Even before Travel + Leisure voted San Miguel de Allende (SMA) the best city in the world, I have wanted to visit. So for my husband’s spring break this year, I started the planning a year ago (as I usually do).
The Planning
Warning: this is a bit long and geeky, so if you want to just hear about the trip, skip ahead to The Trip.
Flights:
At that time (April 2017), I had 60k American Airlines (AA) miles saved. Not enough for 4 round trip tickets, but enough to get us there (one way). I looked at all the combinations and somehow figured out if we could get there on the AA miles, we could come back on Delta using the 50% points back option I have written about before using the Amex business platinum card. The only issue was, because we had to go this exact week, I didn’t have a ton of flexibility, so the best I could do initially was flying out of Philadelphia at 5am on Tues, getting to Mexico around 3, and then flying back out early on Sat on Delta. That would only leave us with 3.5 days in SMA. Not ideal, but WTH. I booked it.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Because I booked so far in advance, I ended up being able to change the flights several times (for free!) and ended up with 7 full days (8 nights) and way more convenient flight times. This is how:
For the AA award flights, I knew that AA would let me change to flights to something else for free as long as the departure and destination cities were the same and the award level was the same (i.e., they had to be “saver” Awards). At booking no other awards that week were available, but I knew there was a good chance more would open up over the 11 months until we went. Enter expert flyer. This site monitors award flights for you (for a small fee), so I entered in all the possible flights I wanted that left on Sat, Sun, or Mon of that week and crossed my fingers. Lo and behold, about 6 months later a bunch of award flights opened up. I quickly changed them to a flight that left on Sat afternoon. Again, you can do this for free on AA as long as they have the award seats and open.
For the flights home, it was a little different. These weren’t award flights per se, rather I used American Express points to book a revenue flight. So basically the flights were $482 each on Delta, for a total of $1928. That translated to 192,800 Amex Membership Rewards (MR), but when I paid that I got 50% of my points back, so total points spent was 96,400, or 24,100 per ticket. It is a lot but since it was Spring Break week everything was jacked up.
Now initially Delta had us leaving SMA at the crack of dawn on Sat. Which is tough because it’s a 1.5 hr drive to the airport! At some point though, Delta actually cancelled the flight altogether! Once I realized this (they didn’t contact me directly, which was frustrating), I called and was able to get on a later flight that left around 12 on Sat. Cool! Much better than 5:30am. But then at some point they changed the flight, to the point where the layover was like 30 mins. That’s impossible on an international flight coming home where you have to clear customs (even with global entry and TSA pre check). So I called and asked to be put on a flight on Sunday instead (my preferred departure date). “No problem!” said Delta. Once an airline makes a flight change, as long as it’s more than about 30-60 mins, you can ask for whatever flight you find is more convenient for you, and they will usually get you on it. Many times I’ve asked for flights to day before or day after to extend my trip and they’ve always obliged.
This is one of the reasons I book so early. There is a greater chance you will get a flight change to your cheap but inconvenient flight to one that is more convenient but was originally out of your price range! Also, going back to the AA flight awards (to get to SMA), I knew that 15k per person for the award was the lowest they would ever go, so I booked them even though it wasn’t “ideal,” with the knowledge that there was a good chance better award flights would open up later if I monitored for them. And it paid off! So our initial 3.5 day trip with terrible flight times became a 7 day trip with reasonable flight times, all for free! Oh and since I was given free platinum pro status from AA in January through May of this year, I could move us to the “premium seats” for free, so I got us in the bulkhead in economy, which my husband and kids prefer.
Total miles used for air: 60k AA miles and 96,400 Membership Rewards (MR).
Lodging
Initially when we were only staying for 3.5 days, I booked the super-LUXE Rosewood San Miguel for a total of 115,000 Ultimate Rewards (UR) Points (28k points/night). This is a lot of points but considering that at the Rosewood rooms start at $600 a night, it’s a great redemption!
“But Deb, aren’t you always saying how you stay in Airbnbs and cheap local places?”
Yes! But I knew SMA wouldn’t have a ton of activities for kids so I wanted to book a place that had an awesome pool. Plus all the reviews said Rosewood is very family friendly. Also I don’t know if it was because I booked super early or what but when I checked later after I extended our trip to add the extra days, they had gone up significantly! Back to the drawing board.
I looked up various hotels in the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal, read their reviews, and ultimately settled on a small hotel called Casa Mia Suites for a total of 12,600 points for 2 nights! (6,300 per night – Mexico prices!)
I also had to book one night in Guanajuato, and after some research I picked a hotel that was not available via Chase Ultimate Rewards, however since it was only $107 a night I used my hotels.com account to add to my “book 10 nights, get one night free” account.
The Trip
We left on a Friday evening right after the kids got out of school (and as more snow started falling in Syracuse) to make the 4 hour drive to Philadelphia. Unfortunately, after 15 minutes on the interstate we came to a dead stop and that’s where we sat for two hours! Apparently we missed a 30 car accident by about 5 minutes (it was so recent even though we were using Waze it didn’t re-route us yet). The department of transportation closed the highway for 2 hours and we just had to wait for them to clean everything up. It was awful and frustrating to sit there for that long, but I just kept thinking he lucky we were because if we had left 5 mins earlier we could have been in it! That definitely would have ruined the trip. We arrived at the Hampton Inn PHL airport around 11 and went to bed. I booked this Hampton Inn for the Park and Fly option. We could leave our car there all week. Also, I had received a challenge from Hilton Honors that if I had 5 stays in Hilton properties between Jan and April I would get an extra 2000 HH points per stay and 10,000 HH points at the end of the challenge. All these little Hampton Inn airport stays count, so their plan to build brand loyalty worked for me!
In the morning we took the shuttle to the Philadelphia airport early to check out the brand new Centurion lounge (for Amex platinum card holders). It was nice and clean and empty! Plus we were able to eat both breakfast and lunch there (Israeli food!) and get some preflight artisan cocktails.
Our flight to Dallas took off on time and when we arrived we had about 2.5 hours to kill. Time to hit Centurion lounge #2 at DFW! This one was so crowded! We barely got a table. But they had delicious Mexican food and we were able to get the children’s room to ourselves for about 45 minutes so my youngest could play Xbox. Finally around 6:30pm we boarded our flight to Mexico!
By the time we got to Mexico around 9:30pm everyone was out of sorts. We were of course staying at the Hampton Inn at the airport, but we were too tired to understand their Spanish about the shuttle, so we took a cab. After some more miscommunication we eventually made it to the Hampton Inn BJX (only $50 US a night). We crashed and were disappointed the next morning to learn the pool was closed until the evening. The breakfast was amazing for a Hampton Inn though! Pancakes, Chilaquales, picadillo, and some other Mexican specialties. Around 10am or driver came and got us to make the 90 minute drive through the gorgeous desert to San Miguel!
We arrived at our first hotel, Casa Mia Suites, and it was adorable. Right in the center of town and we had a little apartment with a full kitchen on a lovely Mexican courtyard. We headed into town to find it vibrant, busy (it was a Sunday and we learned later SMA gets swarmed on the weekend), and beautiful. We had a delicious Mexican lunch, walked around, napped, visited an amazing folk art toy museum and then had dinner later.
The next day was similar in that we did lots of exploring and eating. We visited the craft market and soaked in the town.
The following morning we checked out of Casa Mia and were picked up to do a horseback riding excursion in the country. This ended up being the highlight of the trip. The kids were nervous as they have never ridden horses before. But they bravely got on their horses (they each had their own guide in front, holding the reigns), and off we went. The ride was about 2.5 hours through the desert with amazing vistas and down the sides of a canyon. The kids had an absolute blast and were so proud of themselves for conquering their fear! After the ride we had an authentic and delicious Mexican ranch lunch, and then were driven back to SMA, where we checked into the Rosewood hotel.
The Rosewood is the ultimate luxurious accommodation and the swankiest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. Truth be told, I found it a bit over the top, but the pools were great and the huge room was nice to spread out in, with big comfy beds and turndown service.
The next day we spent the morning at the botanical garden, El Charco Del Ingenio, which was another treat. It sits above SMA and has nice walking trails with indigenous desert plants. There was also a greenhouse, an observatory, and a children’s playground. After that we had some delicious fish tacos and spent the rest of the afternoon swimming at the hotel.
That evening our good friends came to meet us in San Miguel! They happened to be traveling to Mexico City the same week and I enticed them to come to SMA to hang out with us for a few days. We all went out for dinner at a restaurant that was highly recommended but ended up having terrible service. Luckily we all laughed about it and redeemed our meal by going to the churros restaurant for dessert.
The next day the six of us met at noon to do a San Miguel food tour. The guide took us on a walking tour of the city, stopping at 6 food stops to try various things including Peruvian ceviche, Yucateco pibil, enchiladas mole, a vegan taco, ice cream from a street stand that has been there for 50 years, and churros filled with carmelized goat milk. The kids did great on the tour even though a lot of it involved waiting for food. That evening we got a babysitter from the hotel and had a grown up night where we met our friends at a mezcal/tapas restaurant.
The following day some of us had a bit to much Mexico in their stomachs, so our friends went to visit a local hot springs and we stayed at the hotel, enjoying the pool. We met up with them for dinner at a delicious Peruvian restaurant that was on our food tour, and for and one last evening stroll through San Miguel.
The next day we left early to head to Guanajuato city, the capital of Guanajuato state and another old colonial town. My husband was in very rough shape this day. Luckily, even though we arrived at this hotel at 10am, they let us have our room early. The kids and I ate at the breakfast buffet at the hotel while my husband rested. He did try to go out with us and we visited Diego Rivera’s childhood home and had some drinks at a cafe. But he was too sick to continue sightseeing, so he and my youngest went back to the room and I went out with my oldest to explore the city.
Guanajuato is a beautiful place! I wish we had allotted two days to see it. It is an old mining town built into the sides of the canyon and there were cool tunnels and passageways throughout. It also houses the University of Guanajuato so there were lots of college students and coffee shop culture. They also love Don Quixote, so there were statues of him all over the city. It seemed like a very European city with circuitous alleyways and cobblestone streets. We visited an art museum and had a delicious taco lunch.
Later that afternoon my husband and other son joined us and we took a funicular up the side of the mountain to see the El Pipila statue (symbolic of a hero of the Mexican revolution, which began here) and to get some gorgeous views of the city and the mountains. We then had a tasty dinner of tacos al pastor and my husband went back to sleep in the hotel while the kids and I walked around watching all the street performers.
The next morning we got up and headed to the airport for our flights home. Getting from the Leon airport to Atlanta was fine. At ATL we got through customs fairly quickly because of our Global Entry, and we headed over “The Club,” a lounge we like there and can access using our Priority Pass. When we got to the gate for Philadelphia however, we were a little delayed. The gate agent said this was because the plane needed a little “extra cleaning.” Uh oh, someone had some kind of accident. The gate agent was trying to lighten the mood, so she had a dance contest and then she asked who could spell “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” I, of course, raised my hand, and I got it right on the first try! My prize was 3 drink tickets.
After another 15 minutes, they called our names up to the front. Another agent informed my husband that because of their “extra cleaning,” we would not be able to put our bags on the floor in front of us on the plane. At that point I figured it out. Someone had puked, and we were sitting in the puke seats. I asked the flight attendants and they nodded and apologized. I asked if they could move us and they said they couldn’t because the flight was full. I couldn’t believe this happened to us again! (In October our flight was delayed 90 mins after boarding because a drunk girl puked right in front of our seats in the bulkhead and it took them an hour and a half to get “cleaners” to do a good enough job of cleaning it up). The flight attendants asked us if we wanted miles for our inconvenience, and I said, “yes please.” So even though it smelled a little like puke and we couldn’t put our bags on the floor, we finally landed on Philly around 9:30pm, now with 3 drink tickets and 30,000 extra Delta skymiles. We got to the Hampton Inn, got our car, and drove home!
my drink tickets!
Overall it was a fabulous trip! My only regret was not staying in Guanajuato longer as it was a very cool city. The whole area is a wonderful place to explore and visit, however. It has a beautiful climate, great food, nice people, and lots of Mexican culture. I would love to go back one day!
Adventures in Travel Hacking 