Hotel

Lodging Review: Renaissance Republique, Paris, France

Posted on March 29, 2023 by 2btravel

Return to International Travel – Introduction
Review: SWISS A340-300 ORD-ZRH and Marhaba Lounge ZRH
Lodging Review: Sina Villa Medici, Florence, Italy
Our Time In Florence, Part 1
Our Time In Florence, Part 2
Lodging Review: Park Hyatt Vendome, Paris, France
Our Time In Paris, Part 1 (Louvre, Sainte-Chappelle, Arc, Eiffel Tower)
Our Time In Paris, Part 2 (Versailles)
Our Time In Paris, Part 3 (Catacombs, Musee d’Orsay)
Viking Kari and an Afternoon in Montmartre
Our Time in La Roche-Guyon and Vernon/Giverny
Our Time on the Normandy Beaches
Our Time in Les Andelys and Le Pecq
Lodging Review: Renaissance Republique, Paris, France
Review: Air France A350 CDG-ORD

While we could have flown home after the final morning of our cruise, I found I could use significantly few Air France miles if I returned the day after. So we decided to stay one extra day and booked a hotel in a different part of the city. The Park Hyatt Vendome is in the 2nd arrondissement so we booked the Renaissance Republique, a Marriott property in the 3rd arrondissement which cost us 70K points for the night. While the two hotels are only about 5 miles apart their neighborhoods have an entirely different feel.

Renaissance Paris Republique Hotel

The area around the Renaissance Republique has much more of a local feel, with many small restaurants, grocery stores, laundromats and other types of stores that you’d need if you lived in the apartments above some of the shops.

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Categories: Award Travel, Europe, France, Hotel, Lodging Review, Marriott, Renaissance, Trip Report | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lodging Review: Park Hyatt Vendome, Paris, France

Posted on March 22, 2023 by 2btravel

Return to International Travel – Introduction
Review: SWISS A340-300 ORD-ZRH and Marhaba Lounge ZRH
Lodging Review: Sina Villa Medici, Florence, Italy
Our Time In Florence, Part 1
Our Time In Florence, Part 2
Lodging Review: Park Hyatt Vendome, Paris, France
Our Time In Paris, Part 1 (Louvre, Sainte-Chappelle, Arc, Eiffel Tower)
Our Time In Paris, Part 2 (Versailles)
Our Time In Paris, Part 3 (Catacombs, Musee d’Orsay)
Viking Kari and an Afternoon in Montmartre
Our Time in La Roche-Guyon and Vernon/Giverny
Our Time on the Normandy Beaches
Our Time in Les Andelys and Le Pecq
Lodging Review: Renaissance Republique, Paris, France
Review: Air France A350 CDG-ORD

I admit it. I’m influenced by travel bloggers when looking for places to stay when I travel. So many of them have raved about the Park Hyatt Vendome that I figured we had to try it out.

We made reservations for our October 2022 river cruise back in the summer of 2021. We knew we wanted to get to Paris a few days early but we weren’t sure exactly how many days in advance we’d arrive. Then I learned that Hyatt was increasing the prices in each category. So I went ahead and booked the night prior to our cruise for 30K World of Hyatt points. The prices did increase to 35K per night and once our plans were nailed down I booked three more nights at that price. So we got four nights for a total of 140K WoH points. The hotel has since been elevated to a Category 8.

Paris has an official rating system for each hotel in the country and hotels must post their rating near their main entrance. The scale is typically 1-5 stars but there are eleven hotels in Paris that exceed five-star and are rated as “palace hotels”. The Park Hyatt Vendome is one of those and is the only one in Paris that’s bookable using points. You can read more about the hotel star system here.

Location

The hotel is located on Rue de la Paix in the 1st Arrondissement, an area that is convenient to the Tuilleries Gardens and Place de la Concorde to the south and the Palais Garnier (opera house) and the Opera metro stop to the north. It’s a bit of a longer walk to the Louvre but it’s an easy one. There are lots of shops and cafes in the area and the office of the Big Bus (the hop-on/hop-off bus) is right on the way to the Louvre. Continue reading →

Categories: Award Travel, Europe, France, Hotel, Hyatt, Lodging Review, Trip Report | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lodging Review: Sina Villa Medici, Florence, Italy

Posted on March 19, 2023 by 2btravel

Return to International Travel – Introduction
Review: SWISS A340-300 ORD-ZRH and Marhaba Lounge ZRH
Lodging Review: Sina Villa Medici, Florence, Italy
Our Time In Florence, Part 1
Our Time In Florence, Part 2
Lodging Review: Park Hyatt Vendome, Paris, France
Our Time In Paris, Part 1 (Louvre, Sainte-Chappelle, Arc, Eiffel Tower)
Our Time In Paris, Part 2 (Versailles)
Our Time In Paris, Part 3 (Catacombs, Musee d’Orsay)
Viking Kari and an Afternoon in Montmartre
Our Time in La Roche-Guyon and Vernon/Giverny
Our Time on the Normandy Beaches
Our Time in Les Andelys and Le Pecq
Lodging Review: Renaissance Republique, Paris, France
Review: Air France A350 CDG-ORD

For our stay in Florence we decided to use some of our Marriott points. While there was a Westin and a St. Regis closer to the historic center of the city, we chose to save a few points by staying at the Sina Villa Medici, which is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection. We stayed three nights at 70K points per night.

Sina Villa Medici, Autograph Collection

Location

The hotel is about a 25-30 minute ride from the airport, depending on traffic, and about a 15-minute walk to the Ponte Vecchio/Uffizi area and only a two or three minute longer walk to the Duomo area.

While there’s street parking around the area, the hotel has a special area for picking up and dropping off passengers so it’s nice that there’s no competition with passing vehicles. The exterior of the hotel gives a hint that this building was at one time a palazzo with an old-world style charm. Continue reading →

Categories: Autograph Collection, Award Travel, Europe, Italy, Lodging Review, Marriott, Trip Report | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Return to International Travel – Introduction

Posted on March 17, 2023 by 2btravel

Return to International Travel – Introduction
Review: SWISS A340-300 ORD-ZRH and Marhaba Lounge ZRH
Lodging Review: Sina Villa Medici, Florence, Italy
Our Time In Florence, Part 1
Our Time In Florence, Part 2
Lodging Review: Park Hyatt Vendome, Paris, France
Our Time In Paris, Part 1 (Louvre, Sainte-Chappelle, Arc, Eiffel Tower)
Our Time In Paris, Part 2 (Versailles)
Our Time In Paris, Part 3 (Catacombs, Musee d’Orsay)
Viking Kari and an Afternoon in Montmartre
Our Time in La Roche-Guyon and Vernon/Giverny
Our Time on the Normandy Beaches
Our Time in Les Andelys and Le Pecq
Lodging Review: Renaissance Republique, Paris, France
Review: Air France A350 CDG-ORD

After two years without an international trip I was thrilled to finally be able to travel internationally again. I researched Viking River Cruises that we had not yet taken and was excited to see that an extension on the Seine Cruise was a visit to Highclere Castle (aka Downton Abbey). As a relatively new fan of the show and films that would be something I’d love to see. However we like to cruise in October and not only did that particular extension package end in September, that extension was sold out for all but about two dates during the summer. So we decided to do something different.

In 2008 we had taken a Western Mediterranean cruise where in a single day we visited Pisa in the morning and Florence in the afternoon. We had a whirlwind tour of Florence, just enough for the famous museums and monuments to be pointed out to us but not enough time to get to explore any of them. So we decided to do a few days in Florence before flying to Paris to take a cruise on the Seine out to the beaches of Normandy and back. While the river cruise would start on Wednesday, we flew to Paris the Saturday before and had several days to explore things at our leisure as the mood struck us.

Red: Memphis-Chicago-Zurich-Florence (United and SWISS) Green: Florence-Paris (Air France) Blue: Paris-Chicago (Air France)
Maps generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz

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Categories: Air France, Autograph Collection, Award Travel, Cruises, Europe, France, Hyatt, Italy, Marriott, Renaissance, River Cruise, SkyTeam, Star Alliance, SWISS, Tours, Trip Report, Viking | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lodging Review: Fairfield Inns and Suites, Chicago O’Hare

Posted on July 16, 2022 by 2btravel

A Quick Trip to the Northern Plains
Lodging Review: Home2 Suites by Hilton Rapid City, SD
Our Visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial and Custer State Park
Our Visit to Mount Rushmore and Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Lodging Review: TownePlace Suites, Dickinson, North Dakota
Lodging Review: Fairfield Inns & Suites, Chicago O’Hare

After driving literally all day, we made it back to Chicago and pulled into the Fairfield Inns & Suites Chicago O’Hare about 10 PM. We’d booked a room here anticipating that our Chicago-based friend would drop off my LA-based friend and me so she wouldn’t have to drive us back out to the airport the next day for our flights. But my LA-based friend decided to stay an extra few days visiting another friend so I had the room to myself. Once again we’d use an expiring free night certificate for our room, booking a room with two queen beds. Shortly before we departed on the road trip we called to see if we could switch to a 1 King room but they said the hotel was nearly sold out so they couldn’t make the change. We didn’t ask about it again at check-in as it really didn’t matter at that point.

Fairfield Inn & Suites Chicago O’Hare
photo from marriott.com

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Categories: Fairfield Inn, Hotel, Illinois, Lodging Review, Marriott, North America, United States | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lodging Review: TownePlace Suites, Dickinson, North Dakota

Posted on July 15, 2022 by 2btravel

A Quick Trip to the Northern Plains
Lodging Review: Home2 Suites by Hilton Rapid City, SD
Our Visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial and Custer State Park
Our Visit to Mount Rushmore and Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Lodging Review: TownePlace Suites, Dickinson, North Dakota
Lodging Review: Fairfield Inns & Suites, Chicago O’Hare

We drove about 30 minutes east of Theodore Roosevelt National Park to the town of Dickinson, ND where we had booked a room at the TownePlace Suites Dickinson, which is a Marriott property. With pre-paid rates as low as $113 plus tax this was by no means an exceptional value for the free night certificate we used. But the certificate would expire within the next month or so and with no other plans for it the choice to use it instead of letting it go to waste was easy.

The hotel was easy to find, not far off I-94. The colorful exterior of TownePlace Suites makes it stand out and those bright colors are continued inside.

TownePlace Suites Dickinson Exterior

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Categories: Hotel, Lodging Review, Marriott, North America, North Dakota, TownePlace Suites, United States | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lodging Review: Home2 Suites by Hilton Rapid City, SD

Posted on July 12, 2022 by 2btravel

A Quick Trip to the Northern Plains
Lodging Review: Home2 Suites by Hilton Rapid City, SD
Our Visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial and Custer State Park
Our Visit to Mount Rushmore and Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Lodging Review: TownePlace Suites, Dickinson, North Dakota
Lodging Review: Fairfield Inns & Suites, Chicago O’Hare

We arrived in the Rapid City, SD area on a sunny, windy afternoon. The temperature was quite pleasant with only a light jacket required. The Home2 Suites is located on the south side of I-94 in an area with four other similar hotels. The Home2 Suites, La Quinta Inns & Suites and Fairfield Inn are all connected to the WaTiki Indoor Waterpark Resort. There’s also a Residence Inn next door so it’s obviously a popular area for tourists like us. To reach the entrance of the Home2 Suites you take the road past the Fairfield Inn, take a side road that runs between the Residence Inn and the La Quinta and drive past the side of the Home2 Suites before turning right towards the main entrance.

Home2 Suites Rapid City Exterior

I’m very familiar with the Home2 Suites brand as I often stay at the one in the Bellevue area of Nashville when I visit my parents so I had a good idea what to expect and by and large the hotel met my expectations. Home2 Suites’ color scheme involves a lot of neon yellow both on the building’s exterior and in the guest rooms. One of my companions found it garish but I must admit it doesn’t really faze me anymore as I’ve become accustomed to it. We were met by a couple of friendly reps at the desk who checked us in quickly and let us know that we wouldn’t receive housekeeping except by request or complimentary after the fourth day. That was fine by us as we were only staying two nights. Continue reading →

Categories: Hilton, Home2Suites, Hotel, Lodging Review, North America, South Dakota, United States | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

A Quick Trip to the Northern Plains: Introduction

Posted on July 11, 2022 by 2btravel

A Quick Trip to the Northern Plains
Lodging Review: Home2 Suites by Hilton Rapid City, SD
Our Visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial and Custer State Park
Our Visit to Mount Rushmore and Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Lodging Review: TownePlace Suites, Dickinson, North Dakota
Lodging Review: Fairfield Inns & Suites, Chicago O’Hare

Due to not taking my usual two-week international vacation in the fall of 2021, I found myself with some extra vacation days to use before my company’s fiscal year ended. My two travel pals and I had not all been together since our trip to New Zealand and Australia in the fall of 2019 so we were all glad to get to be together again. In the past we’d discussed domestic trips we’d like to do but had just never gotten around to so this seemed a good time of year to explore the Dakotas a bit.

Despite doing a road trip around the Southeastern US about a year ago, I’m not a huge fan of road trips. I’d rather fly and get a car. Flights into Rapid City, SD aren’t exactly cheap and my friend from Chicago said she’d be driving anyway, so we decided my LA-based friend and I would fly to Chicago and we’d all spend a little quality time together on the way out and back.

Driving there and back was an all-day affair each way. With a very early morning start we drove from the WSW suburbs of Chicago to Rapid City, SD with a sit-down lunch break and a few gas stops and arrived around 4 PM. On our return, we left Dickinson, ND just after 7 AM and arrived at an O’Hare-area hotel right at 10 PM with only a brief stop to grab-and-go some lunch and a few more gas stops. Rapid City and Dickinson are both on Mountain Time so while we gained an hour going there, we lost an hour coming back.

We save our points to use on vacation so even if this wasn’t the best use of points or certificates we got to stay free which was most important to us. We stayed at a Home2 Suites by Hilton in Rapid City on points, a TownePlace Suites in Dickinson and the Fairfield Inn & Suites O’Hare, both using Marriott free-night certificates that otherwise would have gone unused.

In between we visited the Crazy Horse Memorial, Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park and Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Our weather ran the gamut from sunny and pleasant to windy with sleet/snow.

As the whole trip was less than a week and we really only had two days on the ground, it’s a pretty quick trip report.

Categories: Fairfield Inn, Hilton, Historical Site, Home2Suites, Illinois, Marriott, North America, North Dakota, Road Trip, South Dakota, TownePlace Suites, Trip Report, United States | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lodging Review: King Accessible Tub Studio Suite, Homewood Suites, Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Posted on March 17, 2022 by 2btravel

Homewood Suites Steamboat Springs

Since I stayed at this property just two years ago, this review will be brief. I’ll only highlight the differences in the room. During my previous stay I was in a King Bed One Bedroom Suite but on this trip I had stayed in a King Accessible Tub Studio Suite, normally meant for those who need accessible amenities. Since I’d already reviewed this property, I’d planned to stay at the Hampton Inn in downtown Steamboat. But on Thanksgiving weekend I received an email stating that the hotel would be closing permanently as of December 1 (I think that was the date). As the email did not come from someone with a hilton.com or hamptoninn.com email address I was a bit skeptical but decided I should go ahead and move my reservation since there are very few properties in Steamboat that are available on points or by using a free night certificate (which I did). Thank goodness I swapped reservations quickly as I got one of the last available rooms and that’s why I ended up with an accessible room. I later learned the Hampton and a Fairfield Inn were being converted to employee housing.

The room was at the end of the hall. The door opened directly into the kitchen. The kitchen counter and appliances were all on the right and a door connected to the adjacent room was on the left.

Homewood Suites Steamboat Accessible Suite Entry

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Categories: Colorado, Hilton, Homewood Suites, Hotel, Lodging Review, North America, United States | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Lodging Review: Hyatt House Dallas/Las Colinas (DFW Airport)

Posted on March 12, 2022 by 2btravel

On a recent ski trip I experienced more travel interruptions than I think I’ve ever had on any trip. My original plan was to fly from Memphis to Steamboat Springs, Colorado (HDN) via DFW on American (AA) on a Friday late in February. Things changed late the Wednesday before I was scheduled to leave when AA canceled the first leg of my trip and re-booked me for Sunday. Not wanting to miss out on my vacation, I managed to get the MEM-DFW leg rescheduled for Thursday night where I’d spend the night in the DFW Airport area and then take the second leg of my flight as scheduled on Friday.

I had a free night certificate from my World of Hyatt card that was good for a category 1-4 hotel. While I did not receive any exceptional value by using this certificate, I have a number of similar certificates from various credit cards so I was happy to be able to use it. I did look into staying at the Grand Hyatt DFW, which is accessible from the inter-terminal train (SkyLink) but they did not have any rooms available on points and that property is a category 5, so I couldn’t have used my free night certificate anyway.

Hyatt House Dallas/Las Colinas (photo from hyatt.com)

I’d previously stayed at the Hyatt Place DFW and had absolutely no complaints so this time I thought I’d try the Hyatt House in the area since I knew both limited-service properties included breakfast. What I hadn’t considered until after I’d booked is that for the Hyatt House, at least, the complimentary shuttle, originally shut down due to COVID, had not yet been restarted. As the hotel is only 8 miles from the airport I didn’t think it would be difficult to get a ride. Continue reading →

Categories: Award Travel, Hotel, Hyatt, Lodging Review, North America, Texas, United States | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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