be quite affordable, especially at the last minute vacations to go dot com is a good resource for that, and then, in less than twenty seven, we'll meet a family who took a round the world trip together. Their first flying to japan eventually went down to south africa, and I believe they traveled up from south africa, taking repositioning cruise to europe, so those cruises when they're going from one point to another and not returning because the cruise has has toe the cruise line colder season during the shoulder season, the cruise line has to change from working in one market to working another those are often very affordable, so that's kind of a fun thing to do any questions about experiences and activities on the ground before the challenge yesterday ever met anyone who's traveled on a container ship around the world I have not I have not travel on a container ship but yes, I have met people who have done that and I don't think it's a great deal it's more of like an amazing experience it's not like a super cheap thing where you know that most of the container ship cos they don't actually want a lot of passengers travelling with them, so sometimes they will allow that option for a few people and you're essentially like like crew I mean you have your own cabin but there's not like special services for you I think it could be a really fascinating thing. I have seen some documentaries on it like I would do it, but it's it's more in the like crazy bucket list kind of thing as opposed to like here's a bargain a bargain way to get you know from somewhere to somewhere you don't really interesting experience experience to do and I've visited a number of container ships criss and I actually both lived on a ship for quite a while so visiting container ships that isn't high on my experience list, but I think it would definitely be fascinating if you're interested in kind of seeing that behi I'm scenes and visiting ports and doing it different from the you know, the buffet of a cruise experience prefer yeah, one of your specialty experiences that you talked about once was visiting a small country called bhutan, yet for all visitors have to have a guide and there's a you know, a predetermined amount of money that you have to spend I thought that was very unique you share a little bit of it is very unique. So bhutan is a beautiful country in south asia, quite a small country and they have kind of deliberately decided to to restrict tourism so they actually welcome tourists. There are a lot of tourists, I forget the numbers, a lot of people coming every year, but they kind of try to moderate that that market on dh so basically to go to that country to get a visa, you have to work with a tour company, so I worked with a great agency I didn't know them before I booked it but they were called bridge to bhutan bridge to bataan dot com I think they kind of said everything up I had to spend something like two hundred dollars a day while I was in country but that covered my lodging that covered my meals on my transportation all my touring and things there's really no way to hack that that's just something that you that's like that experience that you work for I guess what you would do if you're planning a dream trip to bhutan you know the flights come in from bangkok or from katmandu or from delhi I believe obviously have to get to one of those points so maybe you're having this big trip to india and you have to do all that with your points and miles and then you have this side trip to bhutan which is an amazing country and that's what you choose to invest uh what's the most important thing you learned today credit card concierge services didn't know about that it's great I don't think much about either so I'm gonna work on that myself anyone probably the real come to consider sources I never thought about like blasting them as a person where do you eat rather than just like where does your hotel tell us to eat so that's cool g experiences page okay I just want to go explore where we're gonna go taylor swift together take it off I'm starting to think about allocating more points towards my husband throwing out the first pitch I've never weigh myself always doing this research so there's a few different parks you can look so we'll look it up maybe afterwards