Booked! (And a Freebie!)

Yesterday's post really did inspire to buckle down and finish up the main plans for our honeymoon.

I spent hours yesterday researching hotels, scouring the internet for deals, rating hotels on qualities, features, locations, specials, etc., and sending top choices to Tom for input.

We had originally planned on using our credit card rewards for the hotel cost, but we found out that are type of card doesn't allow transfers to our hotel rewards program. Major bummer. Despite that setback, we were still able to book five-star hotels, get upgraded rooms, and save over $400!

I'll admit that I'm a bit of a hotel snob, and I didn't want to settle for anything less than perfect. You only get one honeymoon, and in reality, probably only one trip to Australia in your lifetime. Armed with that knowledge, and a free sweet upgrade, we booked this glam hotel in the heart of Sydney:



It was originally the old post office, which was converted to super swanky rooms!

While this isn't our exact room, ours will be similar:



We're about 1-2 miles from most of the major tourist attractions (Darling Harbor, Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge, the Rocks, etc.). Exciting!

Halfway through the trip we fly from Sydney to Port Douglas, a resort town located off of the Great Barrier Reef.

We're staying at a resort here, so while it's not as modern and swanky as Sydney, it's still pretty awesome. Our room includes a private balcony, and a private entrance into the pool. How cool is that??

With the great deal on airfare, along with my lovely hotel finds, we've saved over $700 off of what we originally budgeted for this trip. That doesn't factor in the actual savings off of the rack rates for the hotels and plane tickets. With the current currency rate, I'd venture to say that we've saved well over $2,000.

And if that's not all, since we weren't able to use our credit card points towards our hotel program, we were able to apply half towards our credit card balance (reducing what we pay for the hotels by about $115), and use the other half to get a new camera for free! (Tom brought my camera to Colorado, and there was a baggage handling incident that caused it to die an early death).

Seriously, a money-saving day indeed! :)