Ep 93: Four Travel Perks for Physicians to Travel Smarter

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Transcript

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Hi, everybody.

Dr. Gray, Host 0:01

Welcome back to another episode of the Dare to Dream Physician Travel Podcast.

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I just spent four days in Puerto Rico. My family and I just went on a very short trip, to Puerto Rico and, it was an experiment. in the last year, The shortest trip that I took. That involved flying was eight days to Hawaii where we stayed on the small island of Maui. Um, it was her first visit to Hawaii We had already been in San Francisco for a couple of weeks visiting family. And so Maui was a much shorter flight to San Francisco then flying from Vermont, and that felt like a fairly rushed trip because there was so much to see in Hawaii and eight days didn't feel like enough to see everything. Especially, to take into account the weather affects on our site, seeing and activities. And, give us a few rest days, too. So that was eight days. That was our shortest trips to give you an idea. Then then came this idea to go to Puerto Rico. Um, black Friday, cyber Monday weekend, I found really cheap flights to Puerto Rico. We had never been and we thought, wouldn't it be cool if we just took off minimal time from work and just do a short trip. So today I'm going to go over for travel permits that we really enjoyed during our four days in Puerto Rico. And so this is part one I'm not actually going to talk about Puerto Rico. If you want to hear more about our short trip there, you want to tune in next week? So the four parts that we enjoy during our short trip to Puerto Rico. Number one, lounges. This is the first time that I got to take my family to lounges. So on the way out, we flew from Bradley international airport, which is the Hartford. Springfield. Airport near the Connecticut and Massachusetts border. This is also the first year that I got some travel credit cards. I have the American express platinum, which gives access to. American express lounges and priority lounges. And I also have to chase Sapphire reserve, which gives access to priority past lounges. They'll also allows dining credits, a certain qualifying restaurants and certain airports. I have already taken advantage of that with my family, but we've never been to a lounge. So in Bradley, there was the American express escape lounge. The most famous song just by American express or the Centurion lounges. And they are at the bigger airports like San Francisco. Los Angeles. Dulles international airport. They are not at the little airports that I fly out of. So I have not had a chance to try them. However, the downside to the American century and lounges, is the limited access. So even as a American express platinum car holder, most people are only able to take themselves into the lounge and not any family members. There are ways around taking family members, but they usually require extra costs. If they don't use the lounge on a regular basis may not be worth it. the American express escape lounges are the smaller and less fancy versions of the century and lounges also by American express. But much to my surprise, they do allow to guess with one card. So we have a family of five, but because my husband was also traveling with us, I was able to just take two kids in there just to try it out., in the future we might make one or two of my family members and authorized. User on the American express platinum card. Um, and that would allow the entire family access. To the escape lounges at least. So for those of you like myself, who's never been in the lounge. When you walk into the airport, you may not. Not have noticed this before, but I started noticing it more. More, these. Areas, um, where you have to enter by a fancy glass last door and inside there are seats. There's food. Um, there's a bar usually. And it's a nice enclosed area. The complaint nowadays is that lounges are getting crowded and companies are working on building more lounges at airports, but airport space of course, is at a premium. So that's means these lounges are not going to be guaranteed. space. So as a family of five, we may not be able to get in because of space issues. The Amex escape lounge did allow me and two guests. So two of my kids and I to go into the lounge with my Amex platinum card, I just had to show them our boarding passes. And. We were in. Inside there were seats. It's kind of like a restaurant except, the food is just all you can. I didn't use the bar. So I don't know if you have to pay extra for that, but even if you didn't, you certainly would have to tip the bartender, basically at these lounges, if there were people who were actually, actively giving you service, it would be a good idea to leave a tip. So, yes, so my, my kids and I really enjoy this lounge. It was hard to find a seat, but we did find a table. There were several tables that had two seats, but we were three. So we found one table that had four seats. So we sat down there. Um, we got ourselves some food, which is way, way better than the airport food. Um, even if you were willing to pay. Um, so I sent my husband with our other kid, to the normal airport food options. And my husband got a salad that looked very, very basic. That costs. It's$13. Um, and it didn't look nearly as appetizing as the food that we got in the lounge. The food did run out quickly at the lounge, but it was also restocked quickly. So, um, if you only have five minutes, you may not be able to get something, but we had about 20 minutes, so it wasn't that long, but we were able to get some food down and drink some tea while we're in there. Um, number two, perk the number two perk that we use during this trip that I loved. Was credit card points that translated to free hotel. Stay. So this is a four night trip, through three of the four nights, we stayed at an Airbnb because it was closer to the area. Area that we want it to be in. Um, the first night though, we arrived in the airport around 9:00 PM. So by the time we got a rental car, I knew that it was going to be late and that we didn't want to be driving on mountain roads in Puerto Rico. So we, I just picked a hotel near the airport to stay, just to spend the night. And, as a family of five, it can be challenging to travel in hotels because oftentimes we're forced to get a second room and it's really inconvenient with young kids. So I like to look for hotel chains, like the Hyatt place, the Hyatt house, um, Hilton home, two Swedes. Because they allow, they usually have two queen size beds and they also have a sofa bed. So. So, what we learned was that. In San Juan, where we flew into in Puerto Rico there, even though the rooms are big enough, there was a Hyatt place. And even though the rooms are big enough, they did not allow us to stay there in the room as a family of five, because there is a fire code, that seemed to limit four to a room. So we went a little bit farther out, um, about 20 minute drive from the airport, still better than a two and a half hour drive that we had to do the next day. And this. Was the Hyatt place and by Amman, for those of you who are beginner at credit card points, the Hyatt is a favorite transfer partner in the chase credit card points ecosystem, because of their excellent value in redeeming for hotel stays. So as an example, I paid eight. 8,000 points to stay in a room with two queen size beds and a sofa bed. And it was a fairly large room. There was free breakfast was actually quite decent breakfast. A continental breakfast with, fruit salad and eggs and oatmeal. And, different toppings, from six 30 to 9:00 AM. My husband was a huge. Huge fan of the breakfast. I thought it was okay. Um, but we all were pretty full and didn't even need to have lunch because we had such a full breakfast. So that was 8,000 points. So just as an comparison, 8,000 points if you redeem at 1 cent per point, which of course is not how much cheese points are valued at, but even at that valuation, that's about$80. Even if you were. To value it at 1.5. 5 cents. Per point that's. It's only$120. Dollars. And Hyatt actually includes all fees and taxes when you redeem. So I didn't have to pay a single cent. Of course you're able to make smart redemptions this was just a middle of the road redemption it was nothing fancy but still we can't argue with getting a free night with free breakfast for five people At 8,000 hotel points that's a fantastic deal Um the third part that i learned was direct flights so what are the reasons why we drove so it was even it was worth driving three and a half hours to another airport now for context our closest airport is two hours so we drove an extra hour and a half to get to an airport that had a direct flights to our destination but you have a short trip definitely get direct flights it's worth it even if you have to drive a little bit further and also i should mention that we got these tickets really cheap by cheap i mean for one person round trip tickets from the northeast to puerto rico it was less than$250 that included it to taxes so definitely look for direct flights and look for them early. This is a trip in may i got this at the end of november during the cyber monday sale for jet blue Um my husband was not sure that he wanted to come So when he decided that he was interested in coming which was about three weeks before the trip The$250 regular coach that gave us the option to pick seats um that ticket was close to three times as much the amount um i ended up getting him a basic economy so he couldn't even pick the seats. i think it was$570. so still more than twice of what i paid for the flights i booked over five months ago. so definitely look for direct flights and look for them early. the fourth part that i enjoyed for the first time and loved is using the tsa pre-check. i applied for global entry over six months ago but recently when we came back from the bahamas at the atlanta airport i was able to finally get my interview in which is a first come first serve on as available basis Um i waited maybe 30 minutes and was able to do my interview which wasn't really much of an interview except for doing you know fingerprints and answering very basic questions so when i got my tsa pre-check my kids on the same reservation Um minors traveling with me also got the tsa pre-check that helped me get in and out of the security line at the airport at both Bradley international airport and ads. The san juan airport on our way out um i also have clear which is something that you can anyone can buy at participating airports it's not at as many airports As um tsa pre-check which i think is that all airports But clear is available at select airports it is available at bradley airport out of hartford and it is available out of the san juan so i was able to use That service to expedite the clear line so when you have both you look at the line and see you know what you're shorter the clear line was actually faster at the bradley airport so i used that at the san juan airport it actually didn't really give us an advantage um, because it was It happened to be a short line when we were leaving i was i was told that that is not always the case so yeah highly recommended actually with tsa pre-check you may get special per it's like not having to remove your shoes not having to remove your laptop in in the tsa pre-check line Is there we go those are the four parts that i loved drain our four days in puerto rico next week i will talk about the four lessons that i learned and then also i will be talking about Our actual where where we actually visited in puerto rico okay until next time hope you have a good week