Intro

Chestnut’s famous saying: Generally speaking, the more something gets changed, the worse it becomes! The old cat sleeps on the roof, passed down from generation to generation. The waves behind the Yangtze push the waves ahead, and even weasels are giving birth to hedgehogs now—each generation is worse than the last!

So once again, let me offer everyone this warning—if you’re holding a discontinued credit card and the bank invites you to Upgrade, do not fall for it! Put yourself in their shoes: they clearly think the old setup is no longer profitable, which is why they shut down the original Program and rolled out a new card. Once you take the bait, it’s almost guaranteed to be a losing deal for you.

Right now I’m holding both the new and old IHG cards... I really regret not trying to downgrade the new card to the old $49 annual fee version while the old card was still around! Now that the old card is no longer open to applications, there’s basically no way the system would recognize that move anymore.

Redemption

I was planning to go to Temecula for Labor Day and had my eye on the newly built StayBridge there. I first searched for a Saturday check-in and Sunday check-out, and the result was OOS... the system wouldn’t recognize it. What???

So I tried a different approach—Sunday check-in and Monday check-out. This time the IHG “system recognized it” and showed a Free night available for redemption, so I booked it immediately without a second thought—act fast or miss out!

March Field Air Museum

On the way to Temecula, I stopped by this Air Museum first. Admission Fee was $12 per person.

Honestly, the Museum was pretty good. The only downside was that a lot of the exhibits are outside because of their size, and Southern California in early September is just way too hot!

Just sharing two quick photos:

Photo 1. The star indoor exhibit: the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft.

Photo 2. The star outdoor exhibit: the B52 Stratofortress bomber.

Even the pencil drawing in the restroom showed a B52 dropping bombs... I fear neither heaven nor earth, but I do fear airplanes pooping!

That way, the indoor and outdoor themes stay perfectly in sync. Very fitting indeed.

Check-in

After driving to Temecula, I checked in.

First, the standard key card glamour shot!

The front desk gave me the Information on a sheet of paper.

I had already emailed ahead to ask, and they do offer free breakfast. The breakfast hours are shown below. Since I checked in on Sunday, that meant I could get food starting at 6:30am the next morning!

Here’s a quick look at the lobby. This was basically it—completely empty...

Looks like this is where breakfast would be served the next morning.

There were only four floors total, and I was assigned to the top floor.

Straight up to the fourth floor by elevator!

A shot of the hallway!

And now a few photos of the room~~

Kitchen and closet.

Bathroom.

Temecula Downtown

Then I drove to Temecula Downtown. This is that iconic “gateway” sign, and in person it actually looked pretty small—not much of a presence at all!

Temecula’s Civic Center.

Main Street Temecula Bridge, with the Civic Center in the distance.

This is where I had dinner.

At sunset, all the rabbits came out. Try counting how many little bunnies are in the photo!

Breakfast

Since this place offered free Breakfast, of course I went to take advantage of it.

I’ve always been a basic member and never chase Status to the point of exhausting myself. If a hotel doesn’t offer free breakfast, I’ll just head out to McDonald’s instead. Bottom line: Travel is for having fun, not for obsessing over free breakfast.

The next morning I went downstairs to the hotel lobby. The place that had been empty the day before now had food, so it was time to start hunting!

Round one: I grabbed all this. As a guy, I still need meat to fill my stomach!

Round two: I went over to the waffle machine and made a few DIY waffles!

Heading Back

It was about time, so we checked out and started heading back.

On the way, we spotted a pond called Temecula Duck Pond and park. You can look it up on Google Map yourself!

But the first thing that came into view was actually a torii gate.

This is a friendship-city monument for Temecula and Daisen Town. That raises the question: which Daisen is it?

Fortunately, the pronunciation is written clearly enough (Daisen). It refers to Daisen in Tottori Prefecture, not Oyama in Kanagawa Prefecture (the pronunciation for that one is completely different: Ooyama).

A whole flock of ducks immediately reminded me of a childhood nursery rhyme: “Our family raised a flock of little ducks, and every day I herded them to the pond.”

On the way back, we also stopped once more by the Winery vineyards.

Continuing on, we made another stop in Perris to visit the Southern California Railway Museum.

The collection was quite good, but unfortunately it was just like the Air Museum mentioned earlier—the weather was so hot it was about to turn Chestnut into a roasted chestnut!

A Los Angeles narrow-gauge streetcar. You can see in the photo that the track is dual-gauge, and this car uses the inner narrow-gauge rails.

A hundred years ago, Los Angeles also had streetcars. Now they have disappeared without a trace, so the only place to see these remnants is here.

As this century-old car got moving, the bogies creaked and groaned. Chestnut's feeling was that this thing can really only run around inside a museum for fun now; hitting a top operating speed of 15km/h would already be pretty good!

For details on the car, see: https://socalrailway.org/collections/los-angeles-railway/1201-details/

Do readers in Los Angeles still remember this one? It's Nippon Sharyo P865, which once ran on the Expo Line and Green Line. It was fully retired after 2018, and now the only place to see it again is in a museum.

One last photo: the changing of the guard on the last day of 2016, from Nippon Sharyo P865 to Kinki Sharyo P3010.

Summary

The purpose of this trip was still the same: to find a way to use up an IHG FN over a short holiday weekend. The Staybridge redeemed this time was a newly built hotel in Temecula (when this post was written, the satellite map still showed the site under construction), and the value was quite good.

Because of Labor Day pricing, the redemption value of this FN came out to around $280-$290, far above the annual fee on either the old or new Chase IHG cards, so it was definitely worth trying.