DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Breckenridge

DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Breckenridge, is beautifully situated .1 miles from excellently groomed ski slopes. If you want a good place for a base camp, this is it.

After a long week of work in Colorado Springs, I set aside some time to ski. I hadn't skied in many years, but couldn't resist the chance to go since I was so close.

I drove the two and a half hours of scenic byways and arrived exactly where my GPS led. It seems Breckenidge has it's own weather system including snow and with temperatures at least 20 degrees below what Colorado Springs experienced.

I checked my car with the professional valet team and went to check in with the desk. I was immediately thanked for my Hilton Honors loyalty and status by a sincere reception host. When I couldn't find my driver's license, I presented my retired military identification card. He didn't miss a beat and thanked me for my service. Oh yeah, they had me then.

He handed me my room key, internet details and how to get my complimentary breakfast only available to Gold and Diamond members. He also notified me that I was eligible to join a group skiing what is called "First Tracks", the first group on the mountain. Could this get any better.

After settling in my room, I walked about a mile in the snowy 19 degree weather to pick up my ski rentals for the next day. I rented from Base Mountain Sports. They were very great to work with. The walk reminded me of my skiing back in the European villages. It was perfect. I got back to my room by 6:30, changed then explored a place to eat dinner. 

After another pleasant walk, I ended up going to eat at Kenosha Steak House where I enjoyed the buffalo chili and Spinach & Quinoa Salad. Both were full of flavor and I recommend you go with an appetite. After dinner, I headed back to my room for a good night sleep.

To be continued...

Going on a long trip? You can still exercise

A sure fire way to get a good workout, travel style... 

Walk/run between terminals 
Curl your bags 

For an extra challenge, try this: 
 Arrive at airport 1 hour before flight. Carry all bags, don’t roll them. 
Make sure connection flights are within 45 minutes of each other 

Once you get to the hotel:
100 push ups 

Find more great travel exercises

120 sit ups 
50 burpees 
150 air squats 
50 lunges each leg Swim.

Hilton Garden Inn Rockaway, NJ

This Hilton Garden Inn  Rockaway, NJ is right next to the Rockaway Townsquare Mall and the AMC theater. Just across the street is a busy Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant with a happy crowd. The inn has a lap swimming pool and small workout room with some weights, an elliptical machine and tread mill. 

If you work out, consider running the loop around the mall. It is a 1.5 mile circle of busy shopping traffic, but very accessible in the early mornings. The lap pool is large enough to provide a challenging swimming event.

It is close to the Quietman Irish Pub at http://www.quietmanpub.com/Quiet_Man_Pub/Welcome.html. This restaurant has steaks, seafood and vegetarian meals. The carrot cake is not to be missed.

Hilton Garden Inn, Annapolis

Twice in one week? Can it be? Yes, hopped to another hotel to earn those Hilton Points. Just down the road from the DoubleTree, the Hitlon Garden Inn Annapolis is in a very good location with great rooms and wonderful service.

The rooms are spacious and feature WIFI, remote printing, 32 inch flatscreen TV with DVD player, coffeemaker, refrigerator and microwave.

The Hilton Garden Inn is just 20 minutes from the Annopolis City Dock and the Naval Academy. Beautiful city worth checking out. I recommend the Federal House Bar and Grill for their great food and drink selection and friendly staff. I was in a light food mood and got the Crab Mango Salad, AWESOME! This meal consisted of fresh white crab meat, chunks of delicious mango, strawberry, greens and dressing.

DoubleTree Annapolis

The Doubletree Annapolis hotel is just 3 short miles from Naval Academy, state capital, and historic waterfront. The drive from Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA) is not very long unless you arrive during high traffic times. It's centrally located in Annapolis, MD, between Washington DC and Baltimore and very close to major corporations and a shopping mall.

I chose to eat at nearby at Union Jack's British Pub. Monday nights feature the popular trivia game where the whole crew can get involved. The questions are tough and the fun is easy. If you go there, be sure to have the 1/2 price burgers during happy hour. The One Eye Jack on an english muffin or the regular hamburger on Challah bread are both filling and AWESOME.

The hotel has a large swimming pool for lap swimming and spacious rooms for relaxing. Since the area is well developed there are sidewalks for those fitness walks or jogs. The area is safe and easy to get around in. Again, most places are within walking distance, or you can take the courtesy shuttle operated by friendly drivers. A tip of a couple of bucks should cover a night out.

Hampton Inn & Suites National Harbor / Alexandria Area

“Mr. Bennett, you are my special guest tonight.”

I smiled when I heard those words upon check in, because I knew what was coming next.

“As my special guest, we’ve upgraded your room.”

And upgrade they did. My room was a suite and with a beautiful view of the palatial Gaylord hotel just across the street.

My suite was spacious with a nice size flat screen TV, coffee maker and microwave. The lobby store provided great snacks for the late night munchies. The bathroom is large enough to move and groom, while the bed, chairs, coffee table and desk were comfortably spaced.

I had booked two of my three business trip nights at the Hampton Inn & Suites National Harbor / Alexandria Area. This wonderful hotel is built just a few blocks from the Potomac River just across the harbor from Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. It also has easy access to Fort Belvoir just 25 minutes from our hotel. Washington, D.C. is only 20 minutes away.

National Harbor is just a few short miles from Reagan National Airport (DCA) and well worth the drive. If you can travel before and after peak traffic hours, the drive to anywhere is pretty easy. However, for vacation purposes, you might not need to leave the area. If you do, you can drive, take a water taxi to Old Town or Georgetown and take further public transportation from there.

The National harbor boasts a lively mix of shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues. I ate a great Salmon meal with a Mexican twist at Rosa Mexicana restaurant. Afterward, I walked along the marina.

For this trip, I booked the National Harbor for two days and stayed at another location for the third night (will write about that later). Let's just say that this was the best hotel of the week for the value and experience. I sighed up for double and triple points and received 15,300 points for the week.

On my Way to King Diamond

My wife is on board and so are my travel plans. Currently I have 17 stays at Hilton this year. I only need 9 more and I'll have the elusive Diamond status. Heck, I'm traveling anyway, so why not make the best of it. I've got to say that the Hilton and affiliated hotels do seem like the best.

My wife and kids recently went to DC for the fall break. I am please to say my wife did stay at Hilton hotels on the way there and on her return trip. Next week I depart to remotes tropic and look forward to staying in those wonderful locals.

The the Hilton Honors Credit Card

Another way to rack up points is with a Hilton Credit Card. I have an American Express that I use while traveling. You can charge food, rooms, transportation and anything you desire at any time and watch your points rack up. This is part of the great Hilton deal in that points are always valuable. You never have to work too hard to earn points for a moving target. I use mine frequently to build up toward free stays.

What I’ve learned to do is use my AmEx card and turn in the receipt to my wife who writes a check. I don’t want to take in new debt to get these points. However, the rewards are worth using the card for daily expenses and paying them off immediately.

Five steps to increasing your points and stays

Get a Hilton Honors credit card and build points through purchases. You can get Visa or American Express or both. Hilton Honors gives generously giving up to 10 points for each dollar spend depending on product.

1. Check into a different Hilton Hotel each night. Moving up in status is quicker with stays. The Diamond status starts with 26 stays, not nights. For example, when I travel for a week, I stay in four different hotels. Sometimes they are quite close to each other. One night in a Hilton, the next in a Double Tree, next a Homewood Inn and Suites and etc. That comes out to four stays. If I just spend the week in one hotel, it only counts as one stay.
2. Look for values and specials. Sometimes Hilton offers double  points for stays at selected hotels. If your schedule is flexible, take up their offer.
3. Set your Hilton Honors profile to earn points. You can select to receive points instead of breakfast. Some hotels don’t offer free breakfast automatically, so they will offer points instead of the meal. Go through your profile and determine what you can exchange for points.
4. If you have a good chance of making Diamond status, don’t cash in your points. If you redeem points for a free stay, you don’t get credit for the stay. You can save a few hundred bucks, but wait until you reach diamond status. Then, you can redeem points and still get credit for the stay.
5. Use Airline miles and other awards programs to feed your Hilton points.

That's it, five ways to get the most out of Hilton Honors point opportunities. Join us for more information later.

Why Hiltonhop

Hilton Honors allow you to build up points while travelling. Earn enough points, you get free hotel stays. I’m currently working on hotel stays to move from Gold to Diamond status. It eluded me last year, but this year I will achieve it.

This requires a lot of work.  The quickest way to earn the Diamond status is to change hotels every night. This is tiring and for a five night working engagement, I change hotels four times. This also requires packing the luggage in such a way as to be able to pull out a new set of clothing for work and entertainment each day. This also requires packing in such a way as to prevent clothing from wrinkling.

I usually travel with a small duffel back or suitcase. My wife graciously taught me how to fold my cloths into crisp little bundles that maintained their shape through the duration of travel. My shirts, pants, ties, shorts, shoes, workout and exercise clothing, and etc all have a place.

Also, when I get a set of clothing, I carefully unpack and repack everything just to get the clothing out. It is a most inspiring ceremony the first few times, but soon, it becomes routing. The key is to make sure the suitcase is packed every night before the morning checkout. You never know when you might oversleep.

To prevent oversleeping, set all alarms as soon as you get into the hotel room. All Hilton hotels have alarm clocks, wakeup call service and you should also use watch or telephone wakeup alarms if available. Sometimes it’s hard enough to sleep on the road. If you do finally fall asleep, you want to be able to wake up and get moving in a timely manner.

During the week of 1-5 August I stayed in four great Hilton Hotels in the Crystal City, Arlington, Washington, DC area. 

The first night, I stayed at the Hilton Crystal City at National Airport, 2399 Jefferson Davis highway, Arlington, VA 22202, 703 418-6800. This hotel offered a small swimming pool, a fitness center and had an office space for public use. As a gold member, I received free internet and complimentary breakfast. The room had  a large bed, desk and couch. I was able to work for a few hours in relative peace and quiet.

That night I met friends to eat at the

The second night brought me to Double Tree Hotel 300 Army Drive, Arlington, VA 22202, 703 416 4126

The third night I stayed at Embassy Suites 1300 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA 22202 703 979-9799

The last night I stayed at Hilton Arlington 590 North Stafford Street, Arlington, VA 22203 703 528-6000

We ate lunch at the Hamburger Hamlet in the Crystal City shopping complex. That’s the key here, where I live everyone drives to work. In this metropolis, everyone commutes and spends of good deal of time walking from public transportation areas to their places of work or pleasure. So, the choice is walk in the open air during good weather or navigate the underground walking routes packed with shopping and food vendors.

Hamburger Hamlet was a delicious restaurant complete with a professional staff and competitive menu. True to it’s name, Hamburger Hamlet did have gourmet and regular burgers. However, it offers other wonderful meals. I had the Stella; a three piece meal. It comes with a sandwich of choice, salad and soup of the day. I had the open face veggie sandwich with tomato, olive, onion, reduced vinaigrette on a sourdough bread face. The soup was a great chicken gumbo.

We ate at Union Jacks in the mall by the Bolston Exit in Arlington. My meal was a Grilled Salmon with rice and seasonal vegetables. This meal was tender, fresh and just a perfect way to end a long day. The bar featured about 15 European (mostly British) beers on tab and twice as many in bottles and many non-alcoholic choices. The DJ took requests and kept the dinner alive with alternative hits from the 80’s, 90’s and early 2,000s. Shortly before my bedtime, they moved tables and built a dance floor.