I’m going to a wedding in New York in a couple weeks and I’m taking the long way home back to Michigan. Once I found out the details for all of the events for the weekend, I was ready to book my flights back home. Unfortunately, my flight options weren’t that good.

I ideally wanted to fly back to Michigan on Sunday so that I didn’t have to pay for an extra night in the city, but the reasonably-priced flight options all departed between 6:00 and 7:00am. That wasn’t going to work the morning after a wedding. Flight options in the afternoon were quite a bit more expensive. After checking award availability for various flight options and still not coming up with anything that I wanted to book, I was ready to come up with a different plan.

I still have Kimpton Inner Circle status and one of the perks of that status is that I’m able to stay for one night at their new hotels for free. Right now they have three new hotels: The Kimpton Schofield Hotel in Cleveland, OH, The Kimpton Cardinal Hotel in Winston-Salem, NC, and the Tideline Ocean Resort and Spa in Palm Beach, FL.

Cleveland sounded like a great place to head after the wedding in NYC for a day. I ran my flight searches again looking for fares and award availability from New York to Cleveland and again came up short. My options were no better than heading straight back to Michigan.

Next, I considered heading to Winston-Salem, NC and spending a night there before heading to Cleveland for a night. This option was considerably worse that flying to Cleveland or Detroit.

Finally, I decided to check out flights to Florida. Lo and behold – there were reasonably priced flights with reasonable timing into Palm Beach. Of course, that alone didn’t mean the trip was going to work out. The next challenge was to find a car rental without a one-way fee that would give me unlimited miles.

Well, that didn’t end up being too tough either. As an added bonus, my Grandma lives in Florida, so I’m going to be able to visit her for a day.

Overall, taking the long way home from NYC is going to cost me $200 – $300 more than flying directly back to Michigan would have, but I get to visit my Grandma, stay in three new Kimpton hotels, and I’ll have two $50 dining credits to use at those hotels as well.

This is also my final hurrah as a Kimpton Inner Circle member, so I’m excited to go out with a bang!