Miami 2022 – Summary

Highlights

• Quality time with the boys while still being able to get work done
• Eating at Flanigan’s and Pizza Bar again
• Finding the Venezuelan restaurant near the downtown Miami hotel
• Topgolf was a blast!
• Riding bikes and playing Frisbee in Miami Beach

Lowlights

• Lots of people smoking in Miami Beach
• Long wait times to get Lyft, especially near the downtown Miami hotel
• Not a lot to see and do at Westchester Airport. Next time we won’t get there so early
• Weather was okay, not as good as our last trip

What Went Right?

• Trip came together quickly only a couple weeks before the trip, and all on points!
• Moxy hotel in Miami Beach was unique and fun and used free night certificates
  • Our upgrade didn’t clear, but we got it anyways on checking. Loved the bunkbeds with he boys!
• Flights worked and we now know the local airport is an option for some trips
• Very little out of pocket expenses
  • Lyft mostly paid for by travel credits on our Sapphire Reserve cards
  • Travel Bank credits and point covered most other non-food travel expenses

Takeaways

We weren’t really planning to go on this trip. With the move last summer and my recent job change we were going to stay closer to home for this vacation, but I’m glad we changed our minds. Finding cheap flights our of our local airport was great timing to make this trip worthwhile.

While it did mean that we went to Florida as a family for the FIFTH (!!!) time in a row, it worked out very well. The ability to use points for all the hotel and flights was icing on top. We wanted to stay home to save money, but we ended up trading in points and free night certificates we had earned the last few years from bonuses and general spending. There’s something uniquely satisfying about getting something out of points/credits you didn’t fully realize you had and/or weren’t going to use otherwise.

The stay at the Moxy hotel in Miami Beach used free night certificates we had accumulated during the pandemic so we didn’t even have to use points for those. I was even intending to pay for the flights with cash to use up some credits, but realized I could use points for the flight and the credit to pay the taxes since the credit was smaller than expected.

While we could have stayed at a nicer hotel in downtown Miami, we got really good value for the points and a larger suite than we would have gotten otherwise. It was just over half the number of points as the alternative I was considering and I don’t regret where we stayed. I think the contrast with the hip new Moxy to the “boring” convention hotel made the Hyatt seem more dated than it actually was.

This trip also got much more value for the points than we have gotten on any other trip. For the hotels we used minimal points for what would have cost us nearly $4000. We wouldn’t have paid that much, but points allowed that to be an option, and a great option at that. May of the Lyft rides were covered by the annual $300 travel credit that is part of the Chase Sapphire Reserve card we both hold, and we got great value from our elite status at both Marriott and Hyatt.

As for activities, we repeated a lot the things we enjoyed from our previous trip to Miami in 2021 and avoided most of the parts we didn’t. We added some new activities like Topgolf, Calle Ocho, and the Friends Market Venezuelan restaurant to our list of things to repeat next time. We got a much better experience of downtown Miami has to offer than our previous trip.

I was extremely happy to be able to work effectively half days while still enjoying time with the boys. My wife got to take some time off as well and the boy were (mostly) great together for a change. It was a trip that really hit the spot. It wasn’t overwhelmingly luxurious, adventurous, or exotic, but it was a welcome getaway from a New England winter.