Expert: Stephen Tanenbaum - 11/26/2008

Question
QUESTION: Hi,
I want to travel to Europe with my husband and kids ( age 5,age 3) but we have to be frugal - his income supports us. Can you help?  We are interested in Belgium-France-Italy-Greece and our dates are flexible ( Sept 09 perhaps) for under 2 weeks.  Your Paris apt for $55/nite sounds great.  How?

ANSWER: Hi Sandra:

There is good news and not so good news.

Not so good news first: I have revised my two year old profile to show Paris apartments as low as $60 rather than $55. Quite modest increase over two years. Still, that price is for a STUDIO. The $50 price was the daily price based on our month long rental. That was several years ago. So, lowest rates are for studios AND for longer than 2-3 week rentals.

Here is an album on our lovely Paris $50/day for one month studio. A friends daughter stayed for two weeks the following Summer and paid about $60 or $65/day for the short term rental. You can see the neat alcove bed area and center room large futon. I really do not know your sleeping needs for the two small children. You likely need to cut and paste this address:

http://imageevent.com/worldromer/traveltraveltravel/bestparisapt/bestlittleparis

Here is my YouTube tour of our 1,000sq.ft. Summer apartment. Though we pay $77/day in 2007 for a monthly rental the price  goes way up to about $250/day for weekly rentals. Even that is reasonable for an apartment that can hold two couples or a family with two grown kids who would otherwise need TWO hotel rooms. The better two-star Paris hotels are at least $130/day for small room bed, bathroom, teenie french TV and  NO other amenities:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naZWAKfOgmc

You can have fun checking sizes of Paris apartments and prices by going to www.nyhabitat.com  We used this agency for three rentals. If you could somehow work with the studio I could find out availability and price.

Without  doubt a short term weekly apt. rental is the way to go given the lower than hotel price and KITCHEN which saves $$$ for breakfasts and other meals. I would check this for any stop of a week or longer.

Finally the GOOD news. You should be flying FREE, at least you and your husband and that savings goes right to the apartment costs. We always fly FREE as we shall be doing this Summer to Paris and Barcelona.

Frist check out my fun YouTube promo video for our FREE newsletter.

YouTube promo video for our FREE newsletter:   http://youtube.com/watch?v=VZ0zl1jVhPI


Here are cut and past LINKS to our recent newsletters. The Winter 08 should have the main article on the ongoing Citibank promotion. This is a way to fly free in future years. If one already had some free miles accumulated it would be easy to get free high season tickets to Paris or Athens or Rome by Sept. If not, Citibank's current offer/promotion would for example give you TWO sets of FREE RT tickets to Europe off season meaning Oct 15th through mid May. Those only cost 40,000 but high season like Sept. is 60,000. The offer can get you, within weeks, 50,000 FREE miles each. OPTION: American would sell you the extra 10,000 miles for $225 each so you would be paying $450 total to fly to Europe in high season Sept. Not bad. You need to move on this unless you already have American AAdvantage accounts. Read my FREE travel article. Call American and set up you free accounts.  Apply for your TWO free Citibanks cards each and pick cards that get you 25,000 miles per card. Get Business and personal cards if needed. All explained in my article and newsletter articles. This also assumes you have not already received similar free miles from Citibank. Once you receive the 50,000 miles THEN buy the extra 10,000 miles each. The credit cards are also FREE.

Here are the LINKS to all my articles that cover everything above:
Start with the FREE travel article, then winter 08 and the others scanning for the Citibank Offer references. I'll say good by and leave the LINKS below. Let me know if anything above is still unclear to you AFTER you have checked out the material below. Good luck and HAPPY TRAVELS!

Steve T. (sorry got to run,,,,so no spell checking....) CHEERS.

PS: My FREE travel article discloses that American, as part of its Europe Award flight will give you a second FREE Europe flight. Ex. Fly free to Athens and take the second free flight to Rome and book your free return flight from Paris. Fly Ryan air (Ryanair.com) from Rome to Brussels total cost in Sept. 09 is $241 for all four of you. Then train from Belgium to Paris to meet your FREE flight home. Oh, you will read that American will also give you, IF YOU ASK AT BOOKING, another FREE U.S. gateway stop at JFK, Miami (Orlando theme parks!) Dallas, Chicago or LA. So total airfare for four $691.


Current Summer 2008 CTN:  http://ctnsummer08.blog.com

Spring 2008:  http://CTNspring08.blog.com

Winter 2008: http://ctnwinter08.blog.com

Fall 2007:  http://ctndec07.blog.com

Summer 2007: http://freectnsummer2007.blog.com

FREE TRAVEL ARTICLE:
http://CTNsummer2007ed.blogspot.com



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: appreicate the info, thx for the ideas and Paris link.  I need to check your newsletters.  BTW, I do have citi credit cards so I don't think I'd be eligible for those mile bonuses - actually I have rec'd bonus miiles from Delta amex and a few others already.  if you think of other ways to get good size chunks of miles please advise.

Answer
Hi:
This may be a dupe answer prior one sent a different way that might not get to you.

Seems you are doing very well gathering bonus miles. More ideas:

1. IF you are not doing 'Business' cards then you can reap in  tons of new bonus miles for all the Business card offers that abound. The Citibank offer has several Business cards. Don't have your own business...not to worry just read my Free Travel Article. Totally 100% legit way you can qualify for any small business card.

2. See my discussion of Diners Club in my Free Travel article. For the sixth year we just transferred all our Diners miles about 18,000 and they became 27,000 British Airways miles. This is a 150% yearly Bonus.

3. Always check your 'junk' mail for offers. One week Patty got a United offer for 20,000 miles via their FREE Mastercard. Next week similar offer but for their Business card. In two weeks Patty picked up 40,000 United miles at zero cost all by check that junk mail.

4. Do a Google search periodically, as I do for each CTN issue, for FREE BONUS AIRLINE MILES or such language.

Bye... Steve T.