We spent 10 EPIC days in France on a trip that I honestly never thought we could afford. You can see all the fun from our First 3 days in Paris and Days 4-9 in the South of France. I also breakdown exactly how we earned all these points in my Beginner’s Guide to Reward Travel.

Let’s start with Transportation:

• Positioning Flight to Dallas from LCH – 12,000 points + $11.20 (6K + 5.60 each) – We flew American Airlines, so we used points from our Citi AAdvantage card. We also have Barclays Aviator Cards.
• DFW to Paris (CDG) – 75,000 points + $276.40 (37,500 points + $138.20 each)
• Positioning Flight Marseille to Paris – 17,000 points + 87.90 (8,500 points + $43.95 each)
• Paris to Houston: 40,000 points + $486.10 (20K points + $243.05 each)
• Train Tickets: Paris to Nice: $249.51, Nice to Aix-en-Provence: $115.22, Aix-en-Provence to Marseille: $26.68- All Booked through Trainline and paid cash*
• Car Rental -Houston to Home: $217.58 paid cash – Cancelled our late flight.
• Ubers: 134.66 and Metro: $159.84 (includes transporation from Airport)
• Here’s the summary: Flights for 2 were $861.60, Trains for 2 were $391.41, Car Rental was $217.58, and Ubers/Metro were $295.50.
• Our total cost for Transporation for all 10 days in France was $1547.51.

Let’s Breakdown Accomodations:

• In Paris, we stayed at a great location, Hotel du Louvre (a Hyatt property)- Cash Value: $2,967.00 – We paid $0 and used a total of 105,000 points for 3 nights (35K points per night).
• In Nice, we stayed in another great location right on the Promenade des Anglais: Hyatt Regency Nice Palais de la Mediterranee – Cash Value: $714.00 – We paid $0 and used 70,000 points for 2 nights (35K points per night).
• In Aix-en-Provence, we stayed in an Airbnb for $272.47 for 2 nights and used 27,247 points to erase purchase on Capital One.
• In Marseille, we stayed in an Airbnb for $206.57 for 2 nights and used 12,607 points to erase our initial payment on Capital One. We paid $80.49 cash for the remaining balance.
• DFW Airport Hotel- The night before our big flight, we stayed close to the airport at the Hyatt Place DFW. Cash Price: $147 – We paid $0 and used 8,000 points.
• Paris Airport Hotel – The night before our return flight home, we stayed close to the airport at the Hyatt Place CDG. Cash Price: $115 – We paid $0 and used 6,500 points.
• Total Cost for Accomodations for 11 nights: $80.49

Other Expenses:

• Admission Tickets: $113.44 – Things like Louvre, Arc de Triomphe
• Food/Drinks: $1,834.71
• Souvenirs/Misc: $557.33
• Tours: $1363.13 – We were able to do so much more tours because we saved so much using points. We would not have been able to spend this on tours without those savings.

Want to see how earned all of our points? Here is our Beginner’s Guide to Reward Travel which breaks down exactly how we EARN and then TRANSFER our points!

Follow along on Instagram where I’m always sharing tips and travels!

Check out all our TRAVEL content!

The post France Trip Points Breakdown appeared first on Diary of A Recipe Collector.

FIrst things first, I’m going to share our London Points Guide with you. This breaks down exactly what we used our points for, how many points we transferred, and where we got most of our points. It also breaks down additional cash costs from our trip. Read below for itinerary details of our whole trip to London, Oxford, and the Cotswolds plus other helpful links!!

Want to see Exactly what we did each day of our London trip?

• For Days 1-3, go here.
• For Days 4-6, go here.
• The above links break down each day, where we stayed, what tours we did, and where we ate.
• If you are interested in seeing my London videos, visit here on Instagram or here on Tiktok.

Other London Links I love:

• Covent Garden Walking Tour
• Historical Pub Tour
• Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace Tour

Want to know how we earned a ton of points and saved Thousands for this trip? Click the image below to see our beginner’s guide to reward Travel.

Here’s a link to the guide on how we earned a ton of points!

Here’s a walkthrough video on How we Transferred our Points!

Be sure to follow along on Instagram or Tiktok where I’m always sharing our favorite travels and tips!

Epic France Trip: Paris Days 1 to 3

Epic France Trip: Days 4-9 South of France

London Trip Days 1-3

London Trip Days 4-6

Beginner’s Guide to Reward Travel

Grand Hyatt Baha Mar Bahamas Trip

The post Helpful London Links appeared first on Diary of A Recipe Collector.

When I was planning our trip to France, it was without question that we would make our way to the south of France. Visiting this location has been a dream of mine for years! There was no way I was going to Paris and missing this! To say it was absolutely wonderful would be an understatement. So let me show you all the details of our fabulous 6 days! And if you missed the first portion of our trip where we spent 3 magical days in Paris, go here.

Day 4: Arrived in Nice, France

We took an early morning train from Paris to Nice, and we arrived around 3:00 in the afternoon. This was our first experience with a double decker train! We felt like we were riding in style! I booked these tickets well in advance and made sure I could pick our seats. We arrived at our hotel, the beautiful Hyatt Regency Nice Palais de la Mediterranee. This hotel is located right on the Promenade des Anglais and right next to the Old Nice area.

After getting a little snack and a drink, we set out to explore the Promenade and climb up to see the view from the Tour Bellanda. This gives beautiful views of the Bay of Angels from Castle Hill. It should definitely be on your list of things to do in Nice.

This little climb was no joke!! It was certainly worth it though. The stairs weren’t too steep and there were stopping points along the way. There is also an elevator option, but that was closed by the time we arrived.

Once we made it to the top, there was a place to get refreshments and enjoy the view. This would be a fun activity for families too! It was so neat to see the beach below, and we thought it was so neat to see how it differed from our white sandy beaches we have on the gulf coast. Once we hiked back down, we went down to the beach to dip our toes in the Mediterranean Sea. Walking on those rocks required down a pretty steep slop required some agile movements from us. We got a good laugh!

After all that climbing, we couldn’t wait to stop at one of the bars along the Promenade. We found a nice little balcony spot at the wine bar, Modiva. This was definitely a pinch me moment. I couldn’t believe we were in the South of France enjoying a glass of wine along the Mediterranean!

Next up, we had dinner reseravations at Bocca Mar. This was an excellent choice! It was located right across the street from our hotel and right on the beach. I had some of best burrata ever there. It was truly a great ending to a wonderful day! Plus, the Scottish bachelor party table next to us provided us with quite a few laughs! HERE’S A VIDEO OF OUR DAY TRAVELING TO NICE!

Day 5: Exploring Nice, Eze, and Monte Carlo

The next morning we set out to explore Old Nice, which is filled with historic buildings, churches, quaint restaurants, and beautiful squares. You can also catch the different markets depending on what day of the week you are there. We were able to see the antiques market in the Cours Saleya. I love old stuff, so this was perfect!

We stopped for lunch at a nice cafe, Restaurant la Claire Fontaine in Place Rosetti right near the beautiful cathedral. We tried some of the specialties of Nice like the Salad Nicoise and an assortment of some of their specialties like onion pizza, zucchini fritters, and meat-stuffed vegetables. I didn’t love my steak, but everything else was great.

That afternoon we headed out on a half day excursion to see the medieval village of Eze and then Monte Carlo. We also made a stop at the Fragonard Perfumery in Eze as well.

I could have spent longer in Eze. It gave me all the Rapunzel fairytale feels. It’s definitely a stop I would make again. You can catch a bus there if you don’t want to do a tour, but we liked that the tour would take us to two great locations that we didn’t have to navigate ourselves.

After seeing Eze, our guide brought us to Monoco to check out the Prince’s palace and get a view of the beautiful port. We then headed into Monte Carlo along the Formula 1 track.

We only stayed here for a few hours, and that was just the right amount of time for us. We just wanted to see it, so this tour was perfect. We loved hanging out by the famous Monte Carlo Casino. We got a glimpse of the Prince leaving a hotel too! We sent pictures of all the insanely fancy cars for our boys, and they were FREAKING OUT! That alone was worth it!

We headed back into Nice where our guide stopped at a few good photo spots of Nice. Overall, I’m so glad we booked this tour. The day was packed, but we got to see so much! This is a very similar tour to what we did. HERE’S A VIDEO OF OUR DAY IN NICE, EZE, AND MONTE CARLO.

Day 6: Arrival in Aix-en-Provence

After 2 nights in Nice, we headed by train to my favorite stop on the whole trip…Aix en Provence! I was more excited about this location than any other location on the whole trip!

This was our first Airbnb of the trip. It was down a narrow street and on the 3rd floor of a very charming old building in the center of town. It had a beautiful balcony, a little kitchen, and was perfect for 2 people.

Aix-en-Provence is such a clean city and smells of baking bread and lavendar soap. Once we dropped off our luggage, we headed out to get lunch.

We had a wonderful lunch at Le Forbin. It is here that I became obsessed with the Provence version of ceasar salad. It was crispy chicken with such fresh flavored veggies. We then headed to grab a treat at Christophe Madeleines. These were delicious!

Next we headed back to the Airbnb to chill out and relax. We drank some wine and played some cards.

For dinner, we headed out to Le Petit Bistrot Place Richelme. This square was beautiful and bustling with people enjoying a beautiful dinner in a beautiful French city.

We definitely enjoyed people watching and the relaxed atmosphere of city in street side cafes on this trip!

On the way back to the airbnb, I grabbed a gorgeous gelato at Amorino too. HERE’S A VIDEO OF OUR DAY IN AIX!

Day 7: Provence Wineries and Luberon Villages

The next morning we headed out on a full day tour, which included stops at two Provence wineries and stops at nearby Luberon region villages. It was definitely worth the full day!!

We made some sweet friends, and our guide was fabulous! We stopped in the villages of Loumarin, Roussillon, and Gordes. Each of these villages have shops, historical buildings and churches, and cafes.

Our guide was sure to tell us what places to see in each village and gave us just the right amount of time at each stop. I love that we got to see such beautiful places.

We also got to stop at beautiful photo spots along the way. This tour was definitely worth it!

That evening we were pretty exhausted and just wanted something really simple to eat. A short walk from our Airbnb was this gourmet hot dog place called Aux Petits Oignons. They were delicious. We were just 2 Americans enjoying gourmet French hot dogs! HERE’S A VIDEO OF OUR WINERIES TOUR AND LUBERON VILLAGES VISITS.

Day 7: Lavendar Fields and Arrival in Marseille

The next morning we headed out on a half-day Lavendar fields tour. Our guide took us to two beautiful Valensole Plateau lavendar fields and a distillery.

We also got a picture in this beautiful sunflower field located near the distillery.

We also went into the town of Valensole for a little bit where we sampled some lavender cookies and lavender gelato.

The lavender gelato was actually pretty good. It was a nice refreshing little stop.

Next, we headed back into Aix and went to one of my favorite restaurants of the entire trip…Restaurant Tita. I got the chicken shwarma plate and was in heaven. This place is only open for lunch and you need a reservation. We didn’t know that, but we were able to make a reservation after the main lunch crowd. I would highly recommend this if you are ever in Aix!!

After lunch, we headed by train to our final destination of Marsielle. Marseille is the second largest city in France and on the southern coast. The picture below is the view of the city you see when you arrive at the train station. It was beautiful. We walked all the way down that hill to our Airbnb. We were just glad it was downhill.

Our Airbnb wasn’t quite ready and was having a maintenance issue. The owner worked as quickly as possible to get it resolved, but it took several hours. We were hot and very tired and really just wanted to relax. So we found a cafe near the port, and we relaxed there for a while.

Then when it still wasn’t ready, we did some more walking and found a nice British style pub near the water…oh the irony. We had a great time.

Our Airbnb was finally ready, and it really was perfect for the two of us. The only downfall was walking up 4 flights of stairs. But it overlooked the roofs of Marsielle and had lots of charm. Our host was very nice and offered us a partial credit on our stay due to the problems. We didn’t have any issues once we were there.

Overall, I didn’t absolutely love Marsielle. It was more of a party vibe, and not quite as clean as Aix. It’s a bigger city, and it has the things you would expect…and lots of grafitti. I was shocked at how much grafitti I saw on these beautiful old buildings. It made me kind of sad.

However, I’m so glad we visited Marseille because we had one of our most favorite and memorable days of the trip. It was a day I was most apprehensive about too! HERE’S A VIDEO OF OUR DAY 7!

Day 8: Calanques Boating Excursion

We booked a half day boating excursion with Bleu Evasion. This excursion took us out to see the Calanques on the coast, which are little coves. I get really motion sick, so I was scared to death to be in the middle of the water on a rocking boat and sea sick. I took my Dramamine, ate a good breakfast, and we got on the boat. Our guide, Christophe, was absolutely wonderful!! We stopped at a few and got to swim in the Mediterranean Sea. It was definitely a “pinch me moment.”

And I’m sharing the picture below which I took after having a super emotional moment. This was the last event of the trip, and this trip was the trip of a lifetime. It was in this moment that I got so emotional as a I realized all that we had accomplished and it was a result of all that I had planned. I couldn’t believe I planned all this!! I was so proud of us, and I couldn’t wait to get back home to our kids in this moment. HERE’S A VIDEO OF OUR DAY!

That afternoon we grabbed a bite to eat, grabbed our luggage and ubered to the airport. We caught a flight back to Paris. We stayed at the Hyatt Place at the CDG airport. The next morning, we headed home to see our kiddos!

Want all the details of how to use points for a trip to FRANCE? You can also see how much we spent out of pocket! Get our guide here!!

Learn How to Transfer Points Here!

Be sure to follow on Instagram and Tiktok!

For more of our TRAVELS, Go HERE!!

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I am so excited to share this Epic France trip with you all! This trip was 2 years in the making. I absolutely love researching and planning trips!! I worked so hard on this one, and it was spectacular! Today, I’m going to share all about what we did our first 3 days in Paris!

Arrival Day: Paris Day 1

Our flight arrived at 8:15 am. I love arriving early!! By the time you get out of the airport and to the hotel, you’ve already lost a few hours. We took the RER B to get from CDG into the city and to our hotel. We downloaded the app Bonjour RATP to buy all our metro tickets while we were there. I found this video very helpful! We listed this card as our transit card in our Apple Wallet and used our phones to scan when we entered the metro. We liked CityMapper and Google Maps to tell us what lines to take. Now onto the fun stuff!

We checked in at our hotel, the Hotel du Louvre, a Hyatt property. It was in a great location, had a friendly staff, and it was super quaint! Our room wasn’t ready because it was so early, so we changed downstairs and went out to explore!

And what exactly does one do first on their first visit to Paris? We went to see the Eiffel Tower, of course. We stopped for lunch at Cafe Kleber, which was right near the Eiffel Tower. There was something so magical about getting off a plane and then finding myself sitting in a cafe in Paris!! I totally took it all in! After leaving the cafe, we rounded the corner and saw how massive the tower was! It brought tears to my eyes to finally see it! We spent time taking pictures and walking ALL THE WAY AROUND IT! That takes some time, folks. Pictures on Rue de l’Universite were on the list at this time, but I forgot and we ended up doing this later.

After the Eiffel Tower, we walked over to Rue Cler. This is a charming street with fruit/produce shops, cheese shops, a boulangie and patisserie, a chocolate store, and a wine store. It’s like all of Paris in one street! I had to buy my first baguette at Maison Julien. We also got some fresh strawberries and sampled some chocolate. By this point, we were getting pretty tired, so we stopped for a drink at a cafe here. Then we headed to the hotel because our room was ready!! I have a little room tour video along with our balcony here!!

We rested a bit in our room and changed for dinner and headed out. Our first destination before dinner reservations was to walk to Cour du Commerce St. Andre. It’s beautiful street filled with cafes including Brasserie Des Pres founded in 1776 and Le Procoupe founded in 1686 and oldest cafe in Paris. On my next visit, I will definitely make it a point to stop at one of these! It was a little busy at the time we arrived and we had dinner reservations soon.

Then we headed to dinner at Les Deux Magots. This is a beautiful restaurant in the St. Germain-des Pres area. Our dinner was delicious. I got a wonderful steak, and my husband is way more adventurous! He got the steak tartare, which was a little too not cooked for me.

After dinner, we had tickets to go to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Since we had a little bit of time, we did head over to Rue de l’Universite for some more Eiffel Tower pics we missed that morning. It’s a good photo spot on one of the side streets by the Eiffel Tower.

I purchased tickets to top of the Arc de Triomphe at 9:15 pm a few months before trip. It was still very light outside. We waited until 10:00 but Eiffel Tower did not sparkle that night until later 😞 Isn’t it crazy how light it was at 10:00!!! I think after June 21, it sparkles earlier.

So that’s a wrap on Day 1!! At this point we had been up for over 24 hours. It was time for bed!

Here’s a little recap of what we did!

Paris Day 2

We had a big day in store for day 2. Up first was breakfast at the cafe right near our hotel, Le Nemours. Our breakfast was Parisienne perfection!! Give me all the carbs!

Then we headed right next door to the Louvre!! We really just wanted to hit the “must see” highlights, so we allocated a few hours for this. First stop was the Mona Lisa! Then we headed to see the rest of the must see spots like Napoleon’s Apartment, Apollo’s Gallery, and the French Crown Jewels.

We got right up to the front to see the Mono Lisa!! See my tips below! The crown jewels were fascinating to see who wore what! And of course, I had to get a picture for my kids next to Hammurabi’s Code, since they’ve all learned about it in school and love the song, “Euphrates River!” IYKYK!

My Louvre Tips (if you just want to hit the highlights):

1. Book your tickets in advance for opening time. I booked ours for 9:00 am on a Friday.
2. Arrive about 20-30 minutes before opening time. Enter through the Carrousel entrance. This is a level below the pyramid. To access this, head away from the pyramid towards the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. Next to this will be some steps to go down below. Once here find the entrance line. There will still be a line of people because it isn’t open yet, but once it opens, it does move fast.
3. Once you’ve gone through security, head straight to the Denon Wing to see the Mona Lisa. There will be signs pointing to tell you where to go. By going there first, you stand a better chance of there being less of a crowd.
4. One of the best tips I heard is that once you enter the room with the Mona Lisa, stay to the side. The middle doesn’t move, but if you go up along the side, you can get right up to the front!
5. Other highlights we hit were: The Winged Victory and Apollo’s Gallery with the French Crown Jewels. Also on this same floor is Napoleon’s Apartment. Then we headed down a level to the Near Eastern Antiquities to see Hammurabi’s Code. In all, we were there for about 2 hours.

Next, we were off on the metro to grab one of these viral sandwiches at Chez Alain Miam Miam. You got to pick your meat, cheese, and veggies. It was kind of like Subway, but way more French Gourmet!!

After that we walked over to Rue Montorgueil, which is another beautiful street filled with shops and cafes. We visited Stohrer, which is the oldest patisserie in Paris. I got a Fanancier, which is a French almond cake. Then we walked a few blocks to E. Dehillerin to check out all the cookware!!! This is where Julia Child shopped. I found myself wishing I had way more room in my luggage!

After heading back to the hotel to rest for a bit, we headed out again to see Galeries Lafayette, which is this beautiful mall. I mostly went to go to the 6th floor to get some souveniers, which are fabulous! I was wishing my suitcase was bigger here too! Then we headed up to the terrace to get another view of the city!

Then we headed to Montmartre, and I basically fell in love with this part of the city! Montmartre is located on a hill and has views of all of Paris. We took the metro to Lemarck Station, which gave us the perfect walk into this section of the city. Our first stop was to grab a drink at Chez Ginette. Then we made our way to Rue de l’Abrevoir, which is a beautiful street that ends at La Maison Rose. Then we made our way to Le Consulat.

On this beautiful Friday afternoon, we sat at Le Consulat and had some wine and some cheese. There was beautiful music being played right near our table, and it was just perfection!

We then walked through Place du Tertre and finally to Sacre Couer. I’m so glad we took the time to go inside Sacre Couer. It was so stunning! And the view from there is something worth seeing as well!

Then we headed to dinner in Montmartre at Le Vrai Paris. It was a delicious ending to a perfect time in this section of the city!! Montmartre is a must see experience when in Paris!

The last thing of the evening was on my list of things to do for a while. I had heard about Le Caveau de la Huchette, which is a jazz club in the Latin Quarter. After leaving Montmartre, we headed by metro that way. We were in line for opening time at 9:00 pm and there was already about a 30 minute wait. Lines typically aren’t our thing, but I really wanted to see inside! There was a cover charge, and it was VERY crowded. It was pretty much standing room only. Had we gotten there a little earlier, I may have enjoyed myself more with a better seat. Don’t get me wrong. It was neat to see the jazz band in this cave-like atmosphere, but it had really been a long day by this point so we didn’t stay very long.

We made our way across the Seine and saw this beautiful sunset. Our hotel wasn’t too far way, so we continued our walk.

We stopped in the hotel bar, which became our nightly routine before heading up for bed. I enjoyed a Coke Zero each night, and the staff was great! It was a nice quiet reprieve from being in the busy city with lots of crowds all day. That wraps up Day 2!!

Here’s a little recap of what you can do on Day 2!

Paris Day 3

Oh how I LOVED Day 3!! It started off with another wonderful Parisienne breakfast at Cafe de Flore. I had waiting quite a long time to try their hot chocolate, and I can see myself replicating this at home for sure!

Next, we headed over to City Pharma…sorry no pictures. I was overwhelmed! City Pharma is this amazing french pharmacy that sells TONS of skincare products. I got a few things for my girls and myself. After that, we headed to Chapon on Rue du Bac. This is a chocolate mousse store. I had to give it a try…and now I was overloaded on chocolate for the day, but it was delicious!!

Next, we went to Le Grande Epicerie and grabbed a bunch of picnic supplies (sandwich, butter, chips, a little custard, grapes, assorted jams). I’m obsessed with this place! I will go back there next time too! The butter and yogurt section…oh my! We opted for the smoked butter, and it was absolutely amazing spread on bread!! I also got this little dessert in the yogurt section. Wow, was it good!

Then we headed on the metro with our goodies to Place de Vosges, a beautiful little park. This was located right next to our baking class, so we had a little lunch picnic before heading to our croissant class. I consider this moment in the middle of a park in Paris absolute perfection!

After this, we headed to our croissant baking class. I booked this class through Viator, and I highly recommend it! Our teacher was excellent and I’d say we did pretty darn good. It made for such a fun experience!

We really learned the entire procedure and got to take them with us! It was our breakfast for next few days!!

After this class, we headed back to the hotel to rest and change for the evening out, which started with mass at Notre Dame!! This was such a cool experience!! We went to the Saturday anticipated mass. Now it was in French, which was a bit challenging, but we knew what was going on for sure!

After mass, we walked around the Latin Quarter a bit, but it was really crowded on this particular Saturday because Paris was celebrating the Summer Solstice and has music all throughout the city drawing lots of crowds everywhere. It was very neat to see, but wow there were a lot of people.

So we headed to dinner, which was probably one of my favorites! We went to La Grille Montorgueil. We had the best time! There were so many people walking the street with the music festival, so we did a lot of people watching.

Then we enjoyed our dinner. I got the most delicious Croque Monsier and we also tried the Eggs de Mayo, which really reminded me of deviled eggs in the south with some Cajun-creole flair!

That about wraps up our 3 glorious days in Paris! I would say we packed a lot into those 3 days. Did we do it all? No way! But that leaves more to do next time. The next morning we headed out early to our next France destination!! More on that to come!

Here’s a little recap of Day 3 things!

If you are interested in my Paris map I created for our trip, here it is! It has everything from lunch and dinner stops, sights to see, wine bars, jazz clubs, creperies, and flea markets.

Here are some helpful things I’ve created to help you plan a perfect trip in paris!

• Click here for my France Points Guide, which breaks down how we used points to save a TON of money on our trip.
• Check out my How to Transfer Points Tutorial Post Here.
• Here’s a link to our full guide on how were earned a TON OF POINTS 
• Don’t forget to follow @ourpointdestinations for travel inspiration and ways we earn and use our points for nearly FREE travel!
• Here’s a Video Walk Through of How I Transfer Points.
  
  
  

The post Epic France Trip: Paris Days 1 to 3 appeared first on Diary of A Recipe Collector.

So you have some points and you want to know how to use them

• Having the right cards is the key to traveling on points. Your Costco or Sam’s card may be earning you some rewards, but that is nothing compared to what you can do on some of these cards.
• For years, we used our Capital One Venture card, which is an awesome travel card to have. But we didn’t really have a strategy on how to get more points other than our normal spending. Often times, I would just use our points to erase travel purchases like our flights. Little did I know the value these points could have been.
• Some credit cards are BRANDED cards (United, AAdvantage, Hyatt, Costco…) and some cards are BANK cards that offer FLEXIBLE points able to be transferred out to several transfer partners. This is important to understand when considering a card.

Important Disclaimers and Tips Before you start

• You have to be willing to put your regular spending on a credit card and not on a debit card. If you are using a debit card, you are not earning any points.
• If you put your regular spending on a credit card, you have to pay on it in full either weekly or monthly. The reason for this is two-fold. 1. You don’t want to carry a balance and get charged extra interest fees. That’s not saving you money. 2. Money will be coming out of your checking account regularly just like it does when you use your debit card.
• You have to be ORGANIZED. I cannot stress this enough. I started keeping track of our cards with a simple spreadsheet that I made. On there, I put how many points we currently have next to each card, as well as what the annual fee is and when. If you are not willing to be ORGANIZED, then please don’t try this.
• You only work on one sign on bonus at a time. Once it is earned, I put that card up. You have to keep it open at least one year. Never close an old card that you’ve had for years. This is a part of your credit history.
• Never spend more than you actually would with your debit card.
• It’s ideal if you have a credit score of 750 or higher to get started. You will find that your credit score goes up as you open more cards and continue to pay them off each month. IT IS A MYTH THAT OPENING CARDS WILL LOWER YOUR CREDIT SCORE. So many of us who use multiple credit card points to travel are proof that it actually helps your credit if you stay organized and do this responsibly.

Here’s the link to our first Card: The Chase Sapphire

once you earn the points, How do you transfer them?

How exactly do you book a Hotel using your credit card points?

Once you transfer your Chase points to your Hyatt loyalty account, you then log into Hyatt and your points will be there. This can sometimes take a day or two depending on how many points you are transferring. You can see below that the Hotel du Louvre in Paris is 25,000 points a night. If you want to stay for 3 nights, you only need 75,000 points!! That’s so easy to get! (The price for our stay was 35,000 points per night during the summer). Once I realized that basically one card sign on bonus would pay for my hotel stay in London, I was ready to get started! This process works the same with other hotels like Hilton, Marriott, IHG, etc. However, Hyatt hotels require WAY LESS POINTS than other hotel chains.

How do you use your points to book flights?

• You do the exact same thing above by transferring points to the airline loyalty account.
• Please note that American Airlines is NOT a transfer option for any cards. If you want American Airlines miles, you have to get an American Airlines branded card. More on that later. (There is an option to book AA flights with another airline in the One World alliance such as British Airways – and you can transfer points to British Airways).
• Once you have transferred your points to the airline account, they will take a day or two to be available. You log in to the airline website and make sure you select “miles” or “points” when you search. Otherwise, you will see the cash rate.
• Several airlines have alliances. For example, you can book a United flight for less points on Air Canada. As mentioned above, you can book American Airlines flights with British Airways.
• I often do some research to find low point flights using sites like Roame Travel and Seats.Aero.

Here’s the link to the Chase Business Cards.

• These are a super powerful way of earning points!
• We started with the INK Business Preferred.
• Then we moved onto the INK Business CASH and the INK Business Unlimited. Both of these cards have a $0 annual fee.
• This is how we earned A LOT of Chase points!!! These are my favorite points to transfer to Hyatt.

What about other Cards?

Here’s a link to the Capital One Venture and The Venture X.

• The Venture X does have a $395 annual fee but if you do get a $300 travel credit when you book through their travel portal. You could use this to book train tickets or a car rental! We used ours last year to book a cheer competition hotel.
• I love to use the erase feature too for our Airbnb purchases, rental cars, and train tickets.

So far, we’ve only opened Citi Strata cards. We have also opened other Citi branded cards.

Favorite Branded Cards

I love American Airlines miles since we often fly through Dallas. I made it a point to get some branded AAdvantage cards. Here are some of the branded cards we’ve gotten:

• Barclays Aviator Aadvantage Card
• Citi AAdvantage Cards
• United Mileage Plus Business Card
• Marriott Bonvoy AMEX Card – Wait until this one has a 5 Free Night Offer!

A few more Important points

• Wait 90 days before applying for a new card. Having a spouse to alternate with really helps too.
• Wait 90 days between business cards. Alternating these with personal cards helps.
• Wait until a card has been open at least a year before closing it.

This is our exact strategy we used when we started

Sometimes it helps just see exactly what someone else did to get started. We earned over half a million points within the first year!!! This helped us go to London in 2024 and Paris and South of France in 2025. CLICK HERE FOR EXACTLY WHAT WE DID!

Be sure to follow along on my Instagram page OUR POINT DESTINATIONS where I share all our point journey successes and tips!

And I’ll leave you this Example of the Power of Transferring Points!!

Want to learn more about the trips we’ve taken? I’ve broken down several itineraries HERE!

Don’t forget to follow on Instagram for more traveling on points tips and travel itineraries!

• Our Exact Credit Card Strategy We Started With!
• London Points Guide

The post Beginner’s Guide to Reward Travel appeared first on Diary of A Recipe Collector.

If you are planning a trip to London, and you haven’t thought about venturing out of the big city, you are missing out! This is one of the highlights of our trip. It was like escaping our busy vacation to a more relaxing one!

On our way out to the Cotswolds, we stopped in Oxford to see the beautiful historic Oxford University. This university is made up of 39 colleges and is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. The architecture is definitely worth the stop!

We booked this 3 hour tour through Get Your Guide. It took us inside some of the colleges, including the beautiful Divinity School where scenes from Harry Potter were filmed.

This tour did feel a little long. They do offer a shorter tour which is 2 hours and doesn’t include Christ Church. This is a really stunning building, but I do feel we could have gone to see it on our own. However, the nice thing about the tour is that all the tickets to go inside everything are pre-purchased and you don’t have to worry about it. This is the main reason we opted to do the tour.

Here are some logistics to consider when heading out of London:

• We rented a car at this Avis location near the airport. We got an Uber from our hotel in London to this Avis location. We picked this location because it was right next to our hotel we would be staying at before our flight. It made for a super easy return on a Sunday!
• My husband drove, and yes, it was a bit nerve-racking driving on a totally different side of the road, but it wasn’t that bad! I was pretty proud of him!
• We drove to this car park on the outskirts of Oxford and took a bus from there into the town. Parking is very limited, so this is encouraged.

Isn’t the architecture stunning? How cool would it be to attend college in a city like this!
Before heading out, we stopped at The Bear. It is Oxford’s oldest pub, and you could definitely tell how old it was once you stepped inside! We had a good lunch, and we finally tried some Sticky Toffee Pudding!! Check out my video of this part of our trip HERE!

After lunch, we headed back to a bus stop to take us back to our car park and headed to Stow on the Wold! These names crack me up! Little did I know how much I would LOVE this next stop!!!!!! Stow stole my heart!

I mean look at our Airbnb!! It was called The Little House, and it was actually located on the main road in Stow behind the owner’s house. It was definitely a different experience. We had to walk through the owner’s house, but it really wasn’t a big deal at all! Cat and John, the owners, were such wonderful hosts!!

Cat had the little house fully stocked with fresh bread, butter, jam, and juice! She had relaxing classical music playing upstairs, and it smelled so wonderful too! She just thought of everything!!

We stayed here two nights. Stow on the Wold is such a charming town. The first night we walked to eat outside in the beautiful weather at The Sheep. Then we headed to our little house to rest for the next day! The link for our Airbnb is at the bottom!!

The next morning we woke up and headed across the street to explore the town square. First up, we went to St. Edward’s church to see the famous yew tree door from Lord of the Rings.

We walked to town square and went into some of the shops. They have tea rooms too! I could have stayed here longer for sure.

The cheese shop had so much I wanted to buy!

Next, up we took the bus to the town of Burton on the Water just 10 minutes away. Burton on the Water is beautiful, however, it was really packed with tourists EVERYWHERE! Maybe it was because it was a Saturday. But it really was a contrast to quiet Stow.

This town has a beautiful little river that runs through it with stone bridges that run across it.

There are tons of shops, and there is no shortage of ice cream here!

I was excited to stop at Fresh for Lunch!! We shared a bacon and cheese baguette by the river. It was delicious!

Then I had to get an ice cream before we headed back to Stow. It was in this moment where I just felt so grateful for this trip!

Later that evening, we headed to some of the old inns in Stow to have drinks. The first stop was The Old Stocks Inn. I got this delicious drink, which I came home and recreated here.

It really is such a romantic little town! I highly recommend it, as if I haven’t said that already!! We ate dinner at The King’s Arms. It was a very good ending to a very good day! See our video of the whole day in the Cotswolds HERE

The next morning, we packed up and headed north to Warwick, England. We went to mass and then headed to my favorite castle of the whole trip, Warwick Castle!

I think it was my favorite because we really got to go inside and really explore unlike Buckingham Palace where you are limited on photography, etc. We went up in the tall towers and saw stunning views and down in the dark dungeon. It was really cool. It’s a great castle for kids to visit and was the perfect thing for us to do on a Sunday!

The music they played gave this place a whole vibe as well. At one point, we grabbed lunch and a beer, and sat on the lawn to relax. So fun! Check out our video of our day in Warwick HERE.

We headed back into London to return the rental car and to our hotel by the airport for the night! This was such an amazing trip!

• If you didn’t see our first 3 days in London, go here.
• See all our my videos here.
• Our beautiful Airbnb in Stow on the Wold can be found here!

Want all the details of how to use points and where we stayed for a trip to London & the Cotswolds? You can also see how much we spent out of pocket! Get our guide here!!

The post London Trip Days 4-6 appeared first on Diary of A Recipe Collector.

Day 1: Arrival Day in London

We headed out to London with a late afternoon flight from Houston. We landed 9 hours later at 7:40 London time. I love that we got there so early!! The first thing we did was take the Elizabeth Line to our hotel, Great Scotland Yard. This hotel was a great location near Westminster! I would definitely stay here again. Plus, we transferred our Chase points to our Hyatt loyalty account and stayed for FREE on points! If you want to learn more about transferring points, go here.

Our room wasn’t ready because it was so early in the morning, so we went off to see some sights. Up first, we had to take a picture at this iconic photo spot, which wasn’t very far from our hotel! Next, we crossed over Westminister Bridge and took some more photos.

Then we headed to St. James’ Park, crossed over the beautiful Blue Bridge in the park and headed towards the Mall that leads to the palace. After this, we walked over to our lunch stop.

We went to the Gloucester, where we couldn’t resist trying our first fish and chips!! After this, the plan was to walk around Kensington Park, but we hadn’t slept well on the plane ride and we were exhausted. We headed back to our hotel to find our room ready, and we took a 30 minute nap!!! I know this goes against the jet lag rules, but we just couldn’t help it!

After our little nap, we headed back out and took the tube to the best afternoon tea location!! We went to The Ivy Chelsea Garden. This was a beautiful restaurant! I’m so glad we decided to have our tea here. I did make reservations for 3:00 before the trip. I got the Cream Tea, which is just tea and scones. It was a perfect London thing to do on our first day!!

Then we headed back to the hotel, took another 30 minute nap, and then got dressed to head out to visit some pubs and have dinner in Covent Garden! Our hotel was right near this area, and I highly recommend visiting this area! It was beautiful! Walk up St. Martin’s Lane, and just before Mr. Fogg’s Tavern, head down Goodwin’s Court on the right! It has a very Harry Potter feel! See below for a detailed walkable map of our stops in Covent Garden.

Mr. Fogg’s Tavern would be a great place to stop for drinks too!

After this, we headed up to the street, Long Acre, and took a right to head to Slingsby Place. We walked through here and headed to our first pub stop at the Crown and Anchor!

Isn’t it gorgeous?! I had my very first cider here! Loved it!

After we left there, we headed to Lamb & Flag for another drink stop! This is the oldest pub in the Covent Garden area. We loved it!

Then we headed to our dinner reservation at The Nag’s Head. It had a beautiful staircase leading up to the restaurant upstairs.

I tried my first pie! The Nag’s Head serves their pies with a red wine gravy! It was delicious! After this, we did plan to go to a few more stops, but we had been up for so many hours by this point. We were ready for a full night’s sleep!

Here’s a map of our walk Through Covent Garden

If you want to see a video of our Day 1, go here!!

Day 2: Exploring More London Sites

Today was a huge day! We went from one end of the city to the other…well not really because London is huge, but it felt like it. Thank goodness for the tube! We got an early start and headed back into Covent Garden to stop at St. John’s Bakery Neal’s Yard. Neal’s Yard is such a cute, little, colorful courtyard.

We grabbed some coffee and a few pastries and then headed to the nearby subway to head to…

I was so excited to visit the Notting Hill area!! I really did my research and found some great walks to see the pretty streets. We also went shopping a little down Portobello Rd. I would definitely do this again! The homes were so cute!

In addition to Portobello Rd, we went down Denbigh Terrace to Denbigh Rd to Westbourne Grove to Ledbury Rd, down Lonsdale and back to Portobello Rd. I loved this walk and wished we could have stayed longer.

We bought some souvenirs for our kids, a beautiful tea set for my oldest daughter, and a cute top I can’t wait to wear this fall!

We hopped back on the tube to head back to our hotel to change. It had definitely warmed up!! Our hotel really was a great location! As we left the hotel and headed towards the Westminister Bridge, we noticed a ton of people gathering along the streets near the gates to Parliament. There was also a band playing. We asked a few people what was happening and were told that the King was coming!! So B.J. and I worked our way to a great spot to wait. After about 15 minutes, we saw the procession coming, and there he was!! It was the coolest, most random luck event of our trip!! It turns out that it was the opening day of Parliament! We were so excited to have caught that!!

After that, we headed across the Westminister Bridge and towards the London Eye. We weren’t really interested in riding it, but we did want to see it. After that, we hopped on a tube to head to Borough Market!

I love a good food hall or market in big cities! This one was HUGE! We didn’t even scratch the surface of it, but we tried to hit the highlights. I did get one of the sausage rolls and The Ginger Pig…delicious! I also tried a Humble Crumble dessert. I wanted to try more, but the lines were SO LONG and there were so many people! I would like to go again, but I would want to go before it gets too crowded.

After this, we headed to walk along the Thames towards Tower Bridge. Isn’t it stunning?! It’s not a very long walk at all from Borough Market.

We crossed Tower Bridge and headed to the Tower of London! I had pre-purchased tickets before our trip. I had booked the tickets for 2:00 and we didn’t get there until about 3:00, so I was worried we had missed our time. But it all worked out, and it was no big deal at all! We were able to go in and see what we wanted to see!!

We spent about an hour at the Tower of London, and then took the tube back to our hotel to change for dinner and our big plans for the evening!

Dinner was at The Crutched Friar. It was really good! I got another pie, and at this point, I was feeling like I couldn’t wait to try to make these this fall! BJ got the Braised Beef Short Rib, which was delicious too!

Then, it was time to head to our Historical Pub Tour!! It was such a blast!! It was really one of our favorite parts of the entire trip!! Ricky and his dog, Diggity, were awesome tour guides!! We not only had a great time, but we learned so much about this history of the City of London.

Our tour started out near St. Paul’s Cathedral and focused on the oldest part of the city. We visited 4 historical pubs, and we learned about this history of each one. Many of these spots were visited by the likes of Shakespeare and Charles Dickens!

Our first stop was The Cockpit. Isn’t this building so cool? And when you walk in these pubs, you really get a sense of how old they are!

Many of these pubs had hand-pulled cask ales, ciders, and I even tried a Pimm’s!

The Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese was probably my favorite of all the pubs! We went way down into the basement for this one! Knowing this one was built in 1667 just had me fascinated! Loved it!

It really was the best night!! I highly recommend this tour!!

What a day!! If you want to see a video of Day 2, go here.

Day 3: Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace

We headed out early for our combination tour of Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. We booked this tour through Viator. We started out by heading to catch the tour bus to Windsor.

I absolutely loved Windsor!! It was the cutest town, and I wish we could have spent longer here!!

I’m so glad we came here! We got to tour the castle and even St. George’s Chapel, which houses the burial sites of Queen Elizabeth II and family and even King Henry the VII! This was so cool!!

I will be returning to Windsor one day! It was such a beautiful town!

We left the castle, and then headed out to eat at The Carpenter’s Arms. I got a delicious burger!! Then we headed back on the tour bus to London to head to Buckingham Palace.

I have approximately zero pictures of Buckingham Palace, which is a bummer! But they were pretty strict about photos. We did enjoy our tour though. After this, we headed back to our hotel to change and headed out to dinner in the Covent Garden area. We ate at a great little pizzeria, Fatto o Manno.

That’s it for Day 3! If you want to see a video of the day, go here!

I’ll recap our second half of our trip where we headed out of London soon! In the meantime, here is a list of what we did each day! And don’t forget to follow my travel page on Instagram, Our Point Destinations, for all the details on how we used points for this trip!

Want all the details of how to use points for a trip to London? You can also see how much we spent out of pocket! Get our guide here!!

Learn How to Transfer Points Here!

The post London Trip Days 1-3 appeared first on Diary of A Recipe Collector.

Today, I’m continuing our wonderful trip to Boston and Nantucket this past summer.  Reliving this trip with you guys has made me so excited all over again!!  And I’ve saved the best for last!  Here we go!!  If you missed the other parts of our trip, here is Part 1 and Part 2.  Plus, our whole Google Doc of the trip is linked below!
We got up early in Gloucester, and headed south towards Plymouth.  We made it there around 9 am.  We had a big day and lots to see!!  Remember that early East Coast sunrise:

It was an absolutely beautiful day!  First, we headed to Plimoth Plantation.  This was really neat to see the way the pilgrims established themselves in the new world.  We walked through and toured the village and headed to our next Plymouth destination.

We went to see Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower II.  

We LOVED the Mayflower II tour!!  It was probably one of the best tours on our whole trip.  The staff on this ship were extremely great at really sharing the experiences of the first pilgrims.  They gave us information that I had never learned before in school.  Just to see the scale of the way these passengers lived and survived for all those months was amazing.  It was definitely worth the money to do the tour!

After that, we headed right down the street to Mamma Mia’s for lunch.  There are a lot of restaurant options in this area.  We were craving a little pizza, and this place was really good!  Our waiter was precious too!

After lunch, we made our last stop in Plymouth at Burial Hill.  There we saw graves of some of the pilgrims including the Mayor William Bradford.  

Next, we headed to our final destination!!  We dropped off the rental car in Hyannis, MA and had a 2:30 ferry ride to Nantucket!!!  Y’all this was a bucket list item for me.  I am a huge Elin Hildebrand reader, so the thought of visiting this picturesque island was HUGE!  I literally had tears stepping off the ferry!

We stayed at the Nantucket Inn.  This was pretty far out of the Main Street and town area, but it was not as expensive as some of the other hotels.  We really liked it, and our reservations came with a wonderful full buffet breakfast.  

Each night our dinner reservations were pretty early.  We headed out to dinner after changing. Our first dining stop on Nantucket was Cru!  It was that perfect right on the wharf amidst all the yachts experience.  

We tried the Burrata which inspired us to make our own when we got home.  I tried another lobster roll, of course.  B.J. tried the Haddock.  The food on this island is really exceptional.  

After dinner, we walked the town a little, did a little shopping, and then ended up at Juice Bar!!  I got the Samoa Girl Scout Cookie.  Y’all, this was amazing!  I’m still working on recreating this ice cream recipe in an easy way for y’all!!

Next, we walked to the Brant Point Lighthouse.  

And then we ended up at the Club Car, which is a restaurant and a little bar made from an old rail car.  It was super cool.  They had a great piano guy, and we stayed for a few hours!  Fun fun first day on Nantucket!

The next morning we woke up early for our first full day on the island.  We had big plans!  First up, we went and ate breakfast at Island Kitchen.  This was so yummy!

From there, we walked a little ways to our bike rental location, Easy Riders.  We rented 2 electric bikes.  Let me just mention right here and right now that I am so thankful I rented electric bikes.  Holy cow, we had big plans for big bike touring on our own, and I would have NEVER MADE IT without an electric bike folks.  Well worth the money!!  

So I had a whole biking itinerary for us.  I was quite proud of myself because it was awesome!  We started by heading to see the beautiful homes and flowers.  We were there in July, so the roses were past their peak, but those hydrangeas were showing off!

Our Nantucket Biking Tour Stops from Mid-Island to the North and West:

• Plumb Street
• Fair Street
• Charter Street
• Darling Street
• Head to the north part of the island to see Steps Beach:  From Fair Street, Cross over Main Street up to Centre St up to Ash Ln and Ash St.  Then head up to Cliff Rd. towards Lincoln Ave and Lincoln Circle to see cobblestone path to Steps Beach.
• Head to Bartlett’s Farm Rd.  to Cisco Brewers
• Check out Bartlett’s Farm.
• Head out to west side towards Madaket.
• Stop at Millie’s Restaurant.

After Steps Beach, we headed to Cisco Brewers.  This was a neat little brewery set up with music and food trucks.  We found a little spot to take a rest and have a drink after all that biking!  

Then we got back on our bikes and headed to stop at Bartlett’s Farm.  I’m such a foodie, and this place was a little grocery store heaven for me!  I found myself wishing we had a kitchen where we were, so I could get some things to cook!  After that stop, apparently I put away my phone because I have zero pictures of us heading to the west side of the island towards Madaket.  This was about a 30 minute bike ride, and it was at this point, I was pretty darn thankful for electric bikes!  We saw some beautiful parts of the island on this ride.  We even saw the neatest turtles everywhere when we crossed over Long Pond.  Once we made it to Madaket, we stopped at Millies for a drink and shared some chips and queso and some shrimp tacos.  It was yummy!!

We headed back to the hotel and went to get ready for dinner.  Easy Riders picked up our bikes from our hotel, which made it so easy!  Dinner was at another Nantucket bucket list item for me…Galley Beach!

This restaurant was the inspiration for Elin Hidebrand’s book, The Blue Bistro.  It’s literally right on the beach.  You can even have a table in the sand if you’d like.  They only take reservations starting 2 weeks before, so I made sure to stay on top of that one.  It has a special menu, and it was really good.  I’m telling y’all…these Louisiana kids ate good in Massachusetts.

After dinner, we walked the beach up to Jettie’s Beach and then headed back into town to catch the shuttle to our Inn. 
The next morning we woke up and headed into town to enjoy our final day of the trip.  This was was my favorite!  We started out walking the Main St. and town area doing a little shopping, and of course, we had to visit book stores!!  And they had the CUTEST toy store, Barnaby’s.

This town is like a Hallmark movie!!  I just loved it!  After shopping, we found the Nantucket Wave bus, which we got on for a ride out to the east to see Sconset!!!  

Sconset is on the eastern side of the island and known for its cute cottages and gorgeous beachfront homes with perfect flowers.  It was hard not to post every single picture I took.  Once we arrived in Sconset, we set out on the Sconset Bluff Walk.

I cannot recommend this walk enough!  It takes you right behind the gorgeous homes as you walk along the huge cliff over the beach.  

We accessed it right from Front St. There are a ton of beautiful spots to take pictures.

We walked all the way up to the Sankaty Lighthouse.  This was quite a walk, but it was so worth it.  Then we headed back down into Sconset to the The Summer House Beachside Bistro.  We had a nice refreshing drink at the bar after all that walking.  We then caught the Wave bus back to our hotel.  It was awesome how the bus makes several stops across the island and one happened to be right by where we were staying.  

Right across from our hotel is a restaurant called The Saltbox Tavern.  We shared some wonderful chips and dip and a few drinks before heading back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

Our last dinner was at Brant Point Grill!!  It was my favorite dinner on the island.  It’s on a beautiful lawn at the White Elephant Hotel.  

My drink was an ACK Sunshine, and I am drying my best to figure that one out!  It was soooo good!  I also recreated the Lobster Mac and Cheese with my own Shrimp Version, and I nailed it!!  

We headed back to the hotel and flew out the next morning straight from Nantucket!!  That was way easier than ferrying back and getting a car back to Boston to fly out!
Keep reading to see more places to eat and things to do!  

Tips We Learned for Visiting Nantucket:

• Book dining reservations in advance.  There are a ton of wonderful restaurants on the island.  We loved the ones we went to, but there are so many more we saw when we were there.
• Don’t forget about the on island bus transportation, The Nantucket Wave.  They have several routes.
• See the WHOLE island!  Take each day to focus on different parts of the island.  It’s so fun to see it and explore!
• HERE IS THE GOOGLE DOC OF OUR ENTIRE BOSTON, NANTUCKET TRIP!!

If you missed the other parts of our trip, here is Part 1 and Part 2.

Find more TRAVEL POSTS HERE!

You can find more MAIN DISH RECIPES HERE.
You can find ALL RECIPES HERE.
For more ideas, follow me on FACEBOOK, PINTEREST, INSTAGRAM, AND TWITTER.
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The post Boston and Nantucket Part 3 appeared first on Diary of A Recipe Collector.

I could not take a trip all the way to Boston and not head up north just a few miles to go see Salem and Gloucester!  I’ve been a Hocus Pocus movie fan since the movie came out, and I was always fascinated with the Salem Witch Trials.  So I did my research and found all the filming locations for us to explore!  Plus, we headed up a little further to stay on the Atlantic Coast in Gloucester.  We made a ton of fun memories on these stops, so here we go!  If you’re looking for Part 1 – Boston, go HERE!

Our first stop was breakfast at the Ugly Mug Diner.  It was delicious!  I got the Huevos Fresco, which was a slice of toast, pico, scrambled egg, cheese, avocado, and sour cream and served with potatoes. It was such an easy idea, and it was absolutely delicious!
The Ugly Mug Diner is right in the center of this cute historic town and the perfect place to start your own Salem walking tour.  I did a lot of research on what to see, and felt pretty confident that we could walk and see what we wanted on our own.  Of course, there are walking tours available too!
All addresses for our tour stops and directions are on my google doc I’m sharing at the bottom of the post.

Our first stop was The Witch House, which was the former home of Salem Witch Trials Judge Jonathan Corwin.  We went inside and toured it and learned a lot about the hysteria that existed during the Salem Witch Trials.  Then a few doors down was the Rope’s Mansion….aka Allison’s house in the first Hocus Pocus movie.  We did not go inside, but it has a beautiful garden in the back that is free to see.

It was so beautiful with a ton of different varieties of flowers. 
Next, we walked to see the Old Town Hall and the Salem Witch Trials Memorial.  Then we hopped back in the car, and took a drive to “Max’s House.”  I snapped this photo very quickly.  This is not a public touring site, so I didn’t really want to invade someone’s privacy.  It’s located right on the water…very cool!!

Right near the Salem Witch Trials Memorial is Old Burying Point Cemetery.  It has a grave from a Mayflower passenger.  So cool!!  

We also drove down Chestnut St., which was America’s first planned street.  It had huge gorgeous homes.  

Our last stop was to head over to Marblehead, MA to see another filming location Old Burial Hill.  This was worth the drive because the VIEW was BEAUTIFUL!  It’s an old historic graveyard (also a filming location in Hocus Pocus) set up on a big hill that overlooks the harbor.  

After our time in Salem, we headed further north to Gloucester, MA.  We had hotel reservations at a cute little place called the Atlantis Oceanfront Inn. It was right on the Atlantic Coast, and we were super excited about this stay!

The first thing we did was head out to the water!!  This is so different from where we live.  I’ve always wanted to see the rocky New England coast.  We had a blast out there, and that water was SO COLD!

We got dressed for dinner and headed to the neighboring and cute town of Rockport!  I just loved it!  Our weather wasn’t too great, and it was a little rainy.  But we had one of our favorite meals of the trip here!

This is Bearskin Neck, a beautiful village in the town of Rockport!  I mean!  So cute!  The photo below is at “Motif #1,” a great place to snap a photo in Rockport!

Our meal was sooo delicious.  This was my favorite clam chowder of the whole trip, and I tried my second lobster roll (cold this time).  BJ got the Haddock.  

We headed to the ice cream shop right down the street after dinner and headed back to the hotel for the night.  The next day was BIG and I can’t wait to share it!  We started it off right by watching the sun rise on the beautiful East coast before heading out!

Click here to see Part 1 of our trip- BOSTON!  Stay tuned for Part 3!

Here is the link to my GOOGLE DOC with all the details of what we did for the whole trip!!!!

You can find more TRAVEL POSTS HERE!

You can find MAIN DISH RECIPES HERE.
You can find ALL RECIPES HERE.
For more ideas, follow me on FACEBOOK, PINTEREST, INSTAGRAM, AND TWITTER.
Get FREE recipes delivered to you by email: SIGN UP HERE!

The post Boston and Nantucket Trip Part 2 appeared first on Diary of A Recipe Collector.

B.J. and I headed out this past July to see some beautiful scenery and wonderful history all over Massachusetts.  Why a Boston and Nantucket Trip for our 20?  Why not?  We love experiencing places neither one of us have traveled to together!  This trip was hands down one of the most exciting trips we’ve ever taken!  I can’t wait to share all the details to help you plan a trip to this destination!  Get ready for picture overload!  Plus, I’ll link a document with all the details to help you plan a trip too!

We kicked off this anniversary trip in style for sure!  We made reservations for drinks and appetizers at the beautiful Lookout Rooftop Bar at the Envoy Hotel.  Words cannot hardly describe how good it felt to finally be there and relax while overlooking Boston Harbor.  I mean look how cool!!

For the rooftop bar, I made reservations a few months before our trip.  You can go up there without reservations, but you are basically standing and hanging out with a whole crowd of people, and it’s not near as relaxing as having your own little couch and server.  Now it is pricey, but this was one of those experiences we wanted for our first night in Boston.  We had reservations for 5:30, which was perfect for pre-dinner cocktails.  Here’s the link to reserve these!From the rooftop bar, we walked over to the Granary Tavern for dinner.  The walk was through a little park along Atlantic Avenue, and it was in that moment that I decided how much I loved Boston!  It was just perfect, and the weather was pure bliss even in the July heat.  The Granary Tavern was cozy and our meal was good, and I tried my first of many lobster dishes.  It was such a great night!  From there we walked back to our hotel for the night.  It was a long travel day, and we were exhausted!

I snapped this next picture on our walk back to the hotel.  It’s Central Burying Ground established in 1754 and located in Boston Common.  Isn’t it spooky?!

Things I loved about Day 1 of Boston:

• We arrived in afternoon in time for a trip down to the seaport area to go to the Lookout Rooftop Bar.  This was the perfect way to kick off our trip!!
• Our walk from the seaport area to the Granary Tavern was perfection.  So glad we chose to walk.  It was only a short distance to the tavern.

Day 2 of Boston:  Our first full day!

The next morning we woke up and went to mass at St. Cecilia Catholic Church, which was right down the road from our hotel, The Colonnade.  I loved this location in the Back Bay area.  It made the perfect walk to start our day after mass.  We headed to our first stop, Levain Bakery, for a coffee and a little treat!

To be fair, I did not eat this cookie for my breakfast.  It was the size of my head and so delicious!  Can’t wait to give a copycat version I found a try!  I did however eat some of their delicious coffee cake 🙂

Our walk was picturesque.  The weather was gorgeous.  The architecture was beautiful.  We walked from Levain up to Commonwealth Ave.  I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this little walk all the way to the Boston Public Gardens!

This is Commonwealth Ave.  I mean…just such a perfect walk on a beautiful Sunday morning leading us to…

The Boston Public Garden was so beautiful!!!  My pictures just do not do it justice!  Boston, you are my new fav!

From here, we explored the Boston Common area, and the Granary Burying Ground, which was the start of the Freedom Trail for us.  This is the burial site of some very important men in history like Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock.  I am a huge history lover, so this was super cool to see!  And it was right next door the the Park Street Church.

We hopped on one of the Old Town Trolley Tours trolleys to head to our next historical destination.  (I pre-purchased tickets online, but we could have bought them at the welcome center location where we loaded at Charles St. and Bolyston.  This was stop #12 on the tour.  We headed to…

The Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum!  This is located right in Boston Harbor, and you can tour the ship and taste the 5 teas thrown into the harbor during the real Boston Tea Party.  We opted not to do the ship tour to save time since we still had lots to see.  From there, we hopped back on the trolley and headed to the historic north end to see Copp’s Hill Burial Ground, Paul Revere’s home, the Old North Church where the lanterns were hung to warn Paul Revere of the British coming…I mean how cool is it to be in these historic places!!

Then we headed to the old historic Bell in Hand Tavern to have a drink while we waited for a seat to eat lunch at the Union Street Oyster House.  Both were great!

The Paul Revere Punch was super refreshing after all of our walking!  After a drink, we headed to the Union Street Oyster House, where I tried my first Lobster Roll and Clam Chowder, and B.J. tried clams.  They were all pretty good.  We definitely loved the old historic vibe sitting inside and upstairs.  This was such a nice stopping point before heading back out to see the city again.

After leaving lunch, we headed to see some more historic sites like the Boston Massacre site, Cheers, and the BEAUTIFUL  Acorn St. in the Beacon Hill area.  The trolley helped us out tremendously for this!  We hopped on right across from the Boston Massacre location and headed to the Beacon Hill/Antique Row stop.

This area pretty much sealed the deal with my love affair with Boston.

The Cheers Bar marked our last stop was our final stop for the trolley tour.  Yes, there was more to see, but we were pooped.  It was time to head back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

Dinner was in the Little Italy area at Limoncello.  First, we stopped for a drink at the Green Dragon, another old historic tavern.
The meatballs were so amazing at Limoncello!
After dinner, we went to right down the street to Mike’s Pastry to grab some cannolis.  This place was insane!  I’ve never seen so many beautiful desserts.  The lines were long, but they moved really fast.

Things I loved about Day 2:

• Our walk down Commonwealth into the Boston Public Gardens was amazing!  I will do that every time!!
• Starting the tour at the Bolyston St. stop and heading to the Boston Tea Party site was a great way to start the Freedom Trail.
• Stopping for drinks on this day at two of the oldest bars in Boston was definitely a fun way to experience the city!
• Finishing our day with a cannoli equals perfection!

That wraps up our fun 36 hours in Boston!  Man, we did a lot and can’t wait to go back!
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