I hope this is the right place to post this... I am planning a honeymoon next summer in Croatia. We will fly LAX-VCE then travel by ferry to croatia (porec) and travel down the coast, and probably fly out of DBV. I am planning on getting the tickets on an AAdvantage award. I will have 120,000 miles after flying to a friends wedding in a couple of weeks - so I think the all-partner award is the way to go? Any advice about how to avoid having the LHR-LGW connection?
Anyway, I was wondering about advice about how to get some "free" hotel stays. I don't have any points in any hotels - but my fiance has about 35,000 AA miles. There aren't very many international hotel chains in Croatia, but it looks like there are two 5-star resorts that we wouldn't mind spending a few nights at:
1. Starwood's Le Meridian Lav near Split
and/or 2. Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik.

I don't really know of any others, but we would also consider using any points we have/convert for a hotel in Venice.

The Le Meridian Lav requires 10,000 starwood points, which is what you get as a bonus for signing up for their creditcard. Is it worth it? Is there any other way to get these points other than using the credit card or staying at the hotels? Should we both sign up and each get 10,000 points? Could we stay 2 nights somehow by doing that?

The Hilton Imperial requires 35,000 hhonors points. My fiance has about 35,000 AAdvantage miles, so converting them to hhonors would give us enough for 2 nights there at the 2:1 ratio. Since it costs about 250 to 300 euros/night, it seems like a very good use of AA miles... I think (~2.2cpm). Am I thinking about this right? I have never redeemed any kind of awards like this.
Any other advice about better things to do would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry about the long post. Thanks in advance for any advice.