This trip has been in the planning stage since last January 2025. It all started with a beefy American Express Membership Rewards 30% transfer bonus to Air France Flying Blue offer.
A quick look at Flying Blue award availability showed that we could get to Paris at a reasonable price, but where else?
Turns out we could book two seats in Business Class on Air France for 92,000 miles per person to Casablanca. With the transfer bonus that meant we would pay 71,000 Amex points (math!) and $245 in taxes per person to get there.
So now that we got ourselves to Casablanca, which is pretty much in the middle of Morocco, it was a matter of sketching the outlines of the trip and the places we’d go.
But how to get back? Without any solid plans, it seemed safe to plan on returning from Madrid. It gave us the most options and in the worst case scenario we could fly from someplace in Morocco to Madrid in order to begin our return trip.
So I looked at Flying Blue for a return from Madrid and found us two seats in Business Class back to Chicago for 55,000 Flying Blue points which translated to 42,500 Amex points (again math!) and $303 in taxes per person to get home.
Flights sorted!
This gave us a trip length of about 15 days at a total cost of 113,500 Amex points plus $548 in taxes per person for flights that had a cash cost of about $8,500 per person. A redemption value of about 7 cents per mile. Overall an excellent booking!
Wait until you see what we’ve planned! It will be a magical trip through a magical land. So come join us over the holidays for our trip to Morocco!
