Thanks Stephen, no I wasn’t aware of the 10am trick. Will check it out. Ya phone is for 2, we have Irish sim cards we pop in when in the EU for cheap enough. We have looked at the flight points things but I think I’m too picky in terms of flight times and routes now with a smallie that they would be too much effort and too limiting. We have a high percent cash back credit card so that kind of offsets our costs a bit that way. I’ll check again though, maybe things have changed since I last checked.

The phone bills, I assume is for two people so highly doubt this helps. I have FIDO for $35 a month for 110GB / month. But when abroad a lot of people recommend Airalo, or Saily. However I’ve been using Global YO. And rather than picking the country if you look at the region or world wide section I usually get 10GB for 30 Days for $10 USD and works in a number of countries.

And again another thing you might also know but just in case. I have found with Air Canada points to Europe are usually around 35,000 Aeroplan points (this is from West coast thought). But with Aerlingus you can get flights with Avios as low as 13,500 points. I have an RBC Avion card, these points can be moved to British Airways and from there you can move them to both Aerlingus and Iberia. British airways is terrible to use the points. From a Canadian perspective the Aeroplan points are usually worth about 2 cents per point as are avion. But I find when you use them as avios you get way more bang for your buck as the points are a lot lower on Aerlingus. Plus this could potentially help on flights to Spain from Ireland (they don’t do Portugal from Dublin I dont think). Just bear in mind that sometimes the extra fee they add on is in USD and not Canadian $$.

Sorry if some of this is useless info for yourself, but perhaps someone in the comments might find it helpful!!!