Two tickets to anywhere, please.

August 28, 2008 6:45 PM

American Airlines has announced plans to increase fees for their frequent flier program. My wife and I want to cash in our miles while we can. We've used up most of our vacation days this year, but where should we go next spring?

My wife tells me we have about enough miles for two round trip tickets to anywhere in the world. We're looking for a destination which will be relatively inexpensive once we get there (food, hotel, etc.) but since we don't have to pay for the tickets, we're not particular on where it is.

We're open to most any location — foreign or domestic — but we'd prefer somewhere that would be warm in March or April, especially if it had a beach nearby. I'm leaning towards Buenos Aires or Montevideo but look forward to any ideas you might have.

posted by tomwheeler to travel & transportation (7 comments total)

i've been looking at pictures of Vieques, Puerto Rico lately. It looks like heaven.
posted by nadawi at 6:54 PM on August 28

PR is beautiful but it's also pretty cheap to get their on your own dime. Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam are warm in the spring and cheap once you're there. You could do a safari - flights to Africa from the states are rarely a bargain.
posted by foodgeek at 7:11 PM on August 28

Are you talking about doing a round trip or a "round the world" award? The RTW awards are extremely flexible and allow you to visit multiple continents with multiple stopovers. If you have the time and the miles, you're not necessarily limited to a single destination.
posted by QuantumMeruit at 8:49 PM on August 28

QuantumMeruit: Nope, just a simple round trip to one place and back again.

We're mostly limited by the amount of vacation days available to us and the fact that this year's remodeling budget cut into next year's vacation budget somewhat.
posted by tomwheeler at 9:47 PM on August 28

I second foodgeek. Going halfway around the world is usually $$$ compared to PR etc. My personal choice would be Thailand.
posted by vaguelyweird at 11:40 PM on August 28

south america! buenos aires will be amazing that time of year.
posted by yonation at 7:43 AM on August 29

I used my Northwest miles to get a reward ticket to Singapore in February. 60,000 miles for the equivalent of a $1500 ticket, which seems pretty good.

What I found was that the availability of tickets was very limited, and I had to be flexible in my destination. Like I couldn't get a ticket to Thailand for November through March: there's one plane a day, it probably has 2 or 4 reward seats available, and they were all sold out. So I'm using the reward ticket to get to the area, then buying a flight for the last leg.
posted by smackfu at 9:38 AM on September 6