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Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel
Let us pull back the curtain and show you how you can maximize money you're already spending to earn enough credit card points and miles to travel with your family for nearly free.
We've used credit card points and miles to take our family of 5 on trips to places like Costa Rica, San Diego, Disneyland, Oceanside, NYC, Washington DC, Hawaii, and next year we have already booked Paris, Spain and Japan!
Using credit card points and miles (often called travel hacking) doesn't have to be overwhelming or take a ton of time, and we can show you how.
Can you earn a lot of points and miles without opening up multiple credit cards? Only if you have a really high amount of spend each month. For people with larger families, opening new cards is the easiest and fastest way to earn enough points and miles to take a couple of really low cost (but not low budget) family vacations every year!
If you want to learn ways to help you and your family travel more affordably using credit card points, this show is for you.
Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel
Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort - Review from a Family of 5!
GIVEAWAY WINNER HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED AND NOTIFIED! Thank you all for the reviews, we appreciate it so so much.
In today's episode we are sharing all the details of our Labor Day road trip to Huntington Beach, California!
Our family stayed at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach for the first time on this trip. It's a category six hotel beloved by the points and miles community. Discover how we scored a spacious suite for 44,000 points per night, with a surprise Guest of Honor award gifted from a friend! From free breakfast to complimentary valet parking, find out how these perks made our trip even more special. We share our hilarious first-time experience in a suite, complete with our oldest son's penthouse dreams dashed by YouTube videos.
We also share a few kid-friendly activities (most of which are FREE!) that we did in and around Huntington Beach, including Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve and...the Huntington Beach Public Library??!!?!
In today's episode we are sharing all the details of our Labor Day road trip to Huntington Beach. On points, we'll talk about where we stayed, how we booked it and a few fun family activities that are mostly completely free. So tune in. Hi, I'm Raya.
Speaker 2:And I'm Dwayne.
Speaker 1:And we are your hosts of the Travel Party of Five podcast, where we share how we travel as a family of five around the world.
Speaker 2:We will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as possible and sometimes even completely free.
Speaker 1:So if you're wanting to travel more with your family but you're not sure how, we'd love for you to listen in.
Speaker 2:So welcome to our podcast, where we hope you learn a thing or two to get you closer to your next trip happy monday, welcome back.
Speaker 1:Welcome back. Thanks for tuning in. This is the travel party of five podcast catch you there.
Speaker 2:Um, hold on before we get started. I just want to address some issues. Um, I know we've had some issues with volume. I'm trying to fix that. Hopefully the last episode was good and, moving forward, all of them will be good and, like I said in previous episode, I do all the editing editing. So I was using these cheap amazon headphones, but now I'm using these bose noise canceling headphones and I apologize that our kids are in the background screaming. Um, I never really noticed that before, but with these bose headphones I can definitely hear them in the back. So I just want to apologize for that. And, like I said, hopefully the sound, the volume of the sound, is correct now.
Speaker 1:I told Dwayne that he has to make sure that he speaks like almost on top of the microphone today because he's normally like a few inches away. So we'll see. But yeah, we found these headphones in our closet that I think were sent to me by a job at some point that I don't use, and he's been using them and he was like, wow, I can hear everything.
Speaker 2:So, yes, sorry, so sorry about that um, okay, so we did.
Speaker 1:You have something else okay?
Speaker 2:I was just gonna say happy football season yes, we are recording this on Saturday.
Speaker 1:Normally we record on Sundays, but it's Saturday night.
Speaker 2:Yes, night, we've never recorded at night.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So maybe you won't hear the kids, they are still awake.
Speaker 1:But we are recording on a Saturday night because tomorrow is the first official football Sunday. So go, giants.
Speaker 2:Go Bears.
Speaker 1:We're probably not going to have a good season, but we'll see. Anyways, this is not a football podcast, so we are going to do our giveaway winner. We're going to choose it. So, everyone who wrote a review and emailed us the screenshot, so we have your contact information, I put all of your names into a little hat yes, so we got quite a few comments, but not everyone sent us an email, so, and we don't know how to yeah, there's no way to like there.
Speaker 1:You have to send the email because otherwise we have no way to contact you. So if you left a review and you didn't want to enter the giveaway, you just did it out of the kindness of your heart. Thank you so much. We really appreciate that and I bet I think we'll probably do another giveaway in the future, because I think this one worked out pretty well for us. I was pretty pleased, so okay, so I put all the names in a hat of everyone who sent us an email and, by the way, the emails were so kind, like some people were offering advice and, like you know, additional points and miles tips, and it was just really fantastic to read them all. I believe I've responded to everyone at this point.
Speaker 2:Yes, we appreciate you.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to just live, live on the air. I'm going to pick a name out of the hat and, for the record, dwayne was like why don't you just like do this in an easier way? And I like literally wrote everyone's names on an identical size piece of paper and I put them in a literal hat. So okay, so. Jeff. Oh yes, this was well, maybe I shouldn't say his full name.
Speaker 2:I don't know. No, you should not okay.
Speaker 1:No, this is perfect, because Jeff actually sent in a couple of really good tips, one of which I was going to share anyways, so that's amazing. Okay, so, jeff.
Speaker 2:Congratulations, Jeff.
Speaker 1:Congratulations, jeff. I'll send you an email and we'll figure out what kind of gift card you would like. But Jeff sent in this tip where we did an episode around shopping portals and apparently the Capital One shopping portal has an extension, which that part I knew. But if you use their extension they will sometimes email you offers. Like if you go to a website using the extension, like the next day they might email you like a higher cashback offer than is regularly offered on or through their portal. So that is a tip on the Capital One extension, like Chrome extension or whatever browser extension.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Jeff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, Jeff. Congratulations. I will send you an email when we're done recording and you can choose the $50 gift card of your choice. Legal Jeff not illegal okay.
Speaker 2:Like Rhea commented in the previous episode.
Speaker 1:And Dway doing things. I'm insane, because what gift cards are illegal? I don't know, I don't know. There's a lot of things I don't know about in this world. Okay, let's, let's talk about our main topic today, which is huntington beach yep.
Speaker 1:so we got back earlier this week from huntington Beach, california. We did a little road trip for Labor Day and it was our first time staying at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach, which I feel like is a pretty popular points and miles hotel in the points and miles community, especially if you're on the West Coast. So we are going to talk about the hotel. We're going to talk about we did a few activities around the town and we're going to talk about it all. So I think let's first do how we booked it, and there's a couple different things that that we did on this trip booking wise. So let's get into that, okay, so first of all, this hotel is a category six. So, as a reminder, hyatt ranks hotels in categories from one through eight. Eight is like the most luxury and one is like pretty budget and basic. So this is a category six and that means that standard rooms go for between 21 and 29,000 points a night, just depending on you know, whether you're peak on, peak off, peak or regular which isn't bad.
Speaker 1:No, and Hyatt has a calendar so you can go on and see, like on on the website for any of their hotels, like okay, you know, january 15th is a regular night or whatever, so you can see how many points you would need for the dates that you want to stay. I guess it's worth noting that that doesn't mean they have points availability during those days. It's just, if they do, that's what they cost. So, anyways, so we actually booked a standard suite for this trip and I think I've mentioned before the reason that we did that was only because there were no standard rooms available at the time that I booked.
Speaker 2:And this is our first time getting a suite right. It's our first time booking a suite.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so for the suite. Now, keep in mind this was Labor Day weekend and so that's definitely on peak.
Speaker 2:Labor Day weekend in Huntington Beach, right by the beach.
Speaker 1:The hotel I'm pretty sure was sold out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, had to have been.
Speaker 1:Because I was trying to look up like what our room would have cost cash and I couldn't see it because there was not availability. So we paid 44,000 points a night and we originally had planned to stay for three nights, so Friday, saturday, sunday and drive home Monday. But then we decided we'd actually rather have three full days there, because it's kind of a long drive, it's like a six hour drive six and a half because stops.
Speaker 2:And yeah, we have to eat yeah, so I booked us.
Speaker 1:We decided to drive over thursday night, which is something we don't normally do. We normally leave in the morning and you know we get there like midday, but we decided to leave after the kids got out of school and I got out of work on thursday, which is around three.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for you, for those that aren't used to doing road trips driving west at 3 pm, it's not very fun because the sun is directly there was about an hour where your eyes are just burning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you are pretty much looking directly into the sun. So driving straight west. So that was not ideal, but um.
Speaker 1:I even bought some glasses right before the trip off Amazon sunglasses yeah, dwayne's not normally a sunglass person, but he did buy some for the for just because of that. So, um, what was I gonna say? Oh yeah, so we drove over at night. We actually didn't even get there until like 10 PM, which was pretty late, and I had one when we decided to drive over a day early. I just booked a regular room that night because I didn't want to waste the points Cause I knew we were going to get there late. But when we checked in the front desk we kind of made a joke like, oh, like well, we said, you know, tomorrow we have to check.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were like we have two reservations One is for tonight and it's this room, and then, starting tomorrow, we have this suite.
Speaker 2:The girl at the front desk checked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we kind of joked like if the suite is available now, like we'll take it. You know just kind of like ha ha, ha. And she goes actually let me check. And she checked and she goes you know what it's available, I'll just put you guys in there now.
Speaker 2:So that was amazing because we didn't have to move rooms, shout out to that front desk.
Speaker 1:We were super grateful. The other different thing about this trip is that we had a friend gift us a guest of honor award, which basically just gives you globalist status for the weekend or know for your stay up to seven days, I think, and so we had globalist status for the duration of our trip and so basically we got to try it out, because next year we will have it, and so that was really exciting for me actually, like I felt like so fancy, it was great.
Speaker 2:I mean. So tell us, what that entails.
Speaker 1:So you get free breakfast for I think it's up to four people per room. We had five. We did tell them we had five and they covered it for all five of us. And so if the hotel has a club, I believe that is your, your breakfast. But if they have a, if they don't have a club, then you get to order like from the restaurant or eat at the buffet and it's covered. Not only is your meal covered, but also the tip that you leave for the server is covered wow, I didn't know they covered the tip as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it covers all of it. Oh, that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you just sign it to your room and then they just take it off when you check out. That's what happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I knew that, I just didn't know they covered the tip as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome, so it was great, and it also covers free parking on awards days.
Speaker 2:And yes, parking is not cheap either.
Speaker 1:I think it was $60 a night $55 a night for valet, for valet, yeah. And we did valet only because we knew it was free. Otherwise, I promise you, we would have been self-parking every single day. And, to be clear, self-parking every single day and to be clear, self-parking is also not free.
Speaker 2:I think it was $29, 19 bucks a day. Oh no, no, at the hotel was 29 yeah but you can park across the street by the beach for 19 for the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know if you can overnight. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:That's, yeah, maybe not so, the reason yeah, 29.
Speaker 1:The 19 a day was like public parking yeah and the reason. We know that is because we had friends drive down from ventura to spend the day at the pool with us and that's what they paid to park. So if you're at the hotel, I would just 29 a day is what it's gonna cost you yeah at least as of september 2024. So, um, what else does it come with? Oh, we also got a 25 credit at the little little market. Yeah, there convenience store type ish yes, and so the kids got ice cream.
Speaker 1:Um, so that was like a fun little treat because that was free and I mean, it was just, it just felt, it felt fancy to me yeah like they were like oh yeah, you're gonna have breakfast at 8 30, you're you're, because you're like, you're the globalist people and like to be clear, we were not the only ones, there was plenty of other people that had globalist status there too, but like it definitely felt like they took care of you a little more. Yeah, and I always appreciate that. So, um, if you have any friends who have status with hyatt, I would highly recommend, if you have a like a special stay coming up, see if they can gift you one of those guest of honor thingies. Yeah, we, so let's, okay, so let's do restaurants at the hotel and then we can talk about, like, the little shop and pizza place and pool.
Speaker 2:So this hotel has like like a food court almost, or like a little plaza, if you will. Yeah, it's not really a food court almost, or like a little plaza if you will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not really a food court. Yeah, because I think they only have a pizza place. They have a pizza.
Speaker 2:No, they have the bar that.
Speaker 1:we never went to that served food where I got wings one night. Oh, that's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a bar, there's a store Like a little gift shop, but it's, I'm assuming, a third party on it, because there's, it was pretty big it was cute.
Speaker 2:They had some cute stuff in there and they had a little ice cream shop they had a game room, they had a market where you can get starbucks, snacks, books, toys and the pizza place. And the pizza place. And what was the place right behind? They also had live music, by the way, like every night. We were there, but behind the stage there was another store. Do we ever go in that one? I don't think so. No, there was another store.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what it was, but so, yeah, there's like this whole little courtyard type area that you can just walk to, and they had live music there, uh, we. So they had it on friday night and sunday friday sat and Sunday oh, maybe that was just for the holiday weekend, I don't know. Oh yeah, that was nice. There's a little lawn area where the kids were playing games one day and just like throwing the football and playing. You know, running around being kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was just it was.
Speaker 1:It was just so nice.
Speaker 2:There were like three weddings while we were there too. Oh yeah, a lot of weddings, a lot of weddings. Property was beautiful. Yeah, Um, I mean. Yeah, I would definitely recommend this place and would love to go back.
Speaker 1:Um, so we only ate breakfast at the hotel and then like a couple of pool appetizers or like lunch pool-y type appetizers we had dinner once as well, the pizza joint oh yeah, okay, uh, the pizza joint was meh, it was mid as the kids say, very mid, it was fine for the kids yeah, it was totally fine for kids, like it'll do in a pinch, and the prices were pretty regular. I would say like maybe a few dollars more than a regular pizza, but like pretty average.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, the pizza was fine, it would be fine for a night, you know so every morning we had breakfast at the water table, which is the restaurant right there off the lobby yeah, and they have a buffet on the weekends. Yes, our kids got the buffet every time, for the most part so the first first day we had breakfast, the buffet was not available, correct, so we ordered off the menu.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it was good it was very good, I thought I got the soka, which is like, first of all, a little surprising for me. Not something I would normally order, no, but it was like a fried chicken breast topped with bacon, jalapeno, hollandaise sauce and eggs on top of a cornbread waffle. Okay, uh, the waft. People talk about this waffle like it's delicious. I actually did not like the waffle, but I really thought the chicken and the hollandaise sauce was delicious, so I actually ordered that two different days so and I got, I just got the regular benedict.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I, so we got that the first day. The next day we had the buffet. Then we ate there two more times after that, so I ended up getting the benedict three times during our stay there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because we so me and duane didn't love the buffet. No, it was. It's fine, yeah, it's fine, but like you have the choice, with the guest of honor or the globalist status, to order either from the buffet or off the menu, and either way is free. I think if you order off the menu, it's like one entree plus a beverage and then obviously the buffet is whatever you want and I ordered the benedict because I thought the hollandaise sauce was excellent, really good yeah, yeah, um, but our kids did the buffet every time it was available
Speaker 1:because they, you know, like our oldest comes back with an entire tray of bacon, like our little two love to mix five cereals, five different kinds of cereals, together in a bowl and it's like you know what? Like go crazy, yeah. Like I'm not here to police your food on this vacation. Like have whatever you want. So it, as a parent, like it's not. It's nice to be able to say like yes, because I feel like we say no a lot. So it's nice to say like yes, go ahead, sure get more cereal, sure have more fruit, like whatever you want. Sure you can have juice, you can have juice. I'm generally a you can have water, mom but she definitely is when it's a buffet.
Speaker 1:you can have juice, that's fine. So, um yeah, but Dwayne and I we did the buffet one time and we went back to ordering off the menu. I, the food off the menu was quite good, yeah, so that's what I would recommend if you have the option. Yeah, oh, and the poolside food was fine, it was good. I will say they have nachos. That like if you order the guacamole and the chicken.
Speaker 2:So wait, wait, wait. So they have nachos with cheese, which is like 14 bucks, yeah. To add chicken is is like 14 bucks, yeah. To add chicken is an extra nine bucks, yeah. And then to add guacamole is like seven bucks. So basically, so if you got the loaded nachos, it would be $29. Which is pretty ridiculous.
Speaker 1:That's a lot, yeah. However, we did get the nachos with just the guacamole, so what we had like $20 nachos, $21.
Speaker 2:$21 nachos or maybe $20.
Speaker 1:I will say it was pretty good yeah.
Speaker 2:It was pretty good and we shared it and the reason why we got the nachos is because they brought it out a few times and it walked past it and I was like yeah, I get pina coladas. Every time I'm on vacation, I mean, you know, pinky up, so ray gets the margaritas. Yeah, first day she got a margarita, second day she got the margarita, but a different tequila I had to get a better tequila, because it was not very good the first time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the with the better tequila I got, casa amigos. It was good. All right, let's talk about the hotel itself. So what did you think?
Speaker 2:um, the hotel was great. It was. It's huge. It is huge, um, yeah, so first of all, we walk into this room. When we get there, the kids walk in and they are excited well, the little two are okay, let's talk about the room.
Speaker 1:Let's we'll talk about the hotel in a minute. Let's talk about the room, okay, so the room that we booked was the SoCal suite. They have multiple of these of this suite with this name, because I know someone that was staying at the same property at the same time, also in the SoCal suite, so, but the suite that they gave us was an ADA suite, and so that's I think the second time this year we've gotten an ADA room. It's not something that we book. You can book it on points, but it's not something that we book, because it doesn't I I would. Why would I book that?
Speaker 1:you know, like I'm not trying to take away an ADA room from someone who needs it. I would never do that, but it's the second time this year that they've given us an ADA room and the ADA rooms are bigger. Like everything is bigger. Yeah, so I mean there was. So you walk in. There were two bathrooms, there was a pretty big living room. The living room was the size of like what a regular hotel room would be and then there's a whole second room like the king, with a king bed in the bedroom, and that room was huge, with a second bathroom and a balcony that you probably could have fit 20 people on yeah, it was easily a 10 by 10 balcony 100 square yeah, it was huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we get there, the kids walk in, we take a tour of the room and the kids the kids are like is this all of ours?
Speaker 1:like well, not our oldest, the little two, yeah. But let me tell you a funny story. So our oldest is 10 and I I never, like we've never stayed in a suite. And so I was just telling him like hey, bud, like we're you know, we booked a suite, like it's gonna be really awesome, okay. So we walk in and he just is is like is is, is this, is this the suite? And I'm like, yeah, and he's like so, like we're in it. And I'm like, yeah, we're in it.
Speaker 1:And I'm like what's going on here, like why are you not excited? And he's like well, I just, I just thought it was going to be different. And I was like, well, what did you like? What did you think it was going to be like? And I was like, well, what did you like? What did you think it was gonna be like? He's like well, on YouTube. And as soon as he said YouTube, I was like, oh lord, he was like on YouTube, like a lot of them have like two stories. And so I'm pretty sure this kid is thinking that, like we're gonna stay in like some kind of penthouse, like multi-level fancy, schmancy thing, and so I guess that was my fault for not clarifying with him what a suite actually meant, because in his 10 year old brain I'm pretty sure he thought we were. We were in the penthouse and we were not.
Speaker 2:So yeah, but the younger two were pretty.
Speaker 1:Yes, the younger two were like oh wow, like this is huge this is huge yeah so I mean and it was.
Speaker 2:The room was nice, the living room, like you said, size of a normal room. It came with a dining room table, a couch, pullout, pullout, yeah, two comfortable chairs um coffee maker fridge yep um, and then the other room was the king bed. There was a little what kind of chair is that like not a chase lounge, but like a it was like a, a chair.
Speaker 1:You could easily like read in and like put your feet like not an ottoman, because it was all one unit, but like I don't know what it's called, but it was comfy yeah I mean, yeah, it was it was huge bathroom huge and there was like a whole separate. There was an entire dresser and like makeup area, two tvs you know, one in each room. It was awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like had a whole area to just do my makeup, for, it being our first week, we were definitely happy with it oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was great and we mentioned we had friends come down. So the last day, our last full day, we had friends come visit and they are also a family of five with kids similar ages to us, and all 10 of us were in that room at various points throughout the day.
Speaker 2:And there was plenty of space.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it was good.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:So the hotel, yes, the hotel is ginormous, um, they have. So, first of all, it's directly across from the beach and they have a walkway that you can walk over, like the the busy road, which is the pch. Yes, for guests. Yeah, only yes, yeah yeah, and you can walk over to the beach. Um, we actually never went to the beach and I'm not mad at that we just I was just.
Speaker 1:We did some other stuff and we looked at the beach a few times and we'll get into the the activities that we did, but we spent most of our time at the pool again, it was labor day weekend.
Speaker 2:The beach was packed, yeah, and to be honest, even if it wasn't packed, I like I told rave from the beginning of the trip like I won't be mad if we don't go to the beach and it's not that we don't like the beach, we do like the beach yeah, yeah but the waves in huntington beach are really big.
Speaker 1:Our daughter is really tiny and, quite frankly, I don't need the anxiety of having to stare at her every second.
Speaker 2:We just wouldn't be able to relax there, you know yeah, I mean she weighs 31 pounds.
Speaker 1:Okay, one wave has taken her. You know, I just can't. I can't handle that. So, yeah, we didn't go to the beach. But I want to talk about the pool. They have two pools. Actually, there's two pools and there's like a spa area. Yes, and when I say spa, I don't mean like massages, I mean like but hot tubs well, yeah, they have a spa, but when I say I'm talking about they have like a little hot tub area with like three, I think, hot tubs which is adults only, and you have to be 18 to go in there.
Speaker 1:It was very quiet and very calm. Then they have, like the regular, the main pool. We actually didn't go to the main pool, but it looked pretty basic pretty basic but a lot of seating. They had a bar, yep um yeah, and then they have a kid's pool, and the kid's pool has three different water slides, like a small yeah, not very big yeah, there's like a really small kiddie one, a medium one and then like a.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna say it's a big one, but it's like it's not very big but like the small one, was enough for our four-year-old to go on by herself multiple times with, I will add, with a life jacket on. She's not fully independently swimming, so whenever we are at the pool she has on her little puddle jumper thing and that's where we spent most of our time yeah, what I'm. I want to know. What did you think about the kids pool?
Speaker 2:I mean it was very busy all the time. It was really busy. It could have been bigger, but that's, yes, I okay.
Speaker 1:So I just I think I had higher expectations, because this hotel is talked about so often in the points and miles community for having a really great kids pool. So my expectations, I just think, were a little higher and I thought it was kind of small it was kind of small.
Speaker 1:I mean small enough to where we had to go out and reserve chairs early in the morning yeah, well, we really only did that the one day because we needed like six chairs, because we had friends coming which you're not supposed to have which we didn't know until so later on in the trip.
Speaker 2:There's a big sign that we didn't read. But yeah, I mean the pool could have been bigger yeah, I think that was that would be.
Speaker 1:My only complaint is I just and again this it's always like your expectations versus reality. It's like that's when you get disappointed.
Speaker 2:Right is when your expectations are more than and I mean, I'm not gonna lie, it was rowdy there's a lot of kids, yeah, but I mean, other than that, our kids had fun.
Speaker 1:um, I think what, okay, like, if you were gonna pick in Southern California, like your favorite Hyatt pool for kids, what would you pick? Cause I've been thinking about this and I we didn't talk about this beforehand, so for kids.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think my favorite hotel pool would be the park Hyatt pool.
Speaker 1:The Aviara.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's mine too, actually.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause that pool was big pool, the aviara. Yes, yeah, that's mine too, actually. Yeah, because that pool was big, family friendly place. That was one of my favorite hotels it was.
Speaker 1:It was really fun, yeah, but yeah, and the water sides were like pretty legit. Yeah, yeah, is that?
Speaker 1:the one where you hit your head no, that was in costa rica, oh yeah sorry, anyways, we don't that we don't have to talk about that now, but let's talk about the activities that we did. So first of all, on the drive there on Thursday night, dwayne was I was kind of like I haven't really planned anything but like I feel like I need to look up some stuff to do, and Dwayne was like, oh, I was just planning on sitting at the hotel for three days, like I'm totally fine with that, and I was kind of like well, totally fine with that.
Speaker 1:I was like well, like maybe we should do some stuff in the mornings, especially because if you've never been to like Southern California, well, pretty much all of California actually like in the mornings, especially if you're near the coast, it is foggy always like. Especially if you're near the coast, it is foggy always Like. The sun doesn't usually come out until later morning or early afternoon and it's not super warm. So I'm like we're not going to be at the pool, you know, when it's cloudy and like 65 degrees Like. No, thank you.
Speaker 2:California has beautiful weather.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, A hundred percent Southern.
Speaker 2:Cal for sure.
Speaker 1:But when you're used to it, being 65 is cold, yes, so anyways. So I looked up a few things to do, and here here's what we did, and the first two things are free. Okay. So we drove to bolsa chica ecological reserve, which was, I don't know, five or ten minutes from the hotel, right, and so not far at all yeah, so we I mean we didn't spend a ton of time here, maybe like a half an hour, but it was completely free.
Speaker 1:They have a little parking lot. We just parked, we got out, we basically did a little walk and so it's like a. It's called a coastal estuary, so they have various habitats for like birds, and more than 200 avian species have been identified at this reserve.
Speaker 2:It's super popular with photographers and bird watching people yeah, a lot of people go there just to walk yeah, and that's what we did exercise.
Speaker 1:So you park and you walk and you kind of walk along this little bridge over I don't know water. I don't know what to call it. It's not a lake, but like yeah, over water and you can see in the water at some parts, and so we saw like what I'm pretty sure was stingrays.
Speaker 2:They were definitely stingrays.
Speaker 1:And some other little tiny white like magnetic, shiny looking fish.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We also saw some really big fish. Our oldest thought they were catfish, but they were just giant, black, like figures swimming. They kind of reminded me of the eels in the Little Mermaid, because there were two of them swimming side by side. I don't actually know what they were, though, so that was really fun. The kids liked seeing all the different wildlife and it was just a good like. It would be the perfect place to get a coffee and just go for a walk in the morning and let your kids look at the wildlife and get out some energy, because you know, in the morning god kids have, kids are just ready to go right, they don't need coffee or anything. And then the other free thing that we did, which this might surprise some people, because it surprised me.
Speaker 2:Yep, surprised me too every single website.
Speaker 1:I kept looking up things to do in huntington beach mentioned the library the huntington beach library public library yep. And so I finally told duane, like we're gonna, we're just gonna go and check it out and we're just gonna see it's free, right?
Speaker 1:so like let's go so we drive up and from the outside it looked like it looked like a building yeah, it looked like a building, so in nothing impressive about this place and so in the parking lot, I'm literally googling it again, right like just to make sure, like am I wrong, like what am I missing? And I found an article that basically said like it looks like nothing from the outside, but like go inside.
Speaker 2:So we did so we did and I'm glad we did.
Speaker 1:It was really beautiful now.
Speaker 2:I haven't been to many libraries in my life, but this one was by far my favorite library you know, you probably spent an hour here and I probably could have spent another hour in there like we didn't really look at books, but we walked around the whole library and you have to be quiet.
Speaker 1:But we walked around the whole library and you have to be quiet and our kids did a pretty good job because there are a lot of people studying and like actually using the library for what it is meant for, and then there's us who is just like spectating, basically, but I mean how Okay. So when you walk in, like how would you describe the library?
Speaker 2:You walk in and there's just like this huge fountain feature, yeah, and like a spiral walkway that goes around it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's like trees and like plants and foliage inside the library.
Speaker 2:And people everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was very busy. So we found the kids area and our kids basically played on the computer for a good half an hour.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They have a little like pirate ship area, which I actually thought our daughter would enjoy more than she did, but she was very into this little computer game that she was playing. Did you set that up for her or she figured that out?
Speaker 2:No, she just figured it out.
Speaker 1:Well, there was a girl before her playing and oh, so she saw, yeah, so little computer games that all of our kids were enjoying and honestly, it just was nice for me to sit and just not have anyone bother me for a good 20, 25 minutes, I feel like. And then there is also a secret garden that you can walk to outside of the library. It's not so secret well then, no, that's what it's called. Like I don't think it's a secret, but like I think it's called the secret garden.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean there is a secret garden there. There's also like a big, huge grassy area. We saw a lot of people with their dogs playing fetch. We saw a couple celebrating their kids like third birthday.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, Like having a picnic, I mean it wasn't weird Like a number three balloon some cupcakes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, very, very nice area yeah, the kids got a kick out of like running up and down this grassy hill and, um, yeah, the garden was cute. It was just like this little area you walk through and they have all these different plants and flowers and it was nice. It was just a nice way to spend the morning. I thought we got some exercise, we did some walking and then we went back to the hotel and we hung out by the pool. No, no.
Speaker 1:The other thing that we did and this one was not free, but we drove to Crystal Cove State Park. It was a $20 entrance fee, which is pretty steep. Do you think it's $20 every day, or do you think that was because it was a holiday weekend?
Speaker 2:I'm sure it's $20 every day so. State Park.
Speaker 1:They, they're gonna charge yeah, I guess that's true.
Speaker 2:Um, so this was maybe, I don't know, 20 minutes from the hotel, would you say yeah it, it was almost a half an hour actually, remember, because you have to drive through. Uh, what was it? Newport beach, the little is that the town newport, laguna.
Speaker 1:I don't know one of those one of those places.
Speaker 2:You have to drive through the little town there and it's, there's traffic lights and a lot of a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's say, 25 to 30 minutes from the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach, but I like I don't think this is worth the $20, unless you're going to spend the day. But here's what we learned. So we drove in and there's four different parking lots and you can park at any of them, and so we were only there for maybe half an hour 45 minutes. We went to three of the different parking lots and just kind of went and looked out at the view and it's beautiful, stunning views.
Speaker 1:But here's what I would. Here's when I think the $20 is worth. It is if you're going to go to the beach and you want a little bit of a more private beach area than Huntington Beach, because Huntington Beach is a huge beach but it gets really packed.
Speaker 2:Huge and packed.
Speaker 1:So this beach, you pay 20 bucks. I would park in parking lot four, okay, which is the one all when you drive in. It's the one all when you drive in. It's the one all the way to the left. That seemed to have the shortest walk down to the beach. Now, in full transparency, you have to walk down like a pretty steep road. You can't drive down there. I mean, the, the park service can drive down there but you cannot. So but that was the shortest distance, I think, from parking lot to beach that we saw for sure, parking lot one was the longest really far, so don't do that.
Speaker 2:Don't do that unless you want to hike yeah but yes.
Speaker 1:so if like, if you want to pack up all your stuff and go to the beach for like the day, or even half a day, I think that would be a really good option.
Speaker 2:A less crowded beach, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can walk down there and put up all your stuff and have a great time. There also is kind of near there is the Shake Shack, which we didn't go to on this trip, but we've been to before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very popular.
Speaker 1:Hard to find parking. Yeah, it's not like the chain shake shack, it's like a lone restaurant on a cliff, yeah, and it's it's very much like fast food burgers, but it moves. Because of that it moves pretty quickly. So you'll it like sometimes the line is into the road and you'll literally wait in that line for a parking spot, but it it's going to probably go quicker than you think and then you park and you get out and you can order burgers and shakes.
Speaker 2:Sit on their little deck there that overlooks the ocean.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's a really beautiful view and great milkshakes. Yeah, we enjoyed it last time we were there. So those are the three activities that we did. So two free, one not free, but if you're going to spend the day, $20 is a pretty good value. And what else do we have to cover? Anything.
Speaker 2:I think that might be it. I mean again beautiful property, huge property, Two pools, one main pool, one kid pool, and then there's like a little spa.
Speaker 1:Also, I forgot we didn't talk about this because we didn't go to the beach, but I do think that they will set up beach chairs and stuff for you. Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure that it's free, but I'm not 100% sure.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I forgot. So Rhea mentioned that she wanted. The first night we were there we had a partial ocean view. Our suite, yeah, so we can see, you know the beach.
Speaker 2:Um, the first night we were there, I looked out. There was a bunch of bonfires on the beach, yeah, and Rhea said that that's something that she would love to do. Yes, so I went to the front desk and asked you know how we would go about to do that? And it's online. You just got to go online and book it. But to have this bonfire on this beach was 420 dollars.
Speaker 1:I thought it was 450 dollars 450 dollars, 420 dollars I mean it's either way 400 dollars too much but yeah, I mean they provide the firewood.
Speaker 2:Obviously, I think it came with hot cocoa and some other things, I forget.
Speaker 1:But it was up, it was for up to 10 people, so like if you were going to split it with maybe like three families, three smaller families, then fine.
Speaker 2:Yes, but for just one family. I just thought it was too steep.
Speaker 1:Well, it's because otherwise people like for the for the regular fire pits that are at the beach. People claim them at seven o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2:Like I mean, I don't have the patience for that.
Speaker 1:So, like that's where the I'm like I mean, was I going to pay that this time? No, would I pay that at some point in my life? Maybe just for the experience, because that has been something I've wanted to do since I was like a teenager. Yeah, so when I was reading sweet valley high books about elizabeth and jessica, the wakefield twins duane doesn't even know what I'm talking about, but I have no idea I was a teenage girl living in new york reading about these twins living in southern california and they just they lived the life I wanted.
Speaker 1:Yep, so one day, one day, I'm gonna have my bonfire on the beach.
Speaker 2:Um yeah I mean, I know we briefly touched upon it, but this hotel also has a spa, which we didn't go to it, so no idea. Yeah, it's probably great. I'm sure it is great, yeah. So I mean, I think that's about it.
Speaker 1:I think we're rambling now we are, and it's late, and we're tired too, so thank you so so much for listening um yes, congratulations to jeff again yep, I'm gonna email you shortly and we will catch you guys on the next episode.
Speaker 2:Yes, thanks for tuning in. Bye, have a good one.