So I’ve been travel hacking and credit card churning in moderation for the past few years now. I always just applied for a great offer whenever I saw one and only recently did my first AOR. Now that I’ve got a couple AOR’s down, I’m really trying to see if I can get our entire honeymoon(or as much as possible) paid for using points.

We’ll be flying out of the LA area and we’d like to do a week in Italy(Rome and Florence) and a week in Greece(Santorini and Athens). The trip will be in mid July 2014 and we have some flexibility with the dates here and there but we’d like it to be two weeks or so with a week in each country.

I know all the basic/intermediate stuff when it comes to travel hacking but I have never tried to use points to book hotels/flights outside of the US. That being said, I do have a ton of points already racked up across various networks and I’m not sure how to use them.

Here are the point balances I currently have:

American Airlines - 170k
Amex - 100k
United - 69k
Southwest - 67k
US Airways - 54k
Chase UR - 13k
Delta - 14k
Hilton - 13k
SPG - 35k
Citi - 13k
1 free suite night in a Hyatt hotel

Fiancee’s Point Balances:

Chase - 40k
Barclays - 40k
Citi - 20k

I have gold status on hilton, United and Delta and platinum with hyatt. Our trip is still pretty far away so I definitely have the opportunity to get more cards. I’m pretty good at manufactured spending and can usually spend about 3-4k a month so that’s not an issue. I also can use my fiancee’s credit to get more cards or double up on ones I’ve already applied for if need be.

Flights:

I’d like to use the AA points from LA to Rome and fly first/business. There’s no availability though for 2 people for the 50k business flights, what gives?? I was able to find 2 economy anytime for 60k each(with only one stop in Chicago) but I want to fly first/business since I don’t have status on AA. I was able to hold 2 seats in the economy plus section for 60k each though, is that right?

My other thought would be to sign up for a 30k AA mastercard type offer to get to 200k and then I could book the first/bus class 100k anytime ticket which has availability every day of the week. 200k seems like a lot of points though for two one-way tickets from LA to Rome, worth it or no? Anyone have any thoughts/ideas on other airlines or point networks I could use?

We’ll need a flight from Rome to Santorini/Athens and it looks like Aegean Air is pretty cheap. I know they are a star alliance member but I have no idea how to book Aegean flights with my United or US Airways miles. Any tips?

For the flight back, we’ll fly from Athens to LA and I’d like to somehow use my Amex points for this. I saw something about transferring to ANA and then booking a flight with Turkish airlines. Not sure how I would do this..

Hotels:

For hotels, I really don’t have a very good plan. I know my hyatt free suite night could get us something good in rome, florence or athens. But I’m not sure where/how I should spend the 35k SPG points - could I get 2 or 3 nights out of this? My fiancee’s 40k points plus 4k of mine could get us 2 more free nights in a cat 6(22,000 pts per night) hyatt hotel.

I definitely want to get a few more cards to help out with the free hotel nights. I was thinking about going for the 85k Club Carlson offer and the 80k IHG Visa offer. I actually just got a mailer today for a 70k Marriott offer too. Thoughts on these three cards? Should I go for all 3? I should be able to get approved for them no prob in the next few months and meet the spending shortly after.

My other thought was to go for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card as I’ve never applied for that before. I really like redeeming 22k points for Cat 6 hyatts - and I’ve heard it’s an even better deal in Europe. I already have ink bold but can I do another ink bold for my second business or should i just go for ink plus? That’s a lot of Chase UR points/Hyatt.

We really want to splurge in Santorini so we’re probably gonna get a really nice place. I would assume there are not many hillside ocean view hotels affiliated with the big chains so we’ll probably have to pay cash. I’d like to use the Barclay 40k points here and maybe apply for another barclays 40k myself. We could also use Chase UR points for this portion(redeem for 20% travel bonus) but I think we might get better value out of converting these to Hyatt points for this trip.

Alright, if you’ve made it this far then I am truly thankful haha. This was one long post but I hope that someone out there would like to help me out! If you need something in return for helping me I can give you a shout out on my blog(www.yourpfpro.com), social media accounts or something like that. Otherwise, look forward to hearing your responses!

-Harry