I'm relatively new to this and just wrapping up my first (limited) app spree. I had no travel goals when I started a couple of months ago and so did the Starwood Amex (30k points) and Citi Premier 2-browser (50K TY points each). In addition wife has about 30k Hilton and 30K Marriot rewards points.

To the point..we'd like to shoot for a trip to London for a week and then over to Ireland for a week for sometime in 2014 (so we have a while).

Where should we start? I saw in another thread that for Ireland, it's best to focus on airlines due to limited chain hotel availability. What about London? I'm thinking that even if we get the flights to/from London and maybe some of the hotel costs for that week taken care of, we can swing the Ireland part on our own if needed. Of course, if we don't have to, even better.

Any advice on where to start with the next CC spree (probably her turn in about a month)?