Here is some of the best travel news and notes from around the Internet:
- A great primer over on Travel Codex about when you can (and can NOT) use Alaska Airlines miles. Â I initially didn’t put much stock in Alaska miles, but since I learned about some of their great Mileage Plan partners, I have started getting some (though Bank of America TOTALLY screwed me on the recent checking account offer) – I’m planning on using Alaska miles as part of my next round the world trip
- Although I have never actually done one, I do enjoy the planning aspect of mileage running and elite status challenges.  Here’s Loyalty Traveler’s breakdown of the flights he took to complete a recent American Airlines elite status challenge
- Traveling with kids can be tricky and I greatly admire the folks who are able to travel the world long-term (we’re still working on that).  Here is Travel Babbo’s list of the top cities to take kids (organized by continent!)
- I enjoyed Travel is Free’s recap of him (and a few other bloggers) taking a roadtrip through Namibia.
- Did you know that the kind of junk mail credit card offers you get in the mail tells a lot about whether you’re rich or poor? Â (HT to @PFDigest on Twitter)
Up for more travel news? Â Here’s the previous installment: Reselling tutorial, hiking with kids, the Island Hopper, #familytravel and more
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
I was excited to read the “Top cities to take kids” article but was rather dissapointed. I would assume most traveling families look for budget options because we all know with a family everything is 2,3 sometimes 4 times as expensive and I assume most of your readers are of the frugal family travel mindset like myself, no? Here though, he talks about staying in upward of $500 a night hotels. Venice, Bora Bora? I wish we could travel like his family. All that article did was bum me out that my family will never get to travel that way.
Well, there’s some of that too. I don’t know what his budget is like overall, but I think that you can definitely get some value from some of the ideas of different cities with good things to do.