During last year’s winter trip, we took a bump on New Year’s Eve on the way home from Austin, Texas. This allowed me to turn 63,000 SkyMiles into $2,700 in Delta Air Lines vouchers.

Kim and I were very excited with the opportunity to turn one long day of travel into what could potentially be enough money in vouchers for another trip!

The vouchers were good to use for up to one year, so we started thinking about our options soon after.

A reminder of what we had to spend:

Kim, Lucas and I were booked on a flight from Austin to NYC. By giving up our seats, we each earned a $900 Delta Air Lines voucher. Theo was flying as a lap baby so he didn’t qualify for any benefit.

The Issues:

While a $900 airline voucher sounds amazing, I knew that if/ when we used it, we’d still be in for that amount for Theo. By the time, we’d most likely use our voucher, he’d be two years- old and require his own seat.

Some Options:

The voucher could be broken up to be used towards multiple flights but we wanted to use it for one trip. We only have so much time off, so we didn’t want to create multiple trips. Then again, it’s not like we could find much availability for places we’d want to go.

I only searched for international destinations. Those included islands in the Caribbean, Central & South America and Europe.

Flights to places like Belize were ridiculously expensive so I narrowed our options down to London, Paris and Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Our Decision:

I really wanted to visit Slovenia, but the weather was just going to be too cold and probably not worth visiting for this winter break.

This left us with London and Paris.

Kim and I have both visited Paris, but it was separately and close to 20 years ago. Paris ended up being the winner due to cost of the flight, the desire to revisit France and the opportunity to visit a new country during the trip- Monaco.

Costs:

The cost of the flight differs for adults and kids. (The kid tickets were slightly cheaper.)

Th adult tickets came out to $115.31 each after using our $900 voucher. I forgot to write down the exact amount for the child tickets but it was around $970. This means that Lucas’s ticket cost approximately $70 and Theo’s was full price!

Final Thoughts:

Flights to Paris can be had for much less than our tickets cost. However, you’re not likely to find bargain basement flights to Paris over Christmas and New Years.

In the end, I’m happy with what we booked with our Delta Air Lines vouchers.

We’ll get to revisit Paris for a few days (hopefully it’s peaceful), take the kids to Disneyland Paris, visit Nice- a city in France we’ve yet to check out and see a new country by visiting Monaco.