2015 Epic Summer Vacation – Part 4: Paris

Paris was the main stop in our European travels so we spent a week there. This was a very good thing and we could have easily spent a month. Since we were already in Europe (London) with our stopover, I knew getting to Paris would be a relatively easy trip either by air or train. Figuring out where to stay would be decidedly tougher.

That said, we decided to fly to Paris since we were already at Heathrow airport and getting to the train station would have been a hassle. So, the Chunnel will have to wait for another trip.

Marriott Champs-Elysees lobby atrium and skylight.

FYI, security at Heathrow is NO JOKE. You have to go through a second security check for international flights and they severely limit your carry-on liquids. Even though we made it through US security just fine, we had to throw away a good amount of what we brought as a result. Also, they search everything and it doesn’t take much to trigger a full-on bag and personal check. A pair of nail clippers did it for me. Good times.

For the hotel, we decided on the extremely posh Marriott Champs-Elysees, mainly for the location and the amenities. The Champs-Elysees may be touristy and expensive, but it is centrally located and has two nearby Metro stations which we made extensive use of. Plus, it’s just plain fun.

Holding the Marriott credit card from Chase not only gives you a free night in any Marriott category 1 – 5 hotel each year (in addition to the signup bonus), but it also provides elite status that gives you two free breakfasts each morning per room. We had two rooms, so the four of us ate for free every morning. And a property like this does not skimp on food, so the breakfasts were hearty and delicious. So much that we usually skipped lunch altogether.

Paris panorama from atop the Eiffel Tower.

Airfare:

Looking down the spiral staircase from inside (and atop) the Arc de Triomphe.

Airfare Strategy: I decided that it would be easiest to fly to Paris since Charles De Gaulle is a short one-hour flight and British Airways’ distance-based award chart made the tickets absurdly inexpensive.
Airfare Class: Coach from Heathrow to Charles De Gaulle.
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Airfare Points Spent: 4,500 British Airways Avios points per ticket x 4 tickets = 18,000 points total.
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Airfare Points Earning: Melissa and I each earned 100,000 BA Avios through a single credit card signup, so we had 200,000 Avios total – plenty for the short jaunts we had between European countries.
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Airfare Cost: $0
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Airfare Value: At the time of booking in December, the ticket value was roughly $200 each for all segments or roughly $800 in value.
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Airfare Value Per Point: ($800 – $0) / 18,000 = $.044 per point (4.4 cents per point)

Hotel:

Hotel Strategy: Since we wanted to stay in Paris for a full week, this was the trickiest hotel award we had to deal with. At the heart of my strategy was Chase’s Marriott and Ritz-Carlton credit card signup bonuses and Marriott’s “Hotel Packages” program that allows you to redeem Marriott points for hotel certificates AND a set number of frequent flyer miles in your choice of frequent flyer program. A good writeup of this process can be found here. We chose Southwest Airlines.
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It is not widely known, but since Ritz Carlton hotels are part of the Marriott chain, their points can be shared between programs. In other words, the Marriott points and Ritz-Carlton points you earn can be combined into ONE Marriott account. In fact, if you provide your Marriott rewards number when you apply for a Ritz-Carlton credit card, the points will be deposited into your Marriott account directly. This can allow individuals (and especially couples) to earn massive Marriott points balances very quickly.

Le Moulin de Fourges, a wonderful little French provincial restaurant.

So, the strategy here was to earn 780,000 Marriott points and use them to buy TWO Category 9 hotel certificates + 240,000 Southwest Airlines miles. But that’s not all. Points transferred to Southwest through the Marriott Travel Program actually count toward the Companion Pass, so this this would give us enough points and miles for two rooms at the Marriott Champs-Elysees, 240,000 Southwest miles and TWO Southwest Companion Passes for TWO YEARS. The net result is that we got both rooms AND all four of us fly free on Southwest Airlines (since we have so many points already) for a full two years. Absurd value and a good use of points if I’ve ever seen one.
Hotel Points Spent: 370,000 Marriott Points per Hotel + Flight certificate x 2 certificates = 740,000 points total.
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Hotel Points Earning: Both Melissa and I signed up for the personal and business version of the Chase Marriott credit card when the bonus was 80,000 points (80,000 x 4 = 320,000). Shortly thereafter, Chase offered a whopping 160,000 point bonus on their co-branded Ritz-Carlton card which we also registered for (160,000 x 4 = 640,000). This gave us more than enough points for the redemption.
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Water lily garden at Claude Monet’s home in Giverny, France.

Hotel Cost: $0
Hotel Value: At the time of our stay, the least expensive rooms in the hotel were roughly $695/night. We had two rooms for 7 nights making the total value roughly $9,730.
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Hotel Value Per Point: This is a bit tougher to quantify since it not only gave us the two rooms in Paris, but ALSO 240,000 Southwest miles and two Southwest companion passes for two years.
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The Companion Pass is generally estimated to have a value of roughly $3,000 per pass per year, but it really depends how much travel you do and how much you spend. It could be more or less depending on a number of factors (cash or points paid for tickets, ticket value, frequency of travel, etc). Assuming the $3,000/year per pass estimate for the Companion Pass is close, the equation for this redemption would look something like:

($9,730 + $12,000 – $0) / (780,000 – 240,000) = $.040 per point (4.0 cents per point)

In other words, the value of the hotel room divided by the number of Marriott points spent minus the number of Southwest points received. I’m pretty sure my logic or my math may be faulty here, but at least you get an idea of the kind of outsized value you can get with these flight + hotel deals.

C’est la vie

So, that’s the summary of how we got to Paris and where we stayed. But, I also compiled a list of tips and things we thought might be useful to friends and family who might visit in the future. Trash or treasure!

Notre Dame Cathedral from the banks of the Seine.

Visit outdoor monuments at different times of day. The different lighting can make for dramatically different pictures and experiences. Also, the Eiffel Tower has a “light show” every hour after nightfall which really is pretty cool.
Eat at restaurants off the main drags. They’re more reasonably priced, less crowded, less touristy and generally better food (although the language barrier can be more pronounced).
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Re: restaurant language barriers, be careful about eating at ethnic restaurants unless you want a real adventure. We ate at an Italian restaurant where the menu was in Italian with French translations. Not good. Melissa thought she was ordering a salad and got octopus. The kids thought they were ordering spaghetti and got spaghetti with squid. I thought I was ordering ravioli and got ravioli with something unidentifiable. I still don’t know what it was, but it was the best meal I had in Paris.
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Drink tons of water. Bathrooms are fairly plentiful and not coveted by their owners like in many American cities. And if it’s hot, you’ll sweat most of the water out anyway!
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Get lots of 1 and 2 Euro coins. They’re good for small tips for maids, cafes, vending machines in the Metro, street vendors, etc.
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Outside the Louvre-Rivoli metro stop in Paris, France.

RIDE THE METRO. Get a pass for the duration of your stay and just do it. It’s complex, but not complicated. If you can ride the T in Boston, you can ride the Metro in Paris. Just find your destination stop, a closeby line that intersects with it, the terminus of that line in the direction you want and hop on.
At least one travel power converter per person is a must. More, if you’re traveling with more electronics. Even better, get one that converts *and* has a USB charger or two on it. Very convenient.
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COMFORTABLE FOOTWEAR.
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Make an attempt at French wherever you go. The effort is appreciated and usually gives the French something to giggle about.
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Re: language barriers – GOOGLE TRANSLATE.
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Don’t be a douche. We have seen a staggering number of entitled foreigners (not just Americans), so it’s no wonder the French are guarded/rude. A smile, some effort and some humility go a long way.
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Have a mobile phone plan with good international coverage. We switched to T-Mobile for just this reason and were absolutely thrilled with the results. Good coverage, free international roaming and no worries about massive bills when you get home. They also have wi-fi calling built in to the plan which allows free phone calls anywhere you have decent wi-fi. International SIM cards are also an option, but they change your phone number and I’m not sure exactly how they work.
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Get a travel router. This allows you to use a single wired or wi-fi connection and share it between as many devices as you would like. They’re small, easily configured and offer potentially huge savings at hotels that charge for connections by the device.
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Eat a big breakfast every day. Even better, stay at a hotel that includes breakfast in the price and go to it every day.
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The spectacular Grand Foyer in the Paris Opera House.

Don’t pack too much in. Paris has way, WAY too much to offer to see it in one trip, so don’t even try. Much of the allure of the city is the city itself. Take some time to enjoy it. Stop at cafes. Walk down by the river. Visit the parks. Just be. Everything you miss is just another reason to go back and you’ll always miss something. C’est la vie.

Jim Meets World

Travel adventures of a guy named Jim.