Just a quick post to thank everyone here for there sharing of experience and advice. We are headed back to Ireland soon after making our first 'over the pond' trip last June. We had some of the air travel and hotel/lodging booked back in Feb but didn't decide for sure we'd go until about a week ago (had a potential conflict that resolved)! There were no Biz award seats on Aer Lingus at the time we booked but when
@LilSweetPeaPhoto mentioned seats were open, I took a look and we switched our flights so we could be in biz again via Boston. We're stopping in London for 3 nights before our return home. So our redemptions look a bit like this:
RDU-BOS using VentureX travel credit (had to pay a small amount as I'd used part of it already)
BOS-DUB in Biz using Aer Lingus/Avios pts
SNN-LHR using some Avios points that were "stuck" for almost a week***
2 nights Dublin at a SLH with Hyatt Points (Wilder Townhouse)
3 nights Hyatt Regency Churchhill in London on Hyatt Points
LHR-RDU economy using AA points
We've got about 9 nights in small B&Bs/hotels in Ireland that I'll erase some of the charges using Venture X points.
Booked our rental car for Ireland via Hertz -- WAY cheaper than last summer.
***I had booked the flight via Avios website back in Feb...when I tried to cancel and rebook to get Biz seats, they got an error AFTER the flight was canceled and I had 26k points in limbo. Of course it was on a Friday and the group that could fix it was off until Monday, so I went ahead and xferred even MORE URs to make sure I could get the Biz seats. I ended up using the extra points for our SNN-LHR flight. Terrible redemption ,but whatever.
I have some 'wow I'm dumb' stories to tell about my attempt to PC from CSP to UR Freedom and then re-apply. I PC'd just before we decided to grab the the BOS-DUB biz seats and uh-oh, I no longer had a Sapphire. So I tried to apply for the CSP again -- and didn't think of 2 things: my actual "income" is low (we're retired and now earnings are low as we're using cash savings blah blah blah) and I also had a decent balance on a card because I wasn't thinking and didn't pay that balance before re-applying. So -- got declined for the CSP. I'll deal with that later, but had to do some maneuvering, but thankfully am an authorized user on P2's CSP and got all the points transferring done. Lessons learned -- don't act before thinking everything thru. My first CC non-approval.