PLANNING THE TRIP

Massive travel deals were still going on in these post-pandemic times, which I immediately jumped on, due to having revenge travel momentum. This time, we were embarking on a 7-night Greek Isles cruise on Norwegian Jade, followed by 5 nights in Prague. The cruise deal included reduced air for the 1st guest, free airfare for the 2nd guest, free air deviation (meaning we could change the arrival date without fee), and Free-At-Sea (choice of 3 items including free dining/free drinks/free wifi/free gratuities/$50 shore excursion credit per port).

For a total of about $3000 per cabin double occupancy, we got:

• A balcony cabin for 7 nights
• One-way economy air from SFO-ATH for 2 people arriving 2 days before embarkation
• Two specialty dining meals per person
• $50 shore excursion discount per port for the 1st guest
• One 250 minute wi-fi package

Sweetening the deal, there was an American Express (AMEX) offer of “Spend $500, get $125 back” on Norwegian Cruise Lines. I found this offer on 7 AMEX cards between the two of us and my parents, needing to spend $3500 to maximize the savings. To take full advantage, in addition to the cruise fare, I also pre-paid gratuities, upgraded our wi-fi plan to unlimited, purchased all of our shore excursions (utilizing the $50 discount for 1st guest), and added $315 on-board credit to our onboard account (spent on two more specialty meals, additional tips, drinks and barista coffee). With the AMEX discount, we ended up paying about $2700 total for all of this, less than the original cruise cost!

Even though we had free air deviation from NCL, we couldn’t choose which airline to fly, just the arrival date. A Google Flights search listed just a couple of options, and I was hoping it would be on Air Canada, so we could apply for an upgrade to business class on the long-haul leg. We got air assigned at 59 days before embarkation, and the flights were indeed on Air Canada! Business class upgrades were offered via a bidding process, where you indicated how many Aeroplan points you were willing to bid per person. There was a red-to-green indicator showing the likelihood of acceptance; we chose 90,165 points to land in the “yellow” range. It was a lot of points to be spending per person, but we thought that it was worth $100/hour to upgrade to business on a 9-hour red-eye from Montreal to Athens to arrive a bit more refreshed. Assigning a penny a point value, 90k-ish points would be the limit (a few extra points to beat out 90k bidders…). We transferred little over 180k AMEX Membership Rewards points to Kaleb’s Aeroplan account and hoped for the best. Two days before departure, we got the notice that our upgrade request had been accepted! Cash price would have been close to $3000 per person.

I redeemed 130,000 Marriott Bonvoy points for two nights at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, located next to Syntagma Square in Athens. Cash rate would have been $700/night. I would have Marriott Bonvoy Platinum status by this time, so our stay would also include free breakfast.

How about inserting videos?

Hugo figure shortcode

Here I will insert an image using Hugo shortcode, which lets me control the width and height. Note, all local images reside within the assets/images/ folder. Shortcode will directly insert the HTML into the post, with no post processing.

Markdown Images

Here are pictures inserted using regular markdown code. This allows processing using image renderhooks. The Stack theme includes the popular PhotoSwipe JavaScript app to build an image gallery in this way.

Resize the picture to Width x Height. "Widthx" will proportionally resize the picture to match the given width, likewise "xHeight" will resize to the given height.