I recently took a big family trip to Europe with my immediate family (my wife and two kids) and four other adult family members. We’ll visited Italy (Lake Como and Rome), then cruised to Malta, Sicily, and a number of Adriatic Sea destinations before wrapping things up in Athens. It’s was a pretty ambitious trip to plan for eight people (6 adults and 2 kids). When you add up the cost of flights and hotels, this trip would have cost well over $50,000 to book with cash. We covered the vast majority of it with our stash of miles and points, making a bucket-list-type trip both comfortable and comfortably within reach. This post outlines how I booked and stacked to save.
Flights
The adult family members joining us have all been abroad before, but at least one hasn’t been abroad in a long time and none of them are points and miles collectors. Part of the sell on a trip to Europe was that my wife and I would make sure the trip is comfortable.
That comfort begins and ends with business class flights to and from Europe. We booked:
- Air France Business Class from New York to Paris to Milan via Virgin Atlantic for 48,500 miles + ~$300 per passenger for the way to Europe (388,000 miles and about $2,400 in total).
- Air France Business Class from Athens to Paris to New York via Air France / KLM Flying Blue for 50,000 miles + ~$300 per passenger (375,000 miles and about $2,400 in total. Note that children ages 2-11 get 25% off the miles required, so their tickets were 37,500 miles and about $300 each).
To put this in perspective, a multi-city business class ticket from New York to Milan and then Athens to New York would have cost around $3,600 per passenger if paid in cash. Eight seats would have cost about $28,800 if we were paying cash rates. Instead, we spent a total of 763,000 miles and about $4,800 (combined between the flights).
The flights were solidly good. I find service on Air France to generally be very good and our flights were no exception. Service was particularly attentive on the way home, with a flight attendant offering to cut my son’s food for him, kneeling down to read something to him when she heard him call across the aisle to me to ask what something said, etc. Seats are comfortable, food is good. The seats themselves were showing a LOT of wear for our return flight to the US, but they were nonetheless comfortable. I’d gladly fly Air France business class again despite the surcharges (it cost more than $200 each way in taxes and fees).
Hotels
Grand Hotel Victoria Concept & Spa (Lake Como, Italy)
We originally had booked our first night of this trip at The View Lugano, across the border into Switzerland, but approximately the same distance from Milan Malpensa Airport as the Grand Hotel Victoria, which is an Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH) property that we booked via Hilton Honors. I had been really excited to check out The View — I believe the property only has about a dozen rooms and in pictures it looks like a Bond villain’s lair. I was excited to have scored three rooms, but it wasn’t meant to be.
We booked a return to the Grand Hotel Victoria for a couple of nights using a combination of Hilton points and free night certificates. As we had 6 adults and 2 children, we booked 3 total rooms:
- Two Deluxe Courtyard View Rooms
- One Prestige Park View Room
Both room types had been available as standard room rewards for 120,000 points per night, though prices have since risen to 140,000 Hilton Honors points per night. The Prestige Park View room regularly sells for a couple hundred Euro per night more than the Courtyard Deluxe Room, but it is worth noting that it is significantly smaller than the Courtyard rooms. If you have more than two people in your party, you absolutely want a Courtyard room. The Prestige Park View room was perfectly fine for two people, but we couldn’t have squeezed a rollaway in it.
While our kids had been free in the past, we had to pay a fee for our older son this time. Children age 6 and older cost an additional 130 Euro per night. While that’s more than I’d generally like to pay for a kid who doesn’t eat a ton at breakfast, I’d pay the fee again for us to enjoy the incredible spa at this place!
Room rates at the time we booked started at about $1,850 per room per night (and I checked regularly and never saw them dip lower). Three rooms for three nights would have come to $16,650 at cash rates. At 120K per bedroom per night, we essentially paid 1,080,000 Hilton Honors points (although a couple of nights were covered with Hilton Free Night Certificates).
We once again very much enjoyed the Grand Hotel Victoria. This was the third stay for my immediate family, though it was a first for everyone else. My kids were very excited to return to the spa and we enjoyed drinks on the lawn, strolling along the lake, getting gelato in Menaggio, and dinner in the restaurant. I’ll continue to dream of the cream puffs and cream-filled croissants from breakfast until we get there again someday.
Comfort Hotel Bolivar (Rome, Italy)
After checking out of the Grand Hotel Victoria, we drove our rental cars back to Milan and took the Italo train from Milan Centrale to Rome. Unfortunately, something broke on the tracks about 30 minutes into what was supposed to be a 3-hour train ride. We ended up sitting on the train with no electricity (and therefore no air conditioning) for hours (the interior temperatures hit more than 105 degrees Fahrenheit at one point). Eventually, Italo sent another train to pull us back to Milan and then we departed again, eventually arriving in Rome almost 7 hours behind schedule (turning the 3-hour train trip into about a 10-hour trip).
The light at the end of the tunnel was the Comfort Hotel Bolivar in Rome. This is a Choice Privileges property in the middle of Rome, less than a 10-minute walk from the Roman Forum and within less than 15 minutes on foot to the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, and all of the other major sites in central Rome. We’ve stayed here at least 2 or 3 times before and would again for the location and price.
Speaking of price, we paid 20,000 Choice Privileges points per night. I actually purchased the points when they were on sale for 0.7c per point, spending $140 per room per night, which compared very favorably to cash rates. Since we needed space for 6 adults and 2 children, I booked two rooms that accommodated 3 people each and one room that accommodated 2 people. The cash rate for the two-person room was $519 per night and for the three-person rooms it was $634 per night at the time we booked, which means that if we had paid cash, this two-night reservation for three rooms would have cost us $4,842. Instead, by purchasing the points for three rooms for two nights, we spent $840.
Let me be clear: there is no planet on which this place ought to cost $500 per night. The lobby is really cute and service is generally quite good, but rooms are feeling pretty tired. I’m not sure they have replaced mattresses or comforters since our first stay about a decade ago, and at the cash rates they are charging these days, they ought to have the margin to do both. Still, the place is relatively clean, it is fantastically located, and the breakfast room on the top floor still provides great views of Rome and a simple but filling breakfast. This hotel is not exciting, but you aren’t going to find a hotel this well-located for a better deal on points (particularly if you’re transferring from Citi or Wells Fargo at 1:2 or you’re buying points on sale like we did).
After the Comfort Hotel Bolivar, we took a Holland America cruise that began in “Rome” and ended in Athens.
Grand Hyatt Athens
At the end of the trip, we spent three nights at the Grand Hyatt Athens. I reviewed this hotel here. In short, we were satisfied enough with the hotel for its good club lounge, solid breakfast, and good use of a suite upgrade award, but service wasn’t great, they don’t honor the Globalist parking benefit, and the neighborhood mostly consists of adult entertainment venues. As the title of the post says, it was a mixed bag.
We spent 42,000 points per room (one night was 12K points and the other two nights were 15K) for three rooms plus a suite upgrade award. The lowest refundable rates for the two-person rooms were $240 per night. A “family” room for three people would have cost about $350 per night. Two of those 3-person family rooms plus one room for two people would have come to $2,820 for three nights. We paid 126,000 points plus a single suite upgrade award (and I should note that the suite would have cost $550 per night during our dates). We did have to pay a 15 Euro “Resilience fee” per room, which is a climate-related tax that everyone must pay in Greece, so that came to around $50 USD for the three rooms.
Rental Cars
We booked almost all of our rental cars on this trip through Priceline.com (originally, we had booked through RentalCars.com, but we ended up changing some reservations) thanks to big rewards offers from Capital One Shopping. That made them feel like a great deal at the time, though unfortunately I have lost almost all of the decent redemption options. Many readers keep reporting in the comments of their post that “good” options have returned for them, but I still have very few gift card redemption options, most of which are for stores where I just don’t shop. I still have the Expedia Global Hotel Card option, but twice this week I have looked for places to stay through that site and one time the major chain hotel I needed wasn’t available and the other time nothing was available in a smaller town with plenty of independent hotels and vacation rentals that show up via other hotel booking platforms. All that is to say that while the rewards looked great at the time we booked, I’m now sitting with a lot of Capital One Shopping rewards and waiting for better redemption options to come around.
Milan: Avis via Priceline
We had an offer from Capital One Shopping for 19% back on rental cars at Priceline.com. We reserved 3 mid-size vehicles (we had 8 people and too much luggage for two vehicles) for three days. Each vehicle came to about $190 with taxes and fees (This was a one-way rental picking up from MXP airport and returning at Milan Centrale train station), though the rate before taxes was $119. We got $32.74 back in Capital One Shopping rewards.
If you valued the Capital One Shopping Rewards at face value, that’s a net cost of $157.26 per vehicle ($471.78 for three vehicles for 3 days).
Messina, Sicily: Sicily by Car
For our cruise stop in Sicily, we wanted to rent a vehicle and drive to Taormina to visit the old Greek Theater there (highly recommended you visit Taormina! It’s lovely!). This was one of a two instances on the trip where I found it made more sense to rent directly with a local company than it did to reserve through a portal. We only wanted to rent one vehicle, so we rented a big passenger van and paid $242 for the privilege. It would have been cheaper to rent 2 smaller vehicles, but we wanted the simplicity of driving (and parking!) one.
Corfu, Greece: Corfu Sunrise
The other instance where we rented a car from a local outfit without booking through any sort of portal was Corfu Sunrise in Greece. Rather than pay for multiple taxis, we wanted a car to get around Corfu. This rental company had an office about 200m from the entrance to the cruise port (although note you have to walk quite a bit out of the way to get from the terminal building to the street before doubling back to the office). We once again wanted a single car that would accommodate the whole family, so this rental cost us $146.38 for the day. Smaller vehicles would have again been a more economical option.
I will note that I picked this place in part because of excellent reviews. I was therefore a little surprised when the person checking the vehicle back in tried to suggest that we put a scratch on the rear bumper. We had essentially driven to a single beach and parked in a place where nobody would have been near our bumper. Thankfully, I had taken a walkaround video at pick up and the person checking in the car barely even glanced at it once she saw that I had video before waving it off. I’m glad that I have the habit to always do a pick up video and a drop off video.
Athens, Greece: Hertz via Priceline
Our final stop on the cruise was Athens. We booked a van one-way for pick up from the cruise port and return at the airport. This was not a cost-effective decision at all. Rather, our flight out was scheduled for 6:30am, which meant leaving the hotel around 3:15am. My wife gets nervous about sleepy taxi drivers in the middle of the night, so we rented a car mostly in order to be able to drive to the airport at the end. We otherwise would have needed three taxis from the port to the hotel and for the 30-40 minute ride from the hotel to the airport, but instead we rented one large van.
This was very pricey at about $600 for three days, but we got $128.83 back via Capital One Shopping (which was based on the rate of $468.27 before taxes and fees). Like our other Priceline experience above, the actual cash back was higher than advertised as our offer was for 19% back but we actually got about 27.5% back as compared to the rate before taxes & fees (I wouldn’t expect to earn on the taxes and fees).
Cruise
We took our 12th cruise of the last ~2.5 years aboard the Holland America Oosterdam. Our port stops included:
- Valletta, Malta
- Messina, Sicily
- Dubrovnik, Croatia
- Kotor, Montenegro
- Corfu, Greece
- Cephalonia, Greece
- Crete, Greece (Chania)
- Napflion, Greece
- Athens, Greece (the cruise ended in Athens)
We had a great time on the port stops! We have visited most of these stops on previous cruises / trips to Europe, but we were happy to go back to those places on a bigger family trip.
This was a “free” cruise from the match to Wynn Platinum last year (as a reminder, Wynn briefly offered a match to Platinum. We first matched our Caesars Diamond, which at the time came courtesy of the partnership with Wyndham, to Fontainebleu Gold and then we matched Fontainbleu Gold to Wynn Platinum). In order to get a “free” Holland America cruise, we needed to spend two non-consecutive nights at Wynn. We booked rooms at Encore via Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts to meet the terms.
When I initially booked the cruise, I had no problem booking our 10-night “Malta, Sicily, and Aegean Jewels” cruise with the Wynn offer (in fact, there was an issue with their payment system on the day when we booked and we had to call back a few days later and have them re-book the reservation so we could pay). However, a couple of weeks later, Holland America reached out to say that the Wynn offer wasn’t valid for a European sailing. We pushed back explaining that they accepted the booking and that we had made reservations for flights and hotels for 8 people already based on having booked the cruise. They asked for proof, so I pulled together email confirmations for flights and hotels. To Holland America’s credit, they honored the cruise booking for us and another family member who had done the match and booked the same cruise.
As has been the case with our other European cruises, we loved the port stops. I can not highly enough recommend a European cruise for family travelers. You get to see a different European place every day without having to pack up and fly / take the train / etc. With kids, I really appreciate unpacking one time and seeing 8 or 9 cities. And on each cruise, we’ve found a place where we’d be excited to return but may not have discovered were it not for a cruise stop.
All that said, I wouldn’t sail on the Oosterdam again.
The short story is that while the staff were wonderful, the ship itself stunk. I’ll try to write a full review, but the short story is that there wasn’t much to do and the free game room was very restrictive and had a bunch of broken games. That said, we were primarily on this cruise for food and lodging, and in that regard we got what we paid for.
Speaking of what we paid for it, this was the most expensive of our “free” cruises. The “free” offer was for an ocean view cabin, but we paid an upgrade fee to move to a balcony cabin and we paid additional fees for our kids (the free offer is based on double occupancy and excludes the $120 per person in port taxes), so the cruise came to a total of about $3,000 with all of those additional costs. If we only had two passengers and stuck with the ocean view cabin, it would have cost us about $500, so most of that cost was from upgrading to a balcony cabin and bringing the kids. One couple who joined us on the trip paid $3,234.48 for a double-occupancy interior cabin on the same cruise, so we got a good discount when you consider that we booked for four passengers in a balcony cabin (and had $200 in on board credit).
Random picture highlights
Bottom line
We had a great trip, visiting numerous fantastic cruise ports, staying in some good hotels (and the fantastic Grand Hotel Victoria), and we got to and from Europe comfortably in Air France business class. Adding up the cash rates for our flights and hotels alone, the cost would have been $53,112. Add in the full cruise fare and rental cars and we would have easily been at close to a $70,000 trip. It blows my mind that we are able to use miles & points, elite status, status matching, shopping portals, and other various techniques to make a trip like this an affordable family trip. None of us would have remotely considered this trip if we were paying full price, but this trip illustrates how this hobby puts very cost-restrictive trips like this into reach.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Hi, Nick. Thanks for providing all this great info about your family trip to Europe! A truly amazing use of points and miles!! On another note, I have two questions/suggestions: 1) have you ever thought about doing a paid 1 day seminar in NYC where FM followers could attend a points and miles “class” taught by you? I know that it would be a phenomenal experience! 2) RE: Capital One Shopping Rewards — what about a swap or trade with your readers for rewards that both parties could actually use? (Providing readers get different reward offers than you do). It might actually be beneficial on both sides!
Great summary and I’m gonna look into that Choice property in Rome. I appreciate that you didn’t inflate the “value” or cost of the trans-Atlantic flights. You could have easily double the “value” if you flew into London (and out of Athens)! On the other hand, it’s a sad reflection of the state of affairs in points land that a redemption value of around 3 cents for your biz class flights is considered reasonable/decent these days.
What Nick didn’t mention in his article (because it’s not really germane) but has written about elsewhere is that (1) his last-minute swapping around of flights on the outbound resulted in a miles-earning fare class change and (2) his wife was credited back 44,000 miles for a defective headset port on the outbound.
Missed it but curious to know how a swap on award flights resulted in earning 44K miles
Holland America is excellent, just not geared for families and especially young kids. It ‘stinks’ in your opinion, but I wouldn’t sail another cruise line, especially those that cater to kids. Food is far superior to any other casino match cruise lines, with the possible exception of Celebrity. And itineraries with Holland America are second to none with larger cruise lines. I think Grand Victoria is probably the most overrated, based on FMs recommendation, hotel I’ve stayed in Europe. I actually cancelled five of my six nights at the View Lugano based on your similar recommendation of that property. Your opinion is as valid as mine, but I probably couldn’t disagree more with your overall review. You get value derived from a dollar per point basis. I get value based on a great experience, room, flight, cruise, food. If it’s a good monetary/point value, it’s a bonus. Nothing about your trip, aside from your Adriatic cruise sounds even slightly appealing.
I didn’t say that Holland America stinks — I said that the Oosterdam stunk. Obviously that’s an opinion (and you’re free to have an opposing one), but we had two adult couples traveling with us who didn’t have children with them (including 3 adults in the target age range for Holland America) and none of them were enamored with the Oosterdam, either.
The port stops were great — but we went to the vast majority of them on an MSC cruise last summer. The ones that Holland America had that MSC didn’t were our least favorite stops, though even my least favorite stop in Greece is better than not going to Greece — my point here rather is that the idea that the Holland America itineraries are “second to none” is an odd position to me given that all of these ships go to ports big enough to accommodate big cruise ships, so most of the major ocean liner cruise lines in Europe offer itineraries that are roughly similar. I don’t think we went to a single port on this cruise that didn’t have at least one other cruise ship in port — and several times there were three. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be happy cruising Holland America. I have no emotional investment there one way or another. But just from the standpoint of itineraries, I didn’t notice itineraries that seemed much different from those offered by competing lines in Europe? For what it’s worth, we enjoyed our Holland America cruise to Alaska and our cruise in the Caribbean with them earlier this year probably would have been fine absent the norovirus outbreak, but c’est la vie.
I never recommended The View Lugano — I’ve never been there. I was interested because it looks nice (and a reader below has commented to say that they loved it). You must be thinking of another blog that recommended it or else you’re confusing me mentioning that it looked cool with having recommended it. It sounds like you aren’t very interested in vacationing by a lake. I’m sure you’re not alone there — we all have different preferences. I love Lake Como and Rome and look forward to going back again!
Just sailed past the North Cape of Norway, on the way to Tromso, the Shetland Islands and a few other ports. If you measure cruise lines by Alaska, Caribbean and Mediterranean itineraries, yeah they all go there. If you look beyond those destinations, you’re not going to find another large cruise line that compares. Oosterdam has three sister ships, been on all of them, nothing wrong with any of them. Zuiderdam, Noordam and Westerdam are pretty much identical, so they would likely ‘stink’ too. Do you understand that short cruises attract different customers with different (limited) interests? Holland America averages two-week cruises. If you want kids clubs, ice cream and pizza parlours, water slides, miniature golf, roller coasters, wave pools or Mickey Mouse, you chose bad because it was free. I made the same mistake with Carnival two years ago, aside from the cabin, everything was awful and my free cruise was a waste of money and time. Just did a quick search of all big cruise lines, Princess and Norwegian go to the Shetland Islands exactly once this year. Holland America goes monthly, at a minimum. Holland America cruisers aren’t looking for Barcelona, Athens, Dubrovnik and Istanbul. And we’re certainly not looking for ports with multiple ships and crowds. You could take me to the best sushi restaurant in the world and I would hate it because I don’t eat fish. You just made a bad choice based on what’s important to you, don’t blame the ship.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about it! I appreciate your guesses as to our wants, but we wanted good port stops, which is why we chose this itinerary. And we got that. Unfortunately, I expected things to be open and functioning that weren’t — so that was a drag. I also wish that Holland America would put a bit more focus on its entertainment and a little less focus on multiple daily shopping events. We haven’t yet chosen a cruise for the ship — each of the “free” cruises we’ve chosen has been based on the fact that it is going to places we’d like to visit. But I’m also obviously going to share my opinion on the ship and experience. I thought that was lacking here. I can’t speak to the sister ships that I haven’t been on. I didn’t like this one. I’m sure that some people must love it. I don’t begrudge them loving it, I would just disagree.
Great trip!
Question- for the airfrance flights, did you search from NYC to Milan or did you search NYC to Paris, then paris to milan, and call to get it ticketed?
can u pls give us a breakdown of miles/points spent on each? TIA
artcle inclds this information.
edit: nevermind, I see what you were saying.
Nick,
Sound like a great trip and impressive use of points. Is it possible to summarize your total cash outlay/points for the trip vs $53K retail price in the bottom line section? Thanks
What a great story, Nick. Unfortunately – well actually fortunately – I’m retired and don’t travel for biz anymore. So I don’t have millions of points to use from various programs. Hopefully I’m the exception compared to the FM followers. I’m more interested in using far fewer miles for smaller vacations. I guess that’s what the current challenge will tell me.
Congratulations! Sounds like an amazing happy family memory for your kids, thanks for sharing ! This is an example of why we love capital F M. You are good people willing to teach us lessons.!
how many seats were you able to get together on each flight/leg? 8 seems impossible…
With shell-type business class seating, none of the seats are really “together” (eg, you can’t really reach over to a child even if your seats are adjacent on the seat map). You can interact with anyone. So how close you are really doesn’t matter. Also, at 8 pax per flight, the family could well have been 25% of the J cabin — so probably fairly close together anyway.
i meant to ask if nick was able to find 8 open award seats on the same flights/legs. it’s hard enough to find 2 J award seats on a single flight, let alone 8.
Yes, we had 8 seats on the same flights on the outbound booked via Virgin Atlantic and on the return booked via Air France / KLM Flying Blue. I was amazed that I got 8 saver-level seats in both directions, but I did.
As it turned out, there was a schedule change on the outbound that would have had us miss our connecting flight. Because there weren’t 8 seats on an alternative option, we ended up having to split up on the “outbound”, but it wasn’t as bad as that sounds: 3 of us ended up on a flight leaving New York at 5:30pm and the other 5 of us were on the 6:30pm (or something like that — the flights were literally 60-minutes apart) and all 8 of us were on the same connecting flight from Paris to Milan. The return journey had us all on the same exact flights.
Almost all of our international travel is as a family of four. While most flights don’t have 4 or more seats available in business class, enough do that we’re able to travel internationally a lot in business class. I stay pretty open on destination though, which is to say that if I’d like to go to Europe, I’ll book whatever route has 4 seats — I don’t care if we fly into Brussels or Warsaw or Frankfurt or whatever, I’ll take what I can get that has 4 seats available.
To Larry’s point (which I know wasn’t your point, but still worth responding): Air France is particularly particular about where children sit. This is a 1-2-1 layout, so there is a single seat on the window, two seats “together” in the middle (though, as Larry notes, those seats are designed to not be that close together) and one on the other window. Air France does not allow the kids to sit in the middle seats — they have to be across the aisle on a window seat across from an adult in your party. The logic is that in case of an emergency, it is easier to get to them there than it is across the middle. I personally find that logic flawed, but it is what it is and my kids don’t care about sitting on their own by the window, so it wasn’t an issue for us.
Nick, you have been my inspiration and following you (and the FM team) I’ve adopted the point and miles game as my retirement hobby as Covid started. We have taken amazing trips since ’21, at totally unbelievable costs using points and miles. We just finished our most epic trip returning Saturday from a 27 day journey to Paris, Versailles, Normandy, Montenegro, Dubrovnik, Naples, Capri and Sorrento. Estimate of total cost was $33K, and we paid $6.5k, using Hyatt, Marriott and LHW points, along with Air France for our travels. We have the benefit of being able to plan 12 months in advance, so we maximize points redemption (we have 5 AF flights this summer all at 50K each). We leave next week for London, Rome and Spain, then in August we’re in Corfu followed by 17 days of train travel through Switzerland.
It’s a wonderful life.
I loved reading this! What a great trip. We are a big family and have also flown AF J. Im planning a similar trip next summer and already worried we won’t be able to make it happen in J for 6 people (4 are kids) with the AF devaluation and limited award availability already showing for next year. Any tips for how to fly east coast to Europe for summer 26 for 6 people in J (ok ok we will settle for PE if we must ha)? I was thinking TAP but I’ve read they limit awards in Juny and July.
Easy answer: subscribe to one of the major award search tools (Pointsyeah, Award Tool, Seats.aero, etc) and set award alerts. Personally, I wouldn’t wait for the stars to align on 6 seats — I’d be searching for 3 seats (1 adult and 2 kids) with the intention to book 3 seats on 2 different flights on the same day and then set an alert looking for more seats to open on one or the other (but also set up alerts for 6 people just in case). Since you’re so far in front of it still right now, you could start with alerts for 6 seats I guess, but that’s likely to be harder.
A couple additional thoughts:
Hey Nick, glad you were able to book the Holland America cruise from the Wynn match (I forgot about that Wynn match). Do you have any other free cruises on the horizon?
One more — Margaritaville at Sea much later this year. I’m not expecting a lot, but the ship we’re on is pretty newly refurbished and I think it might be fun enough!
Haha, I’m curious to read your review of that cruise ship. Have fun and bottoms up!
A comment on the car rental is Crete:
We found ourselves similarly in need of a one-day rental for a cruise stop also at Souda Bay, but it was out of season and the car cost either $9 or $11 for the day (I don’t remember which).
The agent who handed over the car to us (again, a few hundred feet from the gate to the port) instructed me to make a pick-up video. At drop-off the same agent (I think) pointed out a scratch. I pulled the video, she studied it carefully, and did not charge me for the scratch. I myself could not see any scratch — either on the car or on the video, but she was satisfied.
I know it’s rude to comment on typos, but I think this one changes the meaning significantly: Should “I’m not sitting on. . .” actually say “I’m now sitting on. . .”?
Not rude at all! Correct and fixed.
Although, for what it’s worth, I’d LIKE to *not* be sitting on $1600+ in Capital One Shopping rewards…..