Jeremy

Jeremy founded Living the Dream in 2008 to chronicle his long-term trip around Asia. Since then he has been on two long-term trips, visited 69 countries, and is just getting started. He is now on a Lifestyle Design quest to build businesses to pursue a life of travel.

Hilton Dubai Jumeirah Residences Review – A Suite Upgrade

Room at Hilton Dubai Jumeirah ResidencesIn our first Hilton points redemption on our 1.5 year long trip, we used two weekend certificates and 40,000 points for a three-night stay at the Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik worth about $1,750.

For our second rewards stay, we wanted to go big, and one destination was on our minds: Dubai.

In a city where you can spend as much as your credit allows, we knew that Hilton had some pretty amazing properties we could choose from.  The two leaders were the Hilton Jumeirah Resort, a 9-floor property near the famous Jumeirah Palms island with its own private beach, and the Hilton Jumeirah Residences, a 44-floor apartment style property located right behind the resort with access to the same amenities (and our preferred choice).

But for this particular redemption, booking into the property we wanted gave us an important lesson in how to redeem our points in the future.

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Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik Review – A Perfect Stay

Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik from the FortressIt should be no surprise when we say we love our credit cards. As an American it is incredibly easy to get some truly amazing perks just for opening a particular card and (sometimes) meeting a minimum spending requirement.

If you have been following us for a while, you may already know about how we opened credit cards to travel and have been following along with our updates on how we’ve been doing. Since opening our first set of cards about a year and a half ago, we decided to open a few more.  As we were doing pretty good on our airline points, our attention shifted to hotel points to allow us to have a nice stay in a few places around the world.

Our company of choice? Hilton.  Our goal?  10-12 nights at any resort on the planet.

The first redemption was a doozy.

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How to Fix a Stuck Handle in Your Suitcase and Luggage

When it comes to luggage disasters, we are no stranger to them.

One month into our year-and-a-half long trip I discovered that my bag had a rather sizable hole where the seams had come undone in the side. We then came up with a rather robust backpack repair that lasted for the rest of the trip.

Shortly thereafter, we found out that my five-year-old backpack was falling apart even more– this time with more holes and a handle which refused to go down. 

We needed to decide whether to buy a new bag on the road, order a new piece of luggage online and get it delivered to us by mail, or try a luggage handle repair just to endure.

We decided to try one more fix, and wanted to share our technique for what we did to help if you wind up in a similar situation to us on your next trip abroad.

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Is It Difficult to Travel Around Bulgaria? Use These Tips

Before we arrived in Bulgaria, we heard from a lot of past travelers that the country is a difficult one to travel in. 

Many of the stories always came down to the fact that the Bulgarian alphabet is Cyrillic based and does not use the Roman characters most of us are familiar with.

While it is true that the writing system is different in Bulgaria, the notion that it makes travel difficult is one we found to be a bit misguided.

Bulgaria is not difficult to travel in because of the Cyrillic text.  It is difficult because there is hardly any infrastructure built for foreign tourists.

And when you compare the two, the latter is much easier to get over.

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