One Month in Eastern Europe (completely free)

In June 2021, I started writing about my commitment to take my husband to a trip to Europe for one month completely free. When I came up with the idea, I thought I sounded pretty crazy. But as time has passed and I’ve crunched some numbers, I’ve realized how attainable this dream actually is. This past month my husband, Aspen, and I worked to narrow down our travel plans with a general idea of where we’ll go. We decided to take our one month free in Europe through Eastern Europe, focusing on countries we like to call, “European charm without the crowds and cheaper prices.”

In 2013, I studied abroad in Ukraine and Poland. It was my first time out of the country. I still had teenager energy and I wasn’t really ready to experience the world the way I wish I could have at the time. However, that trip did inspire us to decide to visit Eastern Europe, because for as little traveling experience I had in 2013, I really fell in love with the culture.

Narrowing down to a general area to explore has been helpful in developing my travel hacking plan. Here’s a couple of updates:

IHG Credit Card

Once we decided on Eastern Europe, it was important to see what hotels are available in the general areas we want to visit to ensure we are taking out credit cards that are available in the areas we want to travel to. I used AwardMapper to help find the best hotel options. Of the “Big 4” (Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott), IHG has a pretty lofty network and a good price per night rate, so it quickly made sense to get the IHG Rewards Premier credit card.

My husband took out the IHG card and received a 150,000 sign-up bonus for spending $3,000 in the first three months. We fly to Belize next week, which will help complete the spending requirement. The card has a couple of benefits that will really help us on the quest for a month in Europe completely free, too. First, IHG offers the fourth night free with points. That’s basically 25% off of the cost of the hotel. We don’t plan on staying put very long, but a couple of our “must do” destinations we will stay four nights and use the IHG points there. The card also includes one night free each year after your card anniversary. We’ll most likely already be back from Europe by the time our card anniversary rolls around, but it is a useful feature we plan to use annually!

The main reason we decided on IHG was that, after some calculations, the 150,000 sign-up bonus is enough for about 12 nights of our trip. And if we take advantage of the fourth night free, we can expand the 12 nights to more like 14ish. That’s a huge win!

Airfare

I’m still considering some options for our airfare. I have almost enough American Airline miles for one of our one-way tickets. So, we originally wanted to get enough American Airline miles (60,000) to cover both of our one-way tickets. However, we’re looking to use our current miles to redeem one-way to Guatemala free for a 10-day trip after Christmas (10,000 miles one-way per person). I received a 80,000 mile Chase bonus, and I can transfer the miles to United at 33,000 miles per person one-way. We’re planning to get my husband the Chase Sapphire card next for another 100,000 miles (hopefully it will still be around in a couple of months!). The best thing about Chase is you can transfer your points to one immediate family member for free. Between the two of us, that’s more than enough miles for economy. Or, I’m considering waiting until I get an amazing flight deal to Europe and looking into the Chase portal as a way to save some points to use for another time. Recently I found one option, which even with a flight to Chicago used 4,000 less miles than the United reward.

Who knows. I’m still debating our options.

Other Updates

I’ve done a great job adding points to the Chase Sapphire card. It’s been an incredible asset to this trip, and I look forward to upgrading to the Reserve card when I have the opportunity.

We need another travel card to add more free hotel nights, and I’m debating what Hilton card to open. I’m a Hilton loyalist. And yes, I know their point redemptions are awful, but I typically stay at Hilton properties. I’m interested in the Aspire card ($450 annual fee) because of the free night certificate, diamond status and daily credit (used to be free breakfast), as well as $250 travel credit (though you have to pre-select an airline for the year, which makes it more challenging to use) and $250 annually in Hilton resort credit. After you calculate everything, it seems like a good deal for a Hilton loyalist, even if the point value isn’t the best. I have some time to decide on this since I probably won’t get the card until at least October.

We’re going to spend the next couple of months narrowing down a route to help select airfare and the rest of our travel points needed. The only thing I know right now is the trip ends in Istanbul. Everything else is up in the air! Considering how much I want to do, this trip might end up being five weeks. Yikes!

That’s the end of the July updates for Europe for Free. A lot of unknowns still, but that’s to be expected eight months out.

Explore on. -K