Dublin
We celebrated our 20-year anniversary in February. My husband had about 90K points in his American Airlines account from a sign-up bonus a few years ago. February is the off-season to fly to Europe from the US so I started looking at where we could get FREE on points but it wouldn’t take all day to get there and back. His time off each year is limited and I try to maximize as many fun adventures with him as possible. We quickly settled on Dublin. We had never been to Ireland and it is relatively quick to get to from here. Best of all, I could get us two free round-trip tickets from Nashville to Dublin.
Once we settled on flights, I started looking at hotel options. Since it was our 20-year anniversary I wanted to stay somewhere special in Dublin. My husband travels occasionally for work and prefers Hilton. To maximize how many points he earns when traveling I had him get the American Express Aspire card. Not only do we get hotel points for him staying at Hilton, but we also get 14 points per dollar when charging it to our card. This allowed us to accumulate quite a few Hilton points. His Hilton Aspire card offers us Diamond Status with Hilton. In Europe, this status gives us free breakfasts which are usually AMAZING! We also get free upgrades when available.
Another benefit of Diamond status with Hilton is you earn more points for every dollar you spend at Hilton. We used this to our advantage and charged everything to our room. I used to pay as we went at hotels until I realized I was leaving valuable points behind. Now we charge everything to our room.
As for our trip to Dublin, it was so much fun. The Conrad was the perfect place to celebrate our 20th anniversary. It was within walking distance of everything we wanted to do in Dublin. Even though our trip was quick we had the best time exploring.
We booked our tours through Viator which included visits to Guinness, Jameson, and Teeling Distillery. We visited the Book of Kells at Trinity University and met the nicest people as we toured the city. It was so much going to the local pub and just having a pint (or two).
