Iceland + Paris – Planning and Cost

A few of my friends had been to Iceland and all of them had only good things to say about the experience, especially the beautiful nature in the country. Therefore, this destination had always been on my list of “waiting for the right time”. Until recently there weren’t any direct flights from Chicago to Iceland and the easiest and most convenient way to get there was flying to Boston and then continuing to Reykjavik on Icelandair or WOW Air. Well, last year Icelandair announced that they would start (resume) non-stop flights from Chicago to Reykjavik in March of 2016. The introductory fares were decently priced ($600+), so I figured this was the perfect opportunity to pay my respect to the famous Eyjafjallajökull.

One cool thing about Icelandair is that if you fly with them from USA to Europe, you can have a free stopover in Iceland (up to seven nights). A thought of trying a shot of brennivin and washing it off with cafe au lait on the same trip was very tempting – I started looking at options to combine Reykjavik/Paris into one trip. My enthusiasm dropped when I saw the airfare cost – for the dates that worked for me (four days in Iceland + two days in Paris) the flights were over $1,600, way over my budget.

A cheaper option was to book it as two separate round trip flights – Chicago to Reykjavik + Reykjavik to Paris; the cheapest price came out to $1,013 ($736+$277) still pricey in my opinion.

My third option was to buy a one way ticket from Chicago to Paris on Icelandair with a stopover in Reykjavik and book an award ticket with miles on the way back. Third time is the charm as they say – the total came out to $454.29 for the Icelandair portion and 20,000 miles + $63.10 on the way back on an award ticket with American Airlines. To make it even better, I used my Citi Prestige card (which gives me an annual $250 travel credit) to pay for my first flight – that brought the cost down to $204.29 ($454.29-$250).

Now I needed to figure out another piece of the trip – where to sleep and shower. There were a few chain hotels in Reykjavik that were bookable (at least in theory) with points but either they weren’t available for my dates or required more points per night than I was willing to pay. So, I opted for the traditional route and decided to find a reasonably priced hotel/motel/hostel and book it with my Barclay’s Arrival Plus credit card, which let’s you redeem your “miles” for a travel related statement credit. After a bit of digging online, Hotel Orkin seemed like the best choice – the total price for four nights came out to $407 including breakfast. Once the $407 charge shows up on my credit card statement I will redeem 41,000 arrival miles to get the statement credit; so basically my cost for the hotel will be zero.

After checking hotel prices in Paris I knew right away – cash was not an option, I needed to look for alternative ways. Since I had some Club Carlson points sitting in my account and the Radisson Blu Champs Elysees hotel had award availability for my dates, it seemed like a good option to redeem 140,000 points for two nights –  rooms there were going for $330+ tax per night and the total price would’ve been $667.66 for two nights; the hotel was literally a two minute walk from the Arc de Triomphe and right on the Champs Elysees boulevard.

Bottom Line

Had I booked the same exact trip with cash only, it would have cost me over $2,000. Now my total cash cost for the flights (Chicago to Reykjavik to Paris to Chicago) and hotels (four nights in Reykjavik and two nights in Paris) came out to $267.39 ($204.29+$63.10) plus 41,000 Arrival miles, 140,000 Club Carlson points and 20,000 American miles. The “miles and points” game might seem a bit complicated at first, but it’s totally worth it if you play it right.