AARP Rewards Travel Contest 2022 - 5/9-5/27/22

June 13-25 my daughter and I will be going on an Oceania cruise to the British Isles, embarking in Southampton, England and disembarking in Dublin, Ireland; and including 2 other English ports (Newcastle on Tyne, Liverpool), 1 Welsh port (Holyhead), 6 Scottish ports (Ullapool, Invergordon, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Kirkwall in Orkney Islands, Lerwick in Shetland Islands), and 1 N. Irish port (Londonderry). The only port of these 12 to which I have previously been is Dublin; the other 11 will be new experiences! I picked this particular cruise because during my Covid year at home in 2020 I watched many streaming tv shows; for some reason, the shows I was most drawn to/liked best took place in either Scotland(including Shetland Islands), N. Ireland, Ireland, England, or Wales.

I am SO EXCITED to be traveling/cruising again!! I put down my deposit for the cruise in Mar of ’21 so I could have something thrilling to look forward to and lift my spirits after I went back to work full time in my job as internal medicine physician treating patients with Covid and many other illnesses.   

I use Rewards points to cut down on my traveling expenses (Hotels.com, Southwest, Uber, etc). In addition, of course the $740 I’ve saved by using Rewards points has helped to pay for our trip!

My husband and I will be celebrating our 44th wedding anniversary! For the past two years we have booked an adventure package at Yellowstone which has been cancelled each time due to COVID. This year my husband said he did not want to postpone our visit again, so he made independent travels plans including for flights, tours and hotel stays. I have used AARP Rewards to enter sweeps to win the book on National Parks and new luggage in anticipation of our trip, and regularly review offers to redeem for restaurant certificates, etc. to use on our vacation.

We ( husband and I and our dog) have plans to travel to the Dells area in Wisconsin for our oldest granddaughter's wedding.  We have a campground booked and our plans are to take our 5th wheel camper and do some sight seeing.  Plans are getting iffy now with the price of diesel going up more every day and we should be leaving in a little over 2 weeks.  We are hoping we'll still get to take the camper.

My wife and I will be traveling from SC to Topsail, NC. We rented a house for the week and 2 of our 3 children will be joining us along with our 4 grandchildren. My wife's 3 siblings will also be there for the week with most of their families too!. This is a trip that was originally planned for 2020 but of course COVID took care of those plans. We are looking forward to a week of beaching, relaxing, playing games and a little bit of eating and drinking. We will be using gift cards from AARP Rewards to save on travel expenses.

Used AARP travel site to book a  hotel in Dublin  Ireland this summer

Planned an (almost) annual camping trip in June with extended family in Wisconsin.  Due to COVID haven't done it for a couple years.  It will be 5 days on reminiscing, laughing and sharing old stories. Will be using my AARP membership to save on the restaurant meals we traditionally have the day we arrive and the day we leave.

Camping trip to Austin Texas; saved on campsite fee with AARP Rewards! 

We have planned a trip to San Francisco in June with our daughters, age 22 and 19. Will be using AAPR discounts on travel expenses

After being canceled due to COVID the last two years, my husband and I will finally get to visit Amsterdam and then board a river cruise up the Rhine to Basel, Switzerland. We are capping off the trip with a couple of nights in Luzern before we fly home. We have never been to this part of the world and are so excited. I suspect the buildup of hoping to go the prior two summers has also fueled our eagerness to get back to Europe.

I don't think there are a lot of AARP discounts available in Europe, but we regularly use gift cards I buy at a discount through AARP to save money. So, we were able to make this trip more affordable in our budget with our savings from those gift cards (meaning we don't need to draw as much from retirement accounts to pay for everything). 

I'm hoping to take a road trip w/ my dog sometime this summer/fall.  We'll be traveling from FL to WI to visit friends & family and plan to take our time doing so!  I'm not quite sure what route we'll take yet, but I do plan to use the AARP Travel Site to find hotels & fun places to stop along the way.  We'll also use our AARP membership card for discounts on gas & food.  We may even purchase a few gift cards w/ our AARP reward points to give as gifts to family members that we haven't seen in a while!  Sure is sounding like a fun trip, isn't it???  🙂