Miles and points, BelarusPoints, London

1) You can get $5 credit for writing a Trip Advisor review by March 31st, after synching your Amex card HERE  H/T to Million Mile secrets blog.

2) Via Fatwallet, you can save 30 percent on CVS order with the code 30DEAL, expires February 22nd. Make sure to go through a shopping portal first.

3) Just as I predicted, Club Carlson announces devaluation, effective March 15th. New category with 70000 points  per night redemption will be added. I don’t recommend, you wait to book your rooms, though, since everyone will be trying to beat devaluation. Read more  on The points guy HERE

4) If you are planning to go to Europe, consider staying in a castle for at least one night. We did and it didn’t cost a fortune! I liked this post on FTG about some affordable options HERE

5) Barclaycard Arrival’s minimum spending requirement is upped to $3000 in 90 days when you apply through my site. I still recommend this card, in spite of the change. Also, check this post on MMS blog on how you can apply for it and get in on the $1000 minimum spend by calling Barclay’s instead. Read more HERE

6) You can read about SPG category changes HERE

7) Aside from miles and points, I am also very passionate about car seat safety. That is one area, you don’t want to skimp on and dealing with different models, I can tell you, not all of them are created equal. I encourage you to visit Car-seat.org to learn more about car seat basics.

Trip report.

2006 London, England

My husband and I had only one night in London, but we made the most of it. We had reservations in Easyhotel, a spinoff from Easyjet discount airline. The price was only about 36 dollars and the hotel was located in South Kensington, the fanciest part of town. The room was super tiny, though.

We rode around in a double-decker bus, stopped and took some of photos of the Tower of London. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to tour it and see the Crown Jewels. Perhaps, on our next trip. My husband really wanted to ride the London Eye, but I was a bit bored by it, to be honest. The views were incredible, though, in spite of the rain.

My favorite part was visiting the British Museum and seeing Rosetta Stone in person.  I’m sure most of you know this, but before finding this artifact, there was no way to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. Rosetta stone solved that problem, since the inscription was made in 3 ancient languages, including Greek.

London would make a good first stop, if you decide to visit Europe. There is no culture shock, the language is English and there are lots of things for kids to do. I look forward to taking mine there!

On my quirky mind.

I mentioned before how my post about Chase Sapphire Preferred is doing very well on Google. I wasn’t kidding. Many of my visitors  come to read just that one post. In fact, it got about 1000 views  in the last few weeks alone. But here is the thing. Most of them, if not all, don’t come back.  We have what I would like to call a “one post stand”. 🙂

In fact, I know immediately when the post drops ranking in the Google search engine, because my number of visitors drops as well. So does my Alexa ranking (tracks site traffic), even though I don’t check it that often nor do I care all that much. I will write till I run out of things to say and as long as at least a few people are reading.

I think very often bloggers (myself included) preoccupy themselves with reaching more readers. Of course, it is nice to have a larger audience. In fact, I keep waiting for Randy Petersen to invite me to join Boarding Area blogging network. I told you I would challenge you, so there it is! I would be willing to rename my blog to “BelarusPoints”. One condition: I want my site to be placed between Points and Pixie Dust and Rapid Travel Chai blogs for protection. I’m sure, the email will be coming any day now! 🙂

I think ultimately, though, it’s much more important to retain the readers you already have. It’s  better for your blog to provide good value to ten people, than marginal value to a thousand.