- I took a trip to Seattle last year with my girlfriend, and we enjoyed traveling via Amtrak.
- We wanted to take another Amtrak trip, and this time I saved money by using my credit card rewards.
- It was a great trip, especially because I proposed to her during our visit to New Orleans.
In mid-March, I took off on a romantic, week-long Amtrak trip to New Orleans with my girlfriend, and I came back an engaged man with a fiancée. Not only did we get engaged in one of New Orleans' famous cemeteries, but we saved money using our travel rewards credit card points for this special trip.
We took our first sleeper train trip last year
My fiancée and I have been together for a little over eight years, and all of our traveling has been to visit family with my son. Last year, we decided we wanted to do a trip just the two of us, and we got the idea to take a sleeper train. After a little bit of research, we found out Amtrak has sleeper trains with routes all over the United States.
Seattle is one of our favorite places, and we plan on moving there someday, so we chose that as our destination. I'm always looking for ways to get the most out of credit cards, so I signed up for the Amtrak Guest Rewards Mastercard.
Amtrak has its own travel agents, so we booked our trip through them because it's an all-inclusive package. This included two round-trip, day-and-a-half train rides from Los Angeles to Seattle, our meals on the train, three nights at a hotel in downtown Seattle, and tickets to local attractions, at a total cost of $3,562.
The trip cost a little closer to $4,000 because we drove to Los Angeles from Las Vegas, where we paid for parking; rented a car in Seattle; and stayed in a hotel the day before the train left, as well as the night it returned. For these additional expenses, I used our Capital One Savor card because they have great cashback rewards.
We had an amazing time in Seattle, and we absolutely loved the train. We got one of Amtrak's roomettes, which seemed small at first, but they had plenty of room. On the train, we had great conversations with beautiful scenery from the train, and we were able to get in a lot of reading. We loved it so much, we decided to do it again this year.
We saved thousands on our trip to New Orleans
Neither of us had been to New Orleans, and my fiancée absolutely loves spooky stuff, so we decided a trip there would be perfect. We've been together for eight years, and although we thought we'd never get married, I changed my mind and built up the courage to ask her on our trip.
I emailed our original travel agent from last year to get some dates and prices, and she quoted me $5,392 for a similar package, but with a bigger room. We were about to book it, but then I learned we couldn't use our hard-earned credit card rewards if we booked through her.
That's when I started to do some research to see how much it'd be if I booked everything separately. Using our Amtrak rewards points, the train, hotel, and city passes would only cost $4,892. I attempted to haggle with our agent, but she was unwilling to budge on the price, so I decided to book everything myself.
After playing with some dates and doing some research, I was able to save us another $1,300.
Using our Amtrak rewards points, we saved about $500 on the train ride from Los Angeles to New Orleans. We opted to stick with the roomette, so the train only cost us $1,839. I also found us a great hotel in Downtown New Orleans for slightly cheaper. We also saved money because we didn't need to book two hotel stays in Los Angeles.
Our trip went great, and we even earned more points
We had an amazing time in New Orleans. We're vegetarians but decided to "cheat" and have meat on our trip, so she enjoyed some great seafood, and I had some amazing barbecue. We went to Jackson Square, a voodoo museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and many more great locations.
She really wanted to visit some of the cemeteries, but each time we went, they were either closed or booked with tours. It was really messing up my proposal plans.
Fortunately, down the street from the Museum of Art was St. Louis Cemetery No. 3, and it was open and fairly empty. I was nervous, but once I built up the courage, I popped the question, and she said, "Yes!"
After a week-long romantic getaway, I came back to Las Vegas the happiest man on Earth. As an added bonus, we earned an additional 7,000 reward points for our next trip.
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