Berlin On A Budget With Teens

At the East Side Gallery 

Berlin is a tapestry of history, culture, architecture food and energy. There is so much to see and do in this city. The issue really is how do you narrow it down, where do you start and what do you do with teens and how do you do it on a budget?
We assume flights are taken care of already with points, hopefully, if you read my blog often.
So let's move onto hotels. I always check awardmapper.com to see the hotel brands in the city and the points needed to book award nights.
There are plenty of options in Berlin and they are not expensive. We opted to pay for a room at the Sheraton Berlin Grande Hotel Esplanade. Sometimes it is worth it to pay for the room. In this case, we paid because the room only cost $81 per night so it didn't seem worth it to burn 7,000 Starwood points per night. We charged the room to my Starwood Business Credit Card so we could get access to the club. The club provides complimentary breakfast and happy hour.
For a family of 5, this is a huge savings.
We paid for the second room as well and charged it to the Barclays Arrival Card. (See past posts about this great travel card) Then I redeemed bonus points to cover the cost of the room.

Inside the bunker

So now what to see in Berlin? The first place we headed was to the Underground Tunnel Tour. This is a surpisingly great tour that is off the beaten path. It's so off the beaten path that you can't buy advance tickets, they only take cash and you have to just show up day of and hope they have space. We were there at the peak of tourist season and we showed up about an hour before the tour we wanted and there was space. The tour sold out about 15 minutes before the start. They offer tours in English and other various languages.
The tour is a 3 hour walking tour through one of the bunkers used during World War 2 by German citizens. It is a fascinating history lesson through the eyes of the citizens of Berlin.

Doner Kebap restaurant

If you are looking for cheap eats in Berlin, check out the many Doner Kebap stands and restaurants.

Brandenburg Gate

Holocaust Memorial 

Murals on the East Side Gallery 

The Brandenburg Gate, The Holocaust Memorial, The Jewish Museum and the DDR Museum are must sees and your teens will enjoy them . Checkpoint Charlie and the outside display located there are also must sees. But then be sure to check out the East Side Gallery.

The Jewish Museum 

Checkpoint Charlie 

Trabi sitting by Checkpoint Charlie 

Another tour worth booking in advance is a visit to the Reichstag-Bundestag. You need to book a time and submit names of everyone in your party at least 90 days in advance. You will need to bring passports when you visit. The tour is free and they will provide you with audio guides. 

Top of the Reichstag-Bundestag

The last piece of advice for travelling to Berlin is to check out passes for the bus and trolley system. If you are spending a few days, you will save money and the convenience is worth it. Two good passes that include transportation and museums are the Berlin Museum pass. and the Berlin Welcome Card. Depending on how many and which museums, you plan to visit, it may be worth it.

Kudos to the airlines!

Once in a while, we need to give kudos to the airlines. This time for their reaction to the evacuation of Floridians out of the path of Hurricane Irma. American Airlines actually flew empty planes into Florida so they could add flights to help evacuate residents out of harms way. In a statement, the airline said it added 16 flights out of Miami totaling 3,600 seats. The airlines also capped ticket prices, waived fees and relaxed scheduling procedures as people scrambled to safety.
So this time, we need to say kudos to the airlines!

How To Protect Yourself From The Equifax Data Breach

Just like everyone else, we are also dealing with the fallout from the data breach of 143 million people who had personal information with Equifax. It is considered to be one of the biggest breaches ever so if you are not worried, well, you should be.
So what to do?
Equifax is recommending you sign up with their monitoring service which will be free for one year. There was some controversy over whether signing up for that service would exclude you from any class action lawsuit. But that seeems to be settled now and it appears that it would not exclude you. But is that your best course of action and are there any other steps you should take?
Via Doctor of Credit, he published a guide on what to do and I thought he brought up several good tips.
1. Go to ssa.gov and create your account if you haven't already. This is key because if someone got hold of your social security number, they could open the account. So you want to do it first. Logical.
2. Go to irs.gov and do the same thing.
3. Doctor of Credit is skeptical of signing up for the monitoring service from Equifax since they are responsible for the breach. I am in agreement here and am checking out several other free monitoring services.
4. Set up a 90 day fraud alert, but do note that if you apply for a credit card, you will need to deal with the alert.

Of course, you should pull a credit report which you can get free once per year from creditkarma.com and freecreditscore.com  They also offer free monitoring services.

Good luck!

Another Way To Earn A FREE Night

Wyndham offered a stay 2 nights, get 15,000 points promotion and now, it is Marriott's turn. The Megabonus offer was revealed this week. Here are the details from Marriott's website: 

Get a free night after two stays* with MegaBonus®—and unlock more. Register from September 6 to November 30, 2017.

See Details

• Register by November 30, 2017
• Stay at any of our participating hotels and resorts worldwide between September 12 and January 15, 2018
• Earn a free night after two paid stays*.

Book direct to get our lowest rates worldwide. When you’re ready, redeem points for free nights, flights, exclusive experiences and so much more.

Earn a free night – and more bonus points for your stays through January 15, 2018.

*A 'stay' is defined as consecutive nights spent at the same hotel, regardless of check-in/check-out activity. 

The bonus is for 1 night at a category 1-5 and the certificate expires in 6 months. 

So if you have some stays coming up, why not make them work a bit harder for you. I took advantage of the Wyndham bonus which may help me when I head to South America next year. That's how we do it at almost FREE family travel. 

Targeted Bonus 5,000 Offer From IHG

Received this targeted offer from IHG this week......

If you’ve been waiting for the perfect time to get away – it’s now! Pack your bags…there's 5,000 additional bonus points waiting when you stay by September 30th. If you book a Bonus Points Package, you’ll get a total of 6,000 points on top of the bonus points you’ll receive from booking a Bonus Points Package.

Where do you want to go? Register now and start earning.

Be sure to check your IHG account to see if you were targeted. That's a pretty lucrative bonus especially if you can take advantage of the quarterly price break list.

Stop Laboring So Much To Pay For Travel

Travel is in the top 3 priorities for most Americans so how come most Americans never use all their vacation days? Too expensive to travel? Can't get time off? Overwhelming to plan a trip? Not sure where to go?

My goal is to show you that you can travel as a family and it does not need to cost a lot of money. But it does take some planning. Everything worth something takes planning and research, right?

Research about travel shows that we actually get pleasure from planning a trip and dreaming about places where we want to go. We enjoy the trip, of course, even if it doesn't go exactly as planned. Then research shows that we enjoy the memories of the trip for a long time after. 

So labor away, but then take time off and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Read my blog, ask questions and enjoy almost free family travel! 

Fly Cheap To Europe!!! WOW Air Sale

If you can be a spur of the moment traveller or even if you need to plan a few months in advance, you might check out the sale from discount airline WOW air.  WOW air is a discount airline out of Iceland which can be a plus since most of their flights make a stop in Reykjavik. Right now, you can find flights as low as $69 from the US to Europe. Sale prices are good for September, October and November.

I checked several routes and dates and found flights for $69-$99. The return varied from $149-$600.
WOW air will nickel and dime you for everything so you need to manage the fees or the ticket will end up costing you more. The airline will charge fees for carry on luggage, checked luggage, priority boarding and more. However, they are not charging for car seats and strollers. Nice surprise!
My cousin just flew WOW air from Newark to Dublin for a ridiculously low fare and she took just a small backpack for her free personal item.
We flew discount airline Norweigian Air this summer and had no problems. In fact, we had more issues on Austrian Air!