Views from our AirBNB
About this time last year, I was researching where to go for Spring Break. Florida has been the family friendly destination of choice for many prior Spring Breaks both for respite from the Midwest chill and for the easy non-stop flights, but the prices to go to south Florida were appalling! . I was used to price inflation during high-demand times such as March/April and all the winter school break periods, but I was blown away at what I was seeing. Our previously reliably-cheap flights on Southwest were now $500+ a person, and I couldn’t find a hotel or AirBnb/VRBO for less than $600 a night. We’re talking about at least $5500 for a five-night trip to southwest Florida. I begrudgingly booked refundable flights to the Naples area and a VRBO for more than I wanted to spend.
Around that time I started reading up on travel hacking: using credit cards for your usual everyday to accrue points to spend on travel. I had gotten my first flexible travel points card, a Chase Sapphire Preferred, about a year earlier. I had signed up when they were offering 90,000 points as a sign-on bonus. Between that and the points I earned using the card, I had already collected about 150,000 points. There’s more here about how I accumulated my points for more than $1 spent per point and how to research point redemption flights, but, long story short, I was able to find-round trip tickets for my family of five. Round trip flights nonstop from Detroit to Paris cost 127,500 points plus $800 in taxes. You can imagine the look on my husband’s face when I came home from a night shift asking if he’d rather go to Paris instead of Florida for a week. He showed me to my bed and told me to sleep. After my nap and my points scheme explanation, the tickets were booked that afternoon. These same flights paid with cash only would have been nearly $11,000 for my family of 5!
AirFrance has some of the best points redemption rates out there and, to top it off, they offer 25% off for kids 12 and under!! So our tickets were at 15,000 each way for adults and 11,250 for the kids. We did have to drive to Detroit to make this happen, but it’s only a short 2.5 hour drive for us. We hopped on the plane for our overnight, nonstop flight and were eating croissants in Paris the next morning.
The kids did great! After getting over the excitement of their own airplane screens with maps, movies, and games they had a pretty delicious meal. Everyone even got some sleep.
Flights sorted, the cost of housing was the next big question. Surprisingly, I found plenty of similarly-sized two bedroom rentals for less than we had planned to spend in Naples. Options in Florida were $600/night, but we found beautiful, centrally-located apartments in Paris for $300. It helps that it’s off season for them, but also the abundance of AirBnbs drives reasonable prices. We booked a nice little apartment on the top floor of a Belle Epoch building ½ a block from the Champs-Élysées—5 nights for $1731 including tax and cleaning fees. That’s a total of $346 a night!
We were still able to follow all our usual accommodation rules, including washer and dryer, kitchenette, central location and at least two bedrooms with a sofa bed for kid #3. This unit had a view of the Eiffel Tower, a full kitchen, and a grocery about 50 feet away so we were able to stock the fridge with fresh-squeezed orange juice, cheese, and baguettes aplenty! Most importantly, our place was also stocked with wine glasses that we used nightly to enjoy our market wine after the kids went to bed.
While we were there, we may have spent a little more on cultural experiences such as entrance fees to the Louvre, Musée D’Orsay, and Versailles than we would have spent sitting on the beach, but we think it was worth it. Last, the public transport and Uber fees ended up being less than the cost of a rental car in the U.S. so we came out on top there too even if I might have made up the difference with my pain au chocolat budget. 🙂
More on Travel Hacking here!
