Author Archives: Grant

About Grant

Grant is an expert in frequent flyer miles, hotel loyalty points, credit card rewards, and cash back deals. He also has a pretty cool travel blog. Find him on Twitter @travelwithgrant.

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Hotel Review: Bellagio Fountain View Room Upgrade & Fountain Music Channel

Good morning everyone.  This past weekend, my girlfriend and I made a short trip to Las Vegas.  During the weekend, we visited 4 lounges (the SFO Centurion Lounge once, the LAS Centurion Lounge twice, and the OAK Escape lounge).  When we were not in a lounge, we spent most of our time at the Bellagio Hotel (there are a few MGM AMEX Offers ending soon, like $50 off $250).

During the online checkin process, I was presented with a few upgrade options from our standard”Run of House” room.  One of the upgrade options was to a Fountain View room for $50/night.  Since the Bellagio fountains were a big reason why we stayed at the Bellagio, I decided to surprise my girlfriend by upgrading us to a Fountain View room.  Our room was on the 20th floor and left of center looking at the fountains, Las Vegas Blvd and Paris Las Vegas across the street.  In this post, I will show you how to get the most out of your Bellagio Fountain View room in 5 easy steps.

Step 1: Rearrange the furniture (couch or chair) in the hotel room to get the perfect view of the fountains.

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Hotel Review: Charming Boutique Creekside Inn in Palo Alto Near Stanford University

Updated 12pm PT on 1/8: FTC Disclosure: This was a hosted stay, but all reviews and opinions are my own.


Good morning everyone, I hope you had a great weekend.  Last week, I wrote about my recent stay at the boutique King George Hotel near Union Square in San Francisco.  The hotel is part of the Greystone Hotel Group which has a few boutique hotels along the West Coast.  Recently, my girlfriend and I stayed at the Creekside Inn, another Greystone Hotel, down in Palo Alto, a short drive award from Stanford University. We stayed there Friday night in mid December and the property was very scenic and quiet.  Here are some photos from near the hotel lobby.  As it’s name would imply, the hotel is near a creek and there are a few bridges that cross over the dry creek.  Check in was very quick and we drove our car closer to our room.

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My Top 10 Most Popular Posts from 2017 & Top 10 Posts Ever Written

Good afternoon from rainy San Francisco.  My girlfriend said I should write a blog post highlighting the top 10 most popular posts from 2017 and then look at the top 10 posts even written, so I decided to log into Google Analytics and see which posts were the most popular.  I looked at data from January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017 and here are the top 10 posts written in 2017.  I am always surprised by which posts are the most popular.  Some of the posts I thought would do very well weren’t very popular and some of the posts that I wrote quickly and didn’t think much of turned out to be very popular.  Funny how that worked out.

Date Title Pageviews
7/11/2017 Send Money to Friends (or Other Bank Accounts) Instantly with Zelle (Formerly Chase QuickPay / clearXchange) 13,864
3/27/2017 How to Redeem your World of Hyatt Free Anniversary Night Certificate 8,529
6/17/2017 PayPal Adding Faster Withdrawal Option (with a 25 Cent Fee) & Accepting Venmo Payments (Effective July 27, 2017) 6,646
1/30/2017 Fast Track to Southwest Airlines A-List Elite Status (Keep with 3 Round Trips before April 30) 6,520
4/23/2017 Join Robinhood & Receive a Free Random Share of Stock Worth up to $150 (+ Free Shares for Referrals) 6,244
6/4/2017 American Express Car Rental Loss & Damage Insurance Coverage Changes (Effective September 1, 2017) 5,595
5/19/2017 My 4 Favorite Airfare Deal Websites: The Flight Deal, Fare Deal Alert, Exit Fares & GTFO Flights 5,535
5/28/2017 See, Eat & Drink: The Perfect Long Weekend in Vancouver, Canada 5,106
7/26/2017 Walmart.com Orders Instantly Cancelled? Try Walmart’s Online Chat 4,825
5/28/2017 Great First Experience Calling American Express Platinum Concierge for Restaurant Reservations 3,864

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Keep, Cancel or Convert? Barclays JetBlue Plus Credit Card ($99 Annual Fee)

Good morning everyone, happy Friday!  I hope you all have exciting weekend plans for the first weekend of 2018.  My girlfriend and I are flying to Las Vegas this weekend with a couple lounge visits in our future (SFO Centurion Lounge on departure, LAS Centurion Lounge on arrival, again to LAS Centurion Lounge on departure, and then the Escape Lounge (Priority Pass) in OAK on arrival).  Enough about my free lounge obsession, let’s talk about the Barclays JetBlue Plus Credit Card.

I got this credit card during my December 2016 App-O-Rama and wrote this post about the features of the credit card.  I quickly received the 30,000 JetBlue points from the sign up bonus but I didn’t fly JetBlue at all in 2016.  But thanks to the generous 3x JetBlue points on Amazon purchases, I continued to earn hundreds of JetBlue points each month.  I almost completely forgot about this credit card until this email came to me in early December regarding the annual fee and the 5,000 bonus JetBlue points for being a cardmember.

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2 Product Change / Conversion Options for JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card

Good morning everyone.  A few days ago, the $395 annual fee posted to my JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card.  A few months ago, I wrote this post: Should I Keep Both Chase Sapphire Reserve & JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Cards?  In that post, I basically decided that the $300 travel incidentals credit and unused Ritz Carlton perks were not worth the $395 fee.  So when the $395 annual fee posted on my JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card, I knew I had to call Chase and see what options were available.  I didn’t bother asking for a retention offer since I probably spent about $350 on the credit card during the past year, and $300 of that was reimbursed due to the travel credits.  Instead, I asked the JPMorgan Chase rep what my conversion options were.  He said there were 2 credit cards I could convert to…

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