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As part of our recent trip to San Juan Puerto Rico, Carolyn and I stayed 3 nights in the Hyatt House San Juan.  It’s a Category 2 hotel, which requires 8,000 Hyatt points per night.  We used 24,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards to transfer to Hyatt and then book the rooms.

surprise-chase-hyatt-booking

The nice thing about this particular hotel is that (almost) ALL of the room types were available for the 8000 points, so naturally I got the nicest one (the 477 square foot 1BR suite!).  Compared to the daily rate offered ($275 / night), that was about 3.4 cents per point, a pretty good redemption I think!

Getting to the Hyatt House San Juan from the airport

There are buses that go from the airport to the Miramar area of San Juan, where the Hyatt House San Juan is located, but there is no Uber service at this time, and the buses are pretty unreliable (from what I hear), so most people will take a taxi (as we did).

It’s $17 plus $1 per bag, with an additional charge if you have more than 4 passengers.  Plus a tip, we paid $22, and the ride took about 10-15 minutes.

Suite style

Our Hyatt House San Juan suite came with a fridge, dishwasher, microwave and a stove-top, so since we were planning on being here for a few days, we ended up making a trip to the Pueblo Supermercado to pick up a few things rather than eating out at restaurants for every meal.

I had reached out on Twitter to Hyatt and then again on the phone trying to see what kind of upgrades were available.

(SEE ALSO: List of Airline and Hotel Twitter contacts)

Specifically, I was looking for lounge access, though it turns out that this hotel doesn’t have any kind of executive lounge.  They told me I was already in the best kind of room they had (1 bedroom suite), and when I asked about a view, they told me I was in a “bay view”.

Here are some pics of the suite and the rest of the Hyatt House San Juan.  You can see the “bay view” (spoiler alert: unless you count an abandoned field and construction equipment as a “bay”, that would be a big NO)

 

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Location of the Hyatt House San Juan

One minor downside is the location within San Juan, though I guess that depends on what you’re looking for.

If you

  • a) don’t mind walking places,
  • or b) don’t mind paying for taxis

you should be okay.  We’re cheap, but don’t mind walking, so we didn’t mind 🙂

The Hyatt House San Juan isn’t RIGHT on the beach.  The Playita Condado is about a 15 minute walk and there is a larger beach about 30 minutes down, both in the Condado area of town.  Old San Juan is also a bit away – the front desk recommended a taxi there (which is a flat fare of $15), but we walked there in the morning (but took the taxi back)

Supermarket

As I mentioned, there is a Supermercado Pueblo about a ten minute walk away from the hotel, and since the suite has a stove-top, refrigerator and microwave, we went out there to buy a bit of food there.  To get there, go left out of the Hyatt House, up the hill and around the corner to the first traffic light, then left there on Calle Miramar until it dead-ends on Avenida Ponce de Leon.  Turn right, and there’s a bit of an entertainment district on Ponce de Leon, and the Supermercado Pueblo will be shortly on your right.

We ended up buying among other things a thing of frozen tostones (plantains) but realized we had no oil to fry them in (the curses of living in a house where you just assume that you HAVE stuff like that!! ).  Thankfully, when we asked down at the front desk, they hooked us up with some oil that they had back in the kitchen.

Breakfast

One annoying this was on the first night, they were apparently doing some work somewhere in the hotel as there was some knocking and then drilling that woke me up about 7:45 a.m.  When I went down to the front desk for breakfast, I mentioned it and they must have gotten some other complaints, as they said that they had stopped and would resume at 10 a.m.  Nice, but too bad for me as I was already awake by then 🙂

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Breakfast was good – everything you hoped for.  As you can see from the pictures, that included an omelet bar which is always a fun time.  Of course, that led to the following dilemma

I have actually seen that many Hyatt Houses also offer an Evening Social (code: free dinner), though Hyatt House San Juan did not.  Combined with the fact that many Hyatt House hotels are Category 1 or Category 2 (requiring 5000 or 8000 Hyatt / Chase points, they may be a definite go-to for upcoming family vacations

(SEE ALSO: Which hotels give dinner for free?)

(SEE ALSO: Chase Ultimate Rewards: 5 reasons I think they’re the best miles out there)


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