Saturday, January 07, 2006

Last Trip for the DINKs

I just booked our last trip as DINKs (Double Income No Kids). It will only be a long weekend that I have coming up because of a day off from school. Can't swing the spring break trip this year since it occurs too late and the doctor said I can't fly then.

So, a long weekend trip means we need to fly domestic. So, we're going to FL, Tampa to be exact.

I booked it all on Orbitz. I am a bit of a reasearcher with a need to be thrify, so I made up all these spreadsheets looking for the bext deal.

We are flying Midwest Airlines. Chose them because we wanted decent seats (2 large leather seats in a row); they call their flights business class. Non-stop flights were significantly more expensive and MWA only has a stop in Milwaukee for 40 min., so not even a stop really. So, that became our choice. I might have paid the extra money to fly 1st class on Sun-Country, but since I am not drinking it makes it not as worth it, and we still get the same types of seats on MWA (just no free booze for Andy.) We have liked flying MWA.

Booked a mid-size car through Avis. Could have been really cheap and got the economy size, but for the extra $40 (entire time) it is worth it to have more room and not have Andy complaining that his knees are tickling his nose.

I wanted to stay some place decent. For some reason I kept convincing myself to spend more money on everything -- TOTALLY NOT LIKE ME. I kept thinking would I look back and regret spending the extra money for a nicer place or would I regret not spending it -- or the chance everything would have been fine and there would be no regrets. I decided to spend more money, besides we're only taking a long-weekend break and aren't going someplace for a whole week.

We are staying at the The Best Western All Suites Hotel - Busch Gardens. The things that did it for us was the suites (has a 2 rooms each w/ TV, kitchenette, sitting area), free hot breakfast, free wireless interent in the room, king-size bed, 2for1 happy hour in their bar & grill, free ping pong tables and pool tables, heated pool (most pools in Tampa I find are heated, but you don't want to go to one that isn't), free parking, etc. It seems much more resort like than hotel like and I want more of a vacation.

Granted, we could have stayed at even nicer places, but I didn't find spending the extra money to be worth it, once I found this place.

We thought we might go to the Museum of Sciene & Industry, Lowry Park Zoo, The Pier, & Yuengling Brewery. I know - a pregnant lady going to a brewery -- well, I don't have to drink it, and since I am not normally a beer drinker I don't feel so bad, but I do like doing the tours and some places also brew root beer & cream soda at them. Andy thought that Yuengling was just in PA, but apprently their other location is Tampa. Go figure. Not sure if we'll do all those things, as we want to do a lot of sitting too.

We are all about the relaxing sitting vacation with a few events thrown in.

1 comment:

McBean said...

My Internet brother Jason (he is a link on my blog) lives in Tampa. I've never been there. I'll ask him what's fun to do out there and let you know what he says.