196. France River Cruise: Jess's Mother-Daughter Trip

Points Talk®: Your Travel Dreams, Made Possible by Points

Jess shares her memorable mother-daughter river cruise experience through France's Provence and Burgundy regions, detailing how she used cre

Key takeaways

• Using points for flights and hotel stays can significantly reduce travel costs, allowing more budget for premium experiences like river cruises.
• Air France offers flexible booking options where flights and train connections can be combined using miles, potentially saving on total cost.

Main topics

• Using credit card points for international travel
• Booking business class flights using miles

Notable quotes

"I was going to pay 20,000 more miles every day of the week to fly business class."

Conclusion

Jess's France river cruise proves that strategic use of travel points an

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) What if you could fly business class to France, stay in a luxury hotel, and then spend a week cruising through Provence and Burgundy, all without blowing your travel budget? Jess just returned from an incredible French River cruise with her mom, and points made the flights and pre-cruise stay possible. Today, she's sharing exactly how she booked it, what the cruise was really like, and whether she'd do it again. Speaker 1 (0:23) Welcome to Points Talk. We Speaker 2 (0:25) are three moms who've discovered how to leverage credit card welcome offers to get hundreds of thousands of dollars of travel expenses for nearly free. We've used credit card points and miles to take vacations to places like Hawaii, Paris, Greece, Maldives, Japan, and so much more. And the best part, we each still have 800 plus credit scores. Imagine being able to take the vacation of your dreams for nearly free. It's totally possible and we're here to show you how. Speaker 2 (0:54) Hey, I'm Alex. And I'm Speaker 1 (0:57) Pam, Alex's mom. And I'm Jess. Let's talk points. All Speaker 2 (1:01) right. So Jess is here to talk all about her trip she just returned from. She went with her mom to France. I'm super excited to hear about this because I have only been to Paris. And Jess did not go to Paris this time. She went on a river cruise with her mom through... Provence and Burgundy. So Jess, tell us all about the trip. We want to hear how you got there, where you stayed before the cruise, how you used points. I know you didn't use points for the actual river cruise. It was a points earning opportunity, but you did use points for your flights in your pre-cruise stay. So tell us first all about how Speaker 3 (1:34) you and your mom got there. Okay. So to be fair, we did fly into Paris, but that just wasn't our... final destination. We explored other parts of France that I have not been to. My mom had actually been there before I was born, but I had never been there. And so we flew from Houston to Paris. There is a direct flight on Air France. I had initially booked us on a premium economy for 40,000 Air France miles, which is a great deal. I think that's about as good as you can get on Air France premium economy. I was happy with that booking. I booked it, you know, soon after the schedule opened up. And then I think it was around March of this year, I got a thrifty traveler alert for like wide open availability on Air France business class. And the exact date that we were flying premium economy was available in business for 60,000 miles. I'm going to pay 20,000 more miles every day of the week to fly business class. Premium economy would Speaker 2 (2:34) have been Speaker 3 (2:34) fine, but you know, for 20,000 miles, I was like done. Say no more. So it was 60,000 miles and $246 each in taxes and fees. I will say that Air France normally charges a cancellation fee if you cancel and rebook. So in this situation, it was a matter of calling up Flying Blue, canceling the premium economy flight, and then rebooking on business. They would normally charge, I believe it's a $75 cancellation fee per person. But there had been a slight schedule change. It wasn't anything big. I think it was an hour. The flight had changed an hour. And so they waived that cancellation fee. Oh, Speaker 2 (3:14) that's so Speaker 3 (3:15) nice. Yeah. So I was like, sweet. I was planning to ask about that. But they did it before I even had to ask about it. So that was really nice. So I was easily able to cancel and rebook that. And then we landed in Paris. Well, Speaker 2 (3:29) I Speaker 3 (3:29) have a quick question for you. When you first booked that one flight Speaker 2 (3:32) for 40,000 miles, Speaker 3 (3:34) Did Speaker 2 (3:34) you book a train stop along with it or Speaker 3 (3:36) no? Yeah. So I did. I did. So I had originally – so Lyon is where the cruise was leaving from. So that was our final destination. And how far is that from Paris? I have no idea where. It's like a two-hour train ride. Speaker 1 (3:50) Okay. Speaker 3 (3:51) So when I had originally booked as premium economy, Air France does have this thing where like for certain destinations, you can book your flight and your train in one. booking. And it's like for the same amount of miles. And so I had booked us from Houston to Paris flight and then train from Paris to Lyon in one booking. That's really cool. So I put in Lyon as the destination instead of Paris in that example. When Thrifty Traveler sent out the email, I checked again because I was like, oh, maybe I can get it all for $60,000 and I couldn't. It was It was only like Houston to Paris was 60,000. If I put Houston to Lyon, it was like 100 and something thousand. So I was like, no, that's not worth it. But definitely always check that out. Like put the train station in for the destination that you're going to if you're not just stopping in Paris and see if that option pops up. I know it wasn't available for like every single flight. But that's a cool little trick. That's Speaker 2 (4:53) worth Speaker 3 (4:53) checking. Yeah. Speaker 2 (4:54) I never would have thought like, oh, I can just book my train right along with my flight. Yeah. So that's cool. So we arrived Speaker 3 (5:02) in Paris in the morning and then we had to get from the airport to Gare de Lyon train station. And so there's a few different options. You can take a train, but it was going to require us to switch. And I was like, I don't want to deal with lugging my suitcase on the train, having to transfer to a different one, like jet lag. You know, like I didn't, you know, I just don't. I hate doing that. No, I don't blame you. So we could have taken a taxi. I actually hired a driver to pick us up at the airport and drive us to the train station. I probably should have just taken a taxi. I'm not going to recommend the driver that I hired because he ended up being like late and it was just a whole thing. So if I could do it over again, I would have just taken a taxi directly from the airport and taken it to the train station. And then, like I said, it was a direct train. It's around two hours from Paris to Lyon. I booked us in. business class on the train because there was only $63 each in business class. I think it was like $45 in the regular Speaker 1 (6:05) one. And I wanted to have like the two seats with the table. Speaker 2 (6:08) Yeah. Speaker 3 (6:09) So $63 each in business class on the train. So we got to Leon and we stayed one night at the Intercontinental Leon, but I booked two nights because it is an edit property. And so in order to get the $250 edit credit, you have to book a stay of two nights or more. So I booked us two nights. We only stayed one, but it was really nice because we Speaker 2 (6:37) weren't boarding the Speaker 3 (6:39) boat until like 3 to 7 was the time, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. the next day was the time that you could board the boat and check in. And so we got to like stay the whole day at the hotel and not have to worry about like leaving our bags at the front desk or checking out early and what are we going to do until we can get on the boat type of thing. So it actually ended up working out really nice. So we just left at like 4.30 p.m. or 4 p.m. And we didn't say anything. Like I didn't say, hey, I'm checking out early. We only stayed one night. I just pretended like everything's great. And it just. checked out on its Speaker 1 (7:15) own the next day. That is a great use. That's a great use of that, you know, because sometimes you're not going to stay two nights and it's like, but you want to stay, you know, if you have high global, you wouldn't have had a problem. You could stay till four. But in this thing, with it being an IG hotel, that's a great way to get around that. And Speaker 3 (7:33) I do think there is like some late checkout capability with the edit, but it's not, Speaker 2 (7:37) it's not like four or Speaker 1 (7:38) five, six p.m., you Speaker 2 (7:39) know? Yeah. And I think with the edit, it's not guaranteed. Whereas with fine hotels and resorts, I think it's guaranteed. I don't think it's guaranteed with the edit. Speaker 3 (7:48) Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:49) So it Speaker 3 (7:50) ended up, I did the math and it ended up being way cheaper for us to book two nights through the edit with the $250 edit credit and the $250 select hotels credit. So we got, we booked two nights, got $500 back. And it was just 22,000 Chase points. It was like points boost also. And it was points boost for two cents per point. Oh, that's awesome. So it ended up being 22,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards total for two nights. And then my mom paid me back for half of that. So we each paid 11,000 Chase points for this stay. And this was a beautiful hotel. I know Leon is like kind of... niche. Not a lot of people go there, but if you're going there, this is a great property at use. It's beautiful. It's right on the water. It used to be a hospital and it's like just very, has a lot of character. And we got, so we got free breakfast with the edit at the hotel. And then we also got a $100 credit that we could spend. And so we had lunch. at the hotel. So they have a restaurant and then they have like a bar and lounge, but they have food there too. And so we had lunch in their little lounge and it's like this beautiful domed room. It used to be the chapel at the hospital. Speaker 1 (9:14) Oh, Speaker 2 (9:14) wow. That's really cool. Speaker 3 (9:16) Now Speaker 2 (9:16) it's a bar and lounge. Speaker 3 (9:17) And so we had lunch there. I think our lunch came out to like $108. And so we paid $8 for our stay basically. Speaker 3 (9:27) So, if you're going to be in Lyon, this is a really great option on points. The room wasn't anything special. It was just two queen beds, but it was nice. It was quiet. Excellent location. So, highly recommend that. Did you walk Speaker 1 (9:41) around Lyon at all? Speaker 3 (9:42) We did. So, actually, as part of the cruise, they included a walking tour of Lyon that first day. So, we boarded the boat. checked in, put our bags down, and then they included a walking tour of Lyon. So that kind of took the pressure off of us. We got there and I was like, okay, we don't really have to see everything because we're going to see it all tomorrow on this walking tour. Speaker 2 (10:05) Yeah, that's nice. So Speaker 3 (10:06) we did walk around. We went and found dinner. But we went to bed at 8.30 PM that first night because we were pretty spent. So that is how we got there. And that is where we stayed beforehand. And then flying home from France. we took a little bit of a roundabout way, okay? So we flew from Lyon to Houston, but there were two stops along the way. And that is because I was researching flights. I found this, what I think is a really great deal through United, but, and it was business class for two of the flights. But I told my mom, I was like, okay, we can either fly like Paris to, you know, we can take the train back to Paris. We can fly Paris to Houston, but we'll be in economy. Like I can't find any good. premium or business class deals. Or we could have two stops and fly business. And my mom was like, two stops and fly business. That's my girl. Yeah. Well, the nice thing too is it allowed us to leave. We left Lyon that afternoon and then we technically still got home that same day. If we had gone to Paris first, we would have had to stay the night in Paris before. And to me, there's a lot of convenience that comes from like, you know, after a trip, I just want to get home. Speaker 2 (11:19) Yes. I don't want to go to take a train, go to another city, take a taxi to another hotel, Speaker 3 (11:26) unpack. Speaker 2 (11:27) You know,