This week, Kyle walks us through how he booked an epic trip to England and Scotland using points and miles. There’s a business class award to London, an economy flight home, and plenty of flights, hotels and other travel expenses in between. Plus, Phoenix gets its first nonstop flight to Asia and we say goodbye to the Southwest we knew and loved. Do yourself a favor and stick around for Gunnar’s cant-miss, ridiculous story of his own trip to London … when he learned some of England’s beer-drinking rules the hard way at a consequential Chelsea match.
This week, Kyle walks us through how he booked an epic trip to England and Scotland using points and miles. There’s a business class award to London, an economy flight home, and plenty of flights, hotels and other travel expenses in between. Plus, Phoenix gets its first nonstop flight to Asia and we say goodbye to the Southwest we knew and loved. Do yourself a favor and stick around for Gunnar’s cant-miss, ridiculous story of his own trip to London … when he learned some of England’s beer-drinking rules the hard way at a consequential Chelsea match.
00:45 - Our top tips for the busy summer travel season (& will Real ID matter?)
05:45 - Something hot: Phoenix’s strange (but explainable) Starlux nonstop flight to Taipei
10:30 - Something cold: Pouring one out with a goodbye to the old Southwest
14:50 - A word from our sponsor: Sign up for our (free) Daily Beat Newsletter today!
16:10 - The Extra Mile: Exactly how Kyle booked a points & miles trip to England and Scotland this summer
19:15 - How he (and about seven other Thrifty Traveler team members!) booked business class for just 29,000 points each way thanks to Virgin’s new pricing mode
22:00 - Booking a nonstop Delta flight home … but not with SkyMiles
28:30 - The best car rental booking tool out there: AutoSlash
31:00 - Booking a hotel stay at a castle in Scotland using Hilton points (at the old, cheaper rate)
32:30 - Using Capital One’s $300 travel credit to fill in the rest
37:00 - Gunnar’s legendary story of learning England’s beer-drinking laws at a Chelsea soccer match the hard way…
42:10 - Listener Question: The Concorde in our studio
45:45 - On the Spot: Travel re-treads, or what trips would we try again? Or not?
Produced by Gunnar Olson & Jackson Newman
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo. Welcome to the show. I am imminent father Gunnar Olson here with a guy who may have to do this episode on his own at a moment's notice. It's Kyle Potter. I want you to have a child.
I don't wanna do this on your own. Please come back. What is your plan if I have to get up in the middle of this show and head to the hospital right now to have my first child? There is no plan, Gunnar. There's never a plan.
We just wing it. We wing everything here at Thrifty Traveler. How do you not know this after four years here? I would love to hear the twenty five minute monologue you put together, trying to fill time when I abruptly leave the studio. I don't, I don't even think my wife would listen to that.
I'd listen to it. I'd have to kill some time in the delivery room. Alright, Cal. To get started today, I need to find something out. And that's about summer travel season, which is really just days away at this point.
People are starting to gear up their travels or maybe are hunting for a last minute flight deal or something to put a trip together. But do you have any tips for travelers to help make this kind of busier summer travel season a little easier? I mean, I when I think about summer travel, I think about just how hectic airports can get because the summer is typically always, with the exception of the holidays, the busiest travel season of the year. And, you know, as much as the launch of Real ID starting in early May was a little bit of a joke, enforcement is a term that apparently the federal government is using in air quotations. I still wonder if it's only a matter of time before they get serious about this.
And if they start to get serious about requiring a real ID at security checkpoints in the months to come, you might as well get one anyway if you don't have one. Or more importantly, make sure you have your passport with you because that works as a real idea of security. A global entry card, a passport card even. Just really start to plan for the summer because the last thing that you want when airports are busy is to get held up or just just to have problems in an already hectic environment. So that's the first one.
And the other thing is, I know nobody likes well, some of us may like to have a four AM wake up call and get to the airport for the first flight of the morning, but it's worth it because if you're worried about delays and cancellations, the data is very clear. The single best decision that you can make is take the earliest flight possible because the longer the day goes on, the more likely that delays are gonna start to stack up. You know, the plane that you're flying from Minneapolis to Chicago might be coming in from Denver earlier that day. And if that flight is delayed, all of a sudden you're delayed too. So if you have that first flight of the day, that sets you up to get to where you need to go on time as best as you possibly can.
What about you? Yeah. I actually have a similar tip, and that's just get up in the morning, do things in the morning, just when you're traveling in general. You know, life is just a little easier in the mornings. Crowds are lighter.
Some of the best travel experiences in my life came from getting up at the crack of dawn and going to do things in the morning. And, you know, you're gonna be able to, you know, get better guides and tours at that time of day as well. And just, you know, you're not dealing with kind of the frenzied of the frenzy of midmorning rush at all these things. Get up and do something that you really wanna do where you know crowds are gonna be there super early in the morning. It also starts your day a lot earlier, so you can end your day a lot earlier.
I love going to bed early, Kyle. It's one of my favorite things ever even when I'm traveling. But you get an earlier dinner reservation, so you could eat at some of the nicer places, go get in there at 05:00 and, you know, hit the hay by about 09:30. It's You're gonna get some really weird looks in Spain with this strategy, but it's gonna pay off in the long run. I get weird looks almost everywhere with this strategy, but, I'm knocking on the door at 05:05 looking to get dinner sometimes when I'm traveling.
I love could you have stopped that sentence at I get weird looks everywhere? I could've. Yeah. It's, partially the hair, partially just my general demeanor, but I get good looks. I get weird looks everywhere I go.
My second tip for summer travelers is aim for August, especially if you don't have anything booked yet. The best deals are gonna come in August. You still get that great summer weather. You don't have those like peak summer crowds. And most importantly, those peak summer prices on everything else.
The best Europe flight deals are gonna be for August with the exception of business class. Actually, the best business class deals, especially with points and miles, are usually gonna be in those June, July ranges, which is a surprising trend, but it makes sense considering business travelers are typically not on the road during those months anyway. But those are all the tips I got. Anything else come to mind for travelers? No.
The August window is just so clutch if you wanna get a better deal on flights, especially to Europe, but I would say anywhere. You know, there's definitely a dividing line between kind of the early to mid August where you start to see a lot more of the peak prices in early to mid August and obviously June and July as well. But once you hit that, you know, somewhere between August, maybe the fifteenth in some destinations. After that, that's when we tend to see the best prices. This summer is a little bit different.
I feel like there's been better prices across the whole of the summer than we've seen in a certainly, you know, three or four years, maybe even more than that. But regardless, that late mid to late August window is just so great for finding better deals on flights no matter where you're going. Yeah. I just love that one last getaway too. It's always fun.
Today on the show, we're gonna look at a surprising new route announcement from Asian carrier, Starlux Airlines, And we're gonna wave goodbye to the Southwest that we knew and loved. And in our featured segment called the extra mile, Kyle's gonna show us exactly how to book a trip to England and Scotland using points and miles. All that and more. Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Alright.
Let's jump into something hot and something cold. It's a bit of good travel news and a bit of bad travel news from the last week, and we're gonna start with something hot. Kyle, how many US cities can you name where you expected Starlux to add nonstop flights before you got to Phoenix? Probably a dozen or close to it. I mean, this really did kinda come out of nowhere.
So set this up for us, Gunnar. What is the news? Why is it big news? And then we'll get into why on earth is a Taiwanese luxury airline flying to, of all places, Phoenix, Arizona, nonstop. Yeah.
So last week, the mayor of Phoenix and Starlux jointly announced a new nonstop service to Taipei, beginning in 2026. They just said early twenty twenty six. We don't know any more than that. But it's the first ever Asian nonstop for the Phoenix Airport. And, like you said, Kyle, a massive head scratcher kinda until it wasn't.
Right? Right. I mean, you know, we were kinda racking our brains when this news came out, which came out from Isurion Aviation, I think was the first, you know, big aviation news source to spot this, which, again, you know, that was one of our must follows in one of our previous episodes. Can't stress enough. If you wanna know about airline news, Isurion is just so good at getting this news and seeing things before anybody else.
But, anyway, we were kinda talking in the office here. Like, what is why Phoenix? I mean, is it just business travel? Is there just so much travel demand to to not just Taiwan, but, you know, connections into Mainland China and throughout Southeast Asia? Taipei is a really good airport for connections.
There's a reason why there are, you know, not just, Starlux, but EVA and China Airlines fly a lot of nonstops to and from The US. But, you know, EVA and China Airlines fly to Chicago and New York City and a handful of other cities, and none of them fly to Phoenix. So what's going on here? And then we see the obvious reason, which is, you know, even the mayor from Phoenix, noted that there is a new semiconductor facility being built in Phoenix. And this company from Taiwan is pouring in a hundred and $65,000,000,000 into Phoenix, which means that they've gotta get people back and forth from Phoenix to Taiwan and vice versa.
And this is the thing. You know, there are a lot of reasons why airlines may decide to start a new route just because they can see the travel demand is there. They know that tourism is hot, whatever. But the biggest reason is that business travel dictates everything. And if you can see on paper, if you can talk to a company and know that they're gonna have a lot of employees that are gonna be on this route and they're gonna be paying either, you know, $5,000 or more round trip for a business class fare, or they're gonna be booking last minute tickets, you know, seven, five, three, one days in advance that are gonna cost thousands of dollars every single time.
That makes it really, really easy for airlines to justify starting these new routes. Yeah. If you're gonna put a hundred and $65,000,000,000 into a market, you should probably chase it with a nonstop flight. They would have sent that flight to Wichita if they threw that money at the city of Wichita. That's an insane amount of money.
I do wonder how much, business class award availability we'll find on that route just because there's gonna be so much, you know, demand, we think, especially in the business travel sector, but we'll see. It's also Phoenix. Right? It's not something it's not a lot it's not a place where people are routinely looking for business class award availability either. So who knows?
We might, we might be surprised and find something good there. I would definitely say over the next couple of days, keep your eye out. If it hasn't hit your inbox already, we'll definitely be keeping an eye out because once they launch flights, that's usually the best time to find brand new award availability, especially in the front cabins. Yeah. I imagine it'll run hot and cold based on, you know, this Taiwanese company's work schedule and when they need to send employees back and forth.
And, you know, if it's a little bit lumpy and there are peaks and valleys and how often the airline is filling these business class cabins with employees, you know, everyday travelers might luck out and get it while the getting's good. And, you know, if that's the case, you know, right now being able to book those flights, you know, we believe it would be 75,000 Alaska miles each way because that's what Starlux is charging from its existing gateways like Seattle, San Francisco, and LA. I see no reason why, Phoenix, if and when these flights actually do go on sale, which is still at this point is a big question mark. But like Gunnar said, I mean, we're gonna be looking really, really closely. And I I feel fairly optimistic, let's say.
If I'm wrong, feel free to call me out later. But I feel fairly optimistic that this might be an opportunity that's a little bit better to get, you know, that long fifteen hour flight on a really good airline, which personally, I'm really anxious to try out, and I think Phoenix might be the best bet. Yeah. For sure. Super exciting.
That's why it's definitely something hot for this week. But we gotta get to something cold, and that is, sadly, Kyle, pour one out. This week, the old Southwest officially died. On May 27, Southwest sold its last wanna getaway fares. Those really popular flexible fares that came with two free checked bags.
It's the last thing that made the airline really unique. And now we are seeing Southwest basic fares. Womp womp. Regular old basic economy fare comes with next to nothing, and now almost every major airline in The US is exactly the same. Kyle, you can tell by the tone of my voice how I feel.
How do you feel about Southwest and its future now? You know, I'm a little bit torn about it because on the one hand, Southwest has never really been that appealing to me personally because unlike you, I'm not a huge skier. I don't need those two free check bags everywhere I go, and that has really always been the value proposition of Southwest that they don't nickel and dime you. You get two free bags with every fare. It made a lot of sense even though at face value, Southwest might be charging the same or more as other carriers.
At the same time, I think we heard pretty much in unison from Avid Southwest flyers when this news came out a couple of months ago. The question, why on earth would I book Southwest now? And I think that's a very valid question. And now that these changes have actually taken effect, I think we're gonna probably start to see it in the numbers that unless if Southwest really gets competitive on price by undercutting every single major airline in the country on price, why are people gonna be booking Southwest? And I think above all, kind of zooming out and looking bigger picture at the at the airline industry, I think the most successful airlines in the world all have a story.
Delta is, you know, the airline that is on time and it takes care of you. United is an up and comer that is really trying to challenge Delta. Emirates is all about luxury. You go down the list. And Southwest's story for decades was we take care of you.
We're not gonna nickel and dime you. We don't do stuff like the other airlines that you really loathe. And Southwest does not have that story anymore. So what is Southwest story? I don't know that they're gonna have one.
Yeah. I mean, I know people in my life who don't like flying Southwest because of the uncertainty of no seat assignment at all. So maybe there's a crack in the door for those people, but without the free checked bags, it's just like every other airline. Like, if you throw a Southwest fare up against a Delta fare on the same route on the same day, and they're, you know, within $10.15 dollars of each other. I'm going with Delta because it's more reliable and some in flight entertainment and free Wi Fi.
And it's like all of a sudden, everything that makes Southwest unique is gone. And when you compare those fares apples to apples and Google flights, there's just not a lot of reasons for me to pull the trigger unless they're the only option. Right? So tough one. I'm, you know, curious about their future.
I wonder if, their business will start to perform a little better or at least up to their shareholders' expectations. But, I'm gonna miss the old way. I'm gonna miss the old Southwest. That's for sure. Yeah.
And I'm really looking forward to when Southwest, comes out with earnings next. Not because I'm a financial expert of any kind. I'm not. I can barely add or subtract. But, you know, the last day of selling wanna get away fares with two free checked bags, is May.
May '20 eighth, that changes. You don't get any of that. But if you book by if you know, for travelers out there who booked before that date change, you still get two free checked bags. So I'm wondering if we're gonna get, you know, into the summer and Southwest starts talking about how, you know, April, May, and June went for them. We might see that May 27 was the single biggest day of ticket sales in Southwest history, and it and it probably should be because, you know, Southwest is a good airline.
They run a good show there. People enjoy flying Southwest. And for people who really do like flying Southwest, I bet there are a lot of people out there who rushed to get in the doors before everything changed. Yeah. It should be a really interesting day, Southwest Revenue Management.
That's for sure. Alright. We have a lot more to cover including, Kyle's points and miles bookings to England and Scotland that we're very excited to talk about. But first, we're gonna take a quick break. Alright.
I like to say there are no true experts in travel and that's because whatever you learn this month could be obsolete the next. Things change fast in this world so you can get an edge in budget travel or points and miles by staying current. And that's why I wanted to tell you about our daily beat newsletter. It's a quick email sent to your inbox every morning, and it'll give you all the new information and tools you need to travel for less. Kyle, what should travelers expect from the Daily Beat?
Well, first of all, they should expect it in their inboxes every morning, Tuesday through Saturday when we round up the last day's news in travel flight deals, travel rewards, credit cards, loyalty, hotels, whatever, and send it straight to your inbox. You're going to see stories from Gunnar and I, whether you want them or not. But more importantly, you'll see some stories from some of the other awesome members of our team. Jackson and Nick, two of the best people at covering the credit card landscape, Long, who is doing a killer job writing about hotels as well as finding hotel deals, as well as even the occasional appearance from our own Peter Thornton, who, you know, now is spending most of its time deep in the bowels of award space finding award deals, but also has written some really, really awesome in-depth guides to actually booking award tickets. Yeah.
You're gonna wanna hear from all those experts. So head to thriftytraveler.com/daily beat, all one word, to sign up today. Alright. Back to the show. Alright.
Let's go to the extra mile where we dig a little deeper onto something in the world of travel. And this week, Kyle's taking us to Europe. Where are we going, Kyle? You're coming. You're coming to Europe with me.
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were planning a group trip for you, me, and Jackson, our producer today. That's not what's happening. Okay. Back to the drawing board.
Kyle, what is happening today? Where you just booked a trip. Where did this idea come from? Tell us about the trip. Yeah.
So, you know, I touched on this in a previous episode, but we're gonna dive a little deeper as we do here in the extra mile. My wife and I are going to England and Scotland late this summer. And this, you know, didn't come out of nowhere. In fact, my wife and I have been talking about this for as long as we've known each other, which is almost twelve years. My wife studied abroad, during college in England.
And, you know, since we've met, it's one of the things that she talks about the most. It's just really just a precious experience for her, and so we've always talked about wanting to do this. And we've traveled a ton together. We actually had a trip to, England to fly into London to go to the college where she studied and go to that town and explore Scotland a little bit. And we were scheduled to depart in August of twenty twenty.
And I think we can all guess what happened to that particular trip. That one did not happen. We did not fly to London in, late August of twenty twenty. And the thing is, you know, we've spent the last few years doing exactly what we tell everybody to do, which is to follow the deal. And we've taken some incredible trips by following that deal, but that has meant that the deal hasn't brought us to England until it finally did.
And I'm really, really excited that we're finally making this happen. Yeah. That's awesome. So, I assume that to book this trip, you followed the deal once again. Can you take us exactly through how you found the deal, what you used, and how you booked this thing?
So if, people who are listening wanted to replicate it or maybe even do something better, they could. I mean, you can certainly do better. This all started on 10/30/2024, which may not go down in infamy exactly, but I think it's gonna go down in TT lore, because this was a huge day. So Virgin Atlantic had been warning for months leading up to this that effective October 30, they were going to change over to a dynamic award pricing system for their flying club program. And dynamic award pricing has its ups and downs.
We talked about that a lot when it comes to Delta SkyMiles. But it tends to be a dirty word, and so I think we were all bracing for the absolute worst. And in fact, you know, I don't think really anyone on the team was really, you know, primed to look at this and say, alright. We gotta look first thing in the morning because we know there's gonna be something great here. I think we were all just expecting higher award rates, whether you're flying economy or business class or whatever.
And then we get a message from Jackson on our team who says, hey, guys. I think this flight, you know, this business class flight from Boston to Heathrow actually got got a little bit cheaper. And so then, you know, some light bulbs started going off, and we started digging into it. And lo and behold, you know, when Virgin Atlantic previously charged at least 47,500 points and about a thousand dollars in taxes and fees, you could now book flights from Boston, New York, Washington, DC, even Atlanta to London for as little as 29,000 points and just 250 some dollars in taxes and fees. This was alarm bells, full on alarm bells.
And so within about thirty minutes, you and John and Peter and the others on our team had gotten together a deal to send to our premium members, and I'm on that list. I'm not above getting high on our own supply. I do it all the time. I did follow the deal here. So we got that deal out.
And about five minutes later, I booked flights for my wife and I to get there, you know, departing in late August of this year. And I think about seven others on our team also booked this deal. We got the deal out first, and then the rest of us got really selfish in a hurry, and I was one of them. That's awesome. So, I actually, sadly, was not working that day.
So I was following along on Slack as you guys were all booking this deal, and, I missed out on it. I I was traveling. I don't remember where, but I was, on the road and was not able to book the Virgin deal. But it seems like everyone else is gonna take that flight at some point here this year. So, what points did you use?
Exactly how many did you use to nail these things down? You know, the real magic of this was not just that this deal was suddenly so much cheaper to fly business class from the East Coast to Europe, but also that there was a record setting transfer bonus available. So at the time, in October, there was a transfer bonus from Chase to Virgin Atlantic for 40%, which meant that we only had to transfer 21,000 points each, plus that 250 some, in taxes and fees a ticket, which is not nothing. But, again, that is a quarter of what Virgin Atlantic used to charge. So I will say this was the first time in, I don't know, probably three, four, maybe even five years that I had used Chase points to book a flight.
I had typically been saving them for Hyatt. But with a 40% bonus, it was an absolute no brainer to be able to book two business class tickets for a total of 42,000 points and just over $500. Oh, gosh. It's such a good booking. I'm very jealous.
I've spent that many points on way, way dumber things and way worse flights. So that's gonna be a really, really fun trip once you pull it off. So, let's finish the flights first. As is our rule here at Thrift Traveler, flights first rule. How are you getting home?
You know, we looked into a couple of different things. The taxes, especially flying business class departing London, are just really rough, and I just didn't have it in me to pay, you know, 4 or $500 a ticket or more. Also considered kind of making at least a connection through Dublin. So flying from, say, London to Dublin and then home somewhere. Also wasn't really into it.
A lot of the award space that was available at the time, would have put us through the East Coast, and I was just really eager to get home. And at the end of the day, there's really nothing wrong with using your points to book economy, especially when it's a nonstop flight. So in this case, you know, there was award space to, again, use Virgin Atlantic points, fly from London straight home to Minneapolis. It's a daytime flight. We're not flying overnight to get home from Europe, so I don't know that we really wanna sleep anyway.
Might grab a quick nap, though I for me, that's probably gonna be about five minutes, but it doesn't matter because it only cost us 17,500 Virgin points each, and about, a hun or 240 in taxes, which is a little tough to swallow, but the sweetener there was that after that 40%, transfer bonus from from Chase to Virgin, there was an identical 40% transfer bonus from American Express to Virgin. So we transferred, just 14,000 points a piece to Virgin, and then booked those tickets home. Getting straight home after, you know, a ten day trip, it's it's I feel great about it. Yeah. That's a smart move.
Business class is just a mindset anyway. Right? Three red wines, an eye mask, and a turtle pillow, and you're not you're never gonna know the difference. The Thirsty Traveler podcast is back. Alright.
Three red red wines in economy. You tell me how it goes when you try to flag down a flight attendant and ask for three red wines. And if you ask for three at one time, I want video footage. I'm putting a hole in that flight attendant call button about fourteen minutes into the flight. Alright.
So you're not just going to London. You're also planning to go up to Scotland. How are you getting in between those two places? Yeah. You know, we're so trying to plan out how to divide up this trip because there are a handful of places that we wanna hit.
We, of course, wanna spend some time in Edinburgh. Like I mentioned, we want to get to, you know, the place where my wife studied. We wanna hit up some coastal towns in, kinda Northern England and then, of course, spend some time in London too. So what we decided to do is, you know, right when we land in London, connect straight up to Edinburgh. And I'll be honest, as we're talking right now, I haven't booked those flights yet.
You know, we're still a handful of months out. I'm not too worried. I've got a Google Flights price alert set. I'm gonna continue, you know, just kinda hoping that prices come down a little bit and book that. If they don't, I'll figure out a way to book that flight using some miles.
Gonna be just fine. You know, from there, we're gonna spend some time in Edinburgh, of course, but then we're also gonna drive out kind of into the Highlands, and in particular, go to Oban on the kind of Western Coast Of Scotland, which I'm really, really excited for. And then, we're gonna rent a car. We're going to, drive from Edinburgh down the coast to that town where my wife studied, which is called Alnwick, spelled A L N W I C K. It's a real study in how the Brits pronounce things, and that l's are typically silent.
And then we're, this was a really weird one. It was oddly maybe the thing I'm proudest of and how we put this together is, you know, we talked about doing a day trip to Anack and hitting up some of those coastal towns, but it would have felt really tight. And then we would have had to drive all the way back to Edinburgh, which is, like, two and a half, three hours, and then you're spending six hours in the car that day. And so I looked into, well, could we, you know, drive all the way to Newcastle and then fly from Newcastle back to London? I mean, it's like a nine hour train ride, but an hour by plane.
And the flight prices were just really gross. I mean, like, $500 a ticket one way. I was like, I just really wish that this was a better deal, and it would make the trip so much more convenient. And in my head, I told myself, well, if these tickets are $500 a piece flying British Airways, there's no way that I can book this with miles. You know, that's what we see.
When ticket prices go up, airlines pull award inventory that you can actually book with miles. But I, you know, I took a flyer on it. I booted up ba.com. I searched for that flight and go figure that $500 flight was bookable for under 10,000 British Airways, Avios, which you can transfer from all of the major banks like Chase, American Express, Capital One, on 9,750 Avios and a dollar in taxes and fees because British Airways has this really cool system where you can kick in a little bit more miles in order to bring down the taxes and fees that you pay. And to spend less than 20,000 points and $2 to book what would have been a thousand dollars in airfare and really make the trip make a lot more sense and more efficient was really, really cool.
That's awesome. That's a great, great booking as well. It's, also cool to get just go see another airport too. Maybe that's nerdy of me to say, but I just gotta wonder what the Newcastle Airport is like. But that is a clean booking as well.
So as we know with all trips, you know, you have the big things, but let's talk about all the things in between. Lodging, trains, cars, how are you getting around? Where are you gonna stay? Like I said, we really do kind of need a car in order to avoid spending $9.09 to 12 hours on a train getting out to the Highlands and then, you know, down to Newcastle and Anac. And I have really come around on renting a car.
I think if you asked me five years ago, I would have said, you know, I just really like to avoid renting a car unless if I absolutely have to. Just the freedom of being able to go where you need to go to set your own schedule versus being tethered to train schedules or, you know, driver schedules or whatever. And I've also had a, like, a weird amount of experience of driving on the left side of the road. In the past two years alone, we've done trips, and rented cars in both New Zealand and South Africa, both which use the British driving model. So I'm you know, the that first New Zealand trip was the first time I had driven on the left side of the road, and I got about two or three blocks from the airport.
And my wife was like, you are about to sideswipe a car. You gotta move over. It's a little too close. And now I I feel pretty comfortable about it. I do still end up hitting the wipers instead of the blinker without fail, like, 20 times.
But if that's my biggest issue, I'm fine. So, anyway, long winded way of saying we're renting a car. The only thing that I do now when I need to rent a car is I go to auto/.com. The amount of money that I have saved when renting a car from AutoSlash, not just because it pulls in rates from not you know, the main rental car agencies as well as online travel agencies, which is huge. But most importantly, it allows you to track the price of the rental.
So as long as you're booking a refundable rate through whoever you book through, AutoSlash will continue to track it and then send you an email just like Google Flights price alerts, where if the price of that rental has dropped, you can just go back and rebook it, and you're gonna save a ton. So just as an example, years ago, I was out with family in Hawaii, and we booked a rental car on, on the Big Island Kona. And I booked through AutoSlash, and I got an email two or three weeks before we actually flew out to Hawaii for this trip that our rental had dropped by $280. I saved $280 within about two clicks. So that is my go to every time.
I'm still waiting for one of those emails to come in from AutoSlash, but I'm feeling good. I've got my fingers crossed. Yeah. That's AutoSlash.com. Awesome tool.
That was kinda revelatory for me when I found out about AutoSlash. It is a really, really great travel tool out there and totally free. Tell me about where you're staying. Yeah. First up is Edinburgh.
I booked two nights there at the Doubletree, which is an an amazing location right in the shadow of the castle. Booked one night with cash, little bit steep. I think it ends up being a $320 or so for a night, which is a little tough to swallow. I'm hoping that rate is gonna come down. I'm gonna keep an eye on it.
And then the other night, I booked with, 60,000 Hilton honors points, which is not the best redemption in the world. It's certainly not. Hilton is a little bit tough to get good value from these kind of mid tier properties like that, but it was better than spending another $325 or more for that second night that we need there. From there, we're heading out to the Highlands, staying around Oban. And on the flip side of of where the value is is not so good with Hilton, the value is so great with their, SLH, small luxury hotels of the world program.
And there's an awesome, awesome looking property called the Isle Of Oriska, Isle Of Ariska. I don't know about the pronunciation. All I know is that it is a castle that has been converted into an inn. I am super, super excited. We booked two nights there for 90,000 Hilton points apiece.
Since we booked it, it has unfortunately fallen victim to one of Hilton's many devaluations where Hilton has increased award rates at some of their best properties, especially some of the really good SLH properties. So it now costs a hundred thousand points a night. Not terrible for an increase. I would still gladly book that property for a hundred thousand points, from Hilton just because those points are so easy to earn. But I'm really, really looking forward to this one.
That's gonna be really cool. Yeah. That looks that looks like a really special spot as well. Anything in a castle, is probably gonna be worth your Hilton honors points. That's worth at least a hundred thousand points alone.
It's just to say you slept in a castle. Yeah. Exactly. Alright. Where are you staying in Anak?
Did Did I pronounce that correctly? Nailed it. Yeah. We're so we're after after, Edinburgh and the Highlands, we're driving down the coast and eventually making our way to Alnwick where we found this really great brand new it it actually, as we're talking right now and as this episode comes out, it hasn't even opened yet. A brand new boutique hotel called the Bailiff Gate Hotel.
And this is where credit card statement credits really shine Because you, you know, with things like the Capital One VentureX, which has a $300 travel credit, you have to book through a travel portal, which can be a little bit of a bummer. You know, we always tell people book direct whenever you can, especially for hotel chains where if you have elite status or you wanna earn points, you know, you need to book direct through that, hotel chain program. Not an issue here. So to be able to book a $285, really nice looking boutique hotel in the small town of Anac right where we wanna be, use up most of that, you know, $300 annual credit offset, you know, basically all of the Venturex cards, $395 annual fee with one night in a hotel. I'm really, really excited for that one as well.
Yeah. That'll be really, really cool. What about, London? You're finishing up your stay there. Where are you gonna stay in the great city of London?
The amount of time that I spent going back and forth about where we should stay and, let me say, if I haven't made it clear already, this is my first time entering the country of England. I have connected through the Heathrow Airport, like, I had it four or five times. I have never actually been to England. And you would think with my name, I have been there all the time. I really should have been.
I should have been there years ago. Like I said, the flight deals have brought me and my wife elsewhere. So we went back and forth between a handful of different, you know, properties. And do we stay at a really nice property, or do we kinda focus more on location? And we decided to focus a little bit more on the location of where we wanted to be in order to see the sites we wanna see and do the things we wanna do.
And so what we landed on was, the Great Scotland Yard Hotel, which is a Hyatt property. So we booked that for four nights, and some of the nights were 25,000 points apiece. Some of them were 30,000. So I forget exactly how many points that cost. It was a lot.
It was a lot of the chase points that my wife and I have. But, again, this is a very, very special trip that has been a long, long time coming. So this is what points are for, to have special experiences and, you know, to it was really easy to justify the the vast majority of the chase points that we that we have forking them over to end our stay in London in a in the place that we wanna be. Yeah. I know that hotel is right in the heart of things and super close to the tube.
You can get to just about anything that you wanna see in London from that spot. And those aren't terrible rates either, you know, a little steep, but that's you're gonna you're gonna really love that spot. Besides all the logistics, logistics can be fun in their own right, but that's not the fun stuff. What are you looking forward to actually doing on the strip? What, are you most excited about?
I mean, I think the thing that I'm truly most excited about is going to Anik. Like I said, this is something my wife and I have been talking about for more than a decade, and this was a really formative experience for her. So just seeing where she studied and, you know, the town that she lived in for three or four months is gonna be really cool for me personally. The Castle Of Anak is the castle that was featured in the first Harry Potter movie, the Sorcerer's Stone, specifically the scene where they filmed the first Quidditch lessons. That is outside Anacostle.
So I'm not nearly as much as a HP nerd as I used to be, when I was a kid growing up and would read every single book from the hours of midnight until 7AM each night that they came out. That's not me anymore. I'm a different man now. I'm a man now. I'm not a boy.
But, no. I'm really, really excited to to visit Anik with my wife and kinda see some of the things that she saw and did when she was there a long time ago now. Out in the Scottish Highlands, going to the Oban Distillery, one of my favorite Scotch manufacturers to to be able to go there for a tour and a tasting. Really, really excited for that one. It's also the small things though.
And, you know, to me, what I really want most out of a trip to England is just going to pubs. And in particular, you know, a small kind of countryside pub in a small town. That to me is really kind of synonymous with England in my head, and that is the when I think about a trip to England, that is what I envision. So I'm really excited to just find a pub on our drive somewhere and pop in for some fish and chips and a pint and just kinda soak it in. That's amazing.
That's the part of, that's the part of England and Scotland that is just so exciting. It's just like every little town has had something fun like that and a great pub to sit at and, you know, spending a an hour or a few hours at a place like that would be a great great use of an afternoon. Anything else, that you're looking forward to on this trip? What? Now is when I need your advice because you have what in the office is a legendary story about going to a, I think, a Premier League game.
Maybe it was a championship league game. But whichever it was, let us know. And let us know how that experience was from you and what I can learn from you. Alright. I knew this story would come out on the pod at some point.
So, I flew one of the first ever North Atlantic flights over to London, for work. I reviewed the flights there and back. I flew their premium economy and their economy. And my trip just so happened to happen, two days after the queen died. And I it was my first time in London as well, so I was really excited to kinda make the most of it.
And, I booked, I grabbed I went on StubHub, and I grabbed a ticket to a champions league game. It was Chelsea and Red Bull Salzburg. The Salzburg fans, by the way, did not care that the queen had died. They were very rowdy. I was sitting right next to them.
But, anyway, the so the story goes, one, buying tickets on StubHub, not legal there. So when I got to the gate, the ticket had someone else's name on it. And luckily, there was such a rush of people that they just scan the ticket and push me through. But I was reading online right beforehand being like, yeah. They're not gonna let you in unless your ID matches your ticket name.
So go through the official channels if you wanna buy a ticket. I got lucky, I think. But, anyway, I get inside the stadium, and, I'm a bit of a soccer fan, not a major soccer fan, but I know, like Hang on. Hang on. It's football.
It's football. Come on. Come on. We're talking about the champion league. We're talking about the Premier League.
Come on. It's still soccer for me. I'm sorry to say. But I get there, and, I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna get two beers right away and bring them in for the first half.
I don't wanna be the fan that's getting up in the middle of everything. You know, I don't wanna be disruptive. Like, I wanna blend in here. I wanna be a real football fan. So, I grabbed my two beers.
I was getting some weird looks, and I walk up to the gate usher who sees me walking down the hallway and just starts laughing immediately. And when I get up to him with two beers in my hand, he goes, oh, you American? I was like, I was like, yeah. And he was like, you can't bring beers in here. There's a rule in England.
There's no you're not allowed to have alcohol in view of the pitch, at least in the section that I was sitting in. So, I'm sitting there. They're laying wreaths onto the field to commemorate the queen, and I am chugging my two beers as fast as I can with less than two minutes to go until game time as the gate usher in a, like, hushed tone chants, USA. USA. So as not to so as not to be, disrespectful in front of the queen's ceremony, there at, at Stanford Bridge.
But I, powdered both beers and went and sat in my seat. And, yeah. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life though, just, like, going to, international football games is, you know, in The US, we're so used to pro sports where the announcer is screaming at you the whole time. It's third down. Get loud.
It's a power play. And in England, it's just the fans. You hear just the fans and the whistles the whole game, and it is beautiful. There's no video boards. There's no nothing.
It's just a analog clock and, and one little video scoreboard that just has two numbers and two logos on it. And it's like really it's like lo fi sports, but with just so much energy and passion. And, it was very cool. It was, one of my favorite sporting moments that I could ever remember. And I was sitting right next to the Red Bull Salzburg fans who looked like they wanted to start an absolute riot.
And, I was about to join them. It looked like a lot of fun over on their side of the fence. Well, you you had two beers in here, so why didn't you? My two beers at halftime went down smooth too. So the takeaways here are don't buy tickets on StubHub.
Buy direct from the team or the league. And I'm not sure what the takeaway here is in regards to beers. Honestly, what your experience sounds like the ideal one. And it's funny. You told us this story when you came back, and this was years ago now.
And I don't know if I just missed or I had forgotten the the element of they were honoring the queen while this was all happening and just like the juxtaposition of you chugging beers and the usher cheering you on USA USA while all of this is happening in the background, that's a good one. We're gonna clip this one for social media for sure. It's probably too long for social media, but I love that story. It was, one of the funniest one of the funniest travel, mistakes, issues, days, nights of my life, and, very, very fun one. So I hope you have I hope you have 10 times as much fun as that on your trip, Kyle.
But it sounds like an awesome one. Thank you. Yeah. No. I'm really looking forward to it.
No promises about the two beers at the Premier League or championship game. We'll see. We'll see. Alright. Let's help a listener out here.
We have a listener named Kevin who submitted his question of the week. He asks, I noticed that the Concorde is the centerpiece of the Thrifty Traveler podcast set. You're absolutely right, Kevin. This right here if you're watching on YouTube. Just wondering if anyone on the TT team has flown on the Concorde.
Let's ask her that question first. I don't think so. We thought that maybe our coworker, Peter Thornton, who, has apparently done everything in the world of travel, in the world of points and miles. And we were wondering if Peter had been on the Concorde, but he said, alas, he had not. I was surprised to hear that.
We we just asked to confirm before we started recording this show whether Peter had had done it because if anybody had, it would be Peter. And Peter Peter told us no, which was a little bit of a surprise. I'm a little bit disappointed that he hadn't that he hadn't said, like, oh, yeah. No. I worked two rotations on the Concorde, you know, in 1994 or whatever, because that would have been just the most classic Peter story.
But no. Nobody on our team has flown on the Concorde, unfortunately. This Concorde on our set, though, Kyle, you built this with your bare hands. Right? I built it with my bare hands with all of the skill or maybe less of the skill of a eight year old, building Legos, which is what this is made of.
I love this Concorde on our set. It's, an integral part of this set and, integral part of our next set, which we're building right now. You'll see that one in the coming weeks as well. The last part of Kevin's question is, also, do you think Boom Supersonic will ever enter commercial service? Boom Supersonic is working on another kind of version of this plane or or a version of supersonic travel that maybe promises to be comfier or something like that.
But what do you know about them? What do you think about their, viability, Kyle? No. You don't think so? No.
I think they've put so much money into this. I think they're gonna try and force something out into the market. But I don't know. I I'm not a supersonic expert. I'm not an avgeek as far insofar as, knowing things about plane types and things like that.
And, I don't know if there are people out there who want this. I don't think I do, especially if it's way more expensive. So Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest challenge it I mean, there are a lot of challenges. First of all, finding an engine to make this plane supersonic and, you know, something that they can manufacture.
But maybe the bigger challenge is finding a market to make this work because there's no way to do this in a way that is palatable to American travelers' wallets. The last two, three, four decades of American travel says that we care about one thing above all else, which is a good price. And I just don't currently see a way for this to be economical in a way that people are going to be able to justify paying drastically more in order to get to London in, you know, like, three or four hours instead of five or six from the East Coast. Not to mention, you know, you can only do it from the East Coast to, you know, near parts of Western Europe. It's very, very questionable at this point whether you can do it from, the Western United States to Asia or certainly Australia.
I think that's out of the question. So how do you make this work and how do you scale it? I I don't see it right now. I would love to be proven wrong, but I'm just gonna go back to my original answer. No.
I think that answer's right. If you want us to answer your question, email us at podcast@thriftytraveler.com, and your question might be featured in next week's show. Alright, Kyle. It is my turn to put you on the spot. Alright.
This is a thinker. This England, Scotland trip that you booked and you told us all about is a retread. It's a trip you had to postpone in the past. Do you have any other trips that you had to cancel or that hit the cutting room floor or anything that you'd love a redo on at some point in the future? Kind of.
The answer is kind of. So when the world really shut down in, you know, early March early to mid March of twenty twenty, my wife and I did what apparently every single American in the country did, which is we panic booked a flight for around Memorial Day of twenty twenty because the idea was this is only gonna last a month, maybe two, this this new coronavirus pandemic, and we're gonna want somewhere to go. And it's so funny that if you go look at Google Trends, which allows you to look at, you know, search volume traffic of specific terms, and you look at it over, you know, a five or six year horizon, if you search for the term cheap flights, there is an absolute peak. It just goes straight up in mid March. So this is what my wife and I did.
We just looked for a cheap trip that we could book to have somewhere to go in late May. And what we ended up booking was a flight to Miami, which I've never actually spent time in Miami. I'm not sure if my wife has. I'll have to ask her. But, you know, even by the time we got to basically April, it was clear that this was not gonna happen.
So we've never been back. We've since connected through Miami a handful of times, but it's only been, you know, a positioning flight to get to, to get to our friend's wedding in Italy the next year to, you know, get back from our safari trip that we talked about in a previous episode. I'll be honest. I'm not in a real hurry to get to Miami and actually spend some time there. Nothing against our listeners in Miami, all one of you.
I'll get there eventually. It's just not super, super high on my, on my wish list. Yeah. I think a lot of trips hit the cutting room floor that month as well. I'm gonna share mine with you because I came up with one.
It's actually more than one. It's, almost every year, a few times a year, I try and go chase snowstorms, to go ski. I love skiing powder, and I just love, tracing a a massive snowstorm and getting there for big powder days. And, so every year I end up booking at the last minute and then dumping, you know, a few trips a year just based on watching the weather, which we do religiously. And this year, I actually booked way out in advance, MLK weekend in Salt Lake City.
And we had been we had just been traveling, and we were traveling the next weekend. And I had this trip booked to go to Salt Lake, and the weather forecast was not good. It was freezing cold, and there was no snow. And I was like, you know what? I'm getting rid of this.
And I dumped it, and I woke up on Saturday morning to an alert that 20 inches of snow had fallen overnight at Snowbird. And then the next day, I woke up on Sunday morning and 20 more inches had fallen out of the sky the next morning. Oh, my heart hurts for you, buddy. I, like we had a I think we had a dinner party that weekend. My wife and some of her friends and I was just so down in the dumps, just real poopy pants, real pouty face the whole time.
I I was the saddest saddest boy you've ever seen that weekend, but I've had so many ski trips hit the cutting room floor that I wish I could have a redo on. But there's always next time. There's always that next chase. There will be more snow. I feel like we can say that.
I hope so. I hope so. Alright. That's gonna be it for us. Thank you for listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast.
Go please rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice, and then like and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler on YouTube. The show's a lot of fun over there. I promise. And then send this episode to somebody you know who wants to go to England and Scotland using their points and miles. Kyle just gave you a pretty good blueprint to pull something like that off.
If you have feedback for us, send me a note, podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We would love to hear from you there as well. Kyle, tell us about the TT podcast team. This episode was produced by our senior editor, Jackson Newman, and your favorite red blooded beer chugging American podcast host, Gunnar Olson, who definitely did not disrespect the late queen, and it was edited by David Strutt. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot.
See you next week. See you.