Coming at you with a little something different today!  I mentioned on Friday (and probably way too much on social media over the past few weeks) that  I was co-hosting an event with my friend Richard of Award Travel 101 on Saturday at The Brig.  The event turned out wonderfully!

First, I have to give a big shoutout to The Brig!  They killed it.  If you’re in D.C. and haven’t checked out this new beer garden near the Navy Yard, you need to get there stat!  The staff couldn’t be friendlier, the beer and food is delicious (go for the soft pretzels!), and the space is amazing.  It’s entirely outdoors, however, there’s a covered area that fits a ton of people in the event of a pop-up shower (or in our case, a monsoon).

If you’ve been around here for a while now, you know that I love to take advantage of traveling with points and miles.  It’s how Michael and I travel to almost every place that we go!  Funny travel side story on how Richard and I first met – Michael and I were in Singapore visiting friends that live there when one of THEIR friends came and met us for happy hour and we got to talking about traveling with points and miles.  He mentioned that he was from Georgia and had a buddy that writes about that exact thing.  He mentioned Richard’s name, and of course, I already followed him on Twitter, but what I didn’t realize was that he actually lived in the D.C. area!  Richard and I connected when I arrived back stateside, and I’ve been learning more and more about the points and miles game from him ever since!

Richard is a contributor to ThePointsGuy.com and is the founder of the amazing Facebook group, Award Travel 101 – the group has over 30,000 people in it who are equally as enthusiastic about learning how to travel the world with points and miles!

What made the event really fun was the meshing of two different groups.  I invited my readers, blogger friends, and bffs while Richard invited his 30,000+ members from his Facebook group.  Everyone there was interested in learning more about traveling the world with points and miles.  And no matter what the starting level of knowledge on award travel was when everyone arrived to the event, everyone left knowing a little bit more!

The way I explain the travel hacking world to people that aren’t in it is that before I got into accumulating points and miles for travel, I had no idea that any of this was possible.  But as soon as I figured it out, I realized that there was a game being played all around me by people who are in the know on this type of travel, but I had no idea the game even existed.  Now I’m on the other side, and it’s incredible the things you can do by putting a little effort into learning how to play the game.

I highly encourage anyone interested in learning more about traveling with points and miles to join Richard’s Facebook group.  He and his team are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to travel, and they do a wonderful job of breaking it down so ANYONE can play the game!

Thank you to everyone who joined us on Saturday!  It was such a pleasure getting to meet so many new people and getting to meet a few of you who I’ve only known over social media until now!

One final shout out and then I’ll leave you to a few photos from the event.  Another perk of the event was the amazing giveaways we had (hello 5,000 Hyatt points and $100 to spend at Away!).  Thank you to SoulCycle, Take Five Meditation, and Hotel Hive for their generous donations!  All brands that I’m a huge fan of here in D.C.!

WHAT I’M WEARING