Monday, April 28, 2008

Washington DC Trip: The Finances


My husband and I went on a whirlwind tour of our country's capital last weekend. We left late on Thursday for Raleigh, NC, drove to DC on Friday morning, drove back to Raleigh Sunday night, and left Monday morning! We had a blast!

As far as the financial aspect of things, I was actually pretty surprised.

Breakfast was either provided by the friend we were staying with or free at the hotel, but for various reasons, we ate out every single lunch and dinner. I knew that was going to get expensive, but I wasn't sure exactly how it would all come out.

We ended up spending a lot eating out, but almost nothing for entertainment (since all of the DC museums are FREE!). I think it came out as a pretty decent wash. Here's the breakdown:

Food: $175
Entertainment: $39
Parking: $44
Lodging: $100
Transportation: $415

The transportation costs were just the plane tickets. Our friend graciously paid all of the gasoline costs. We tried to make up for it by paying for some of his meals, but I think we got the better end of that deal :) (Thanks, Tom!)

I highly recommend vacationing in Washington DC. A lot of the awesome things to do there are free, and you could have a very frugal vacation if you were to buy your food at a grocery store instead of eating out like we did.

What's your favorite frugal vacation spot?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's also a big advantage of living in DC. If you want to "do" something, there's lots of free stuff available. And lots of stuff you have to pay for, but I don't know if we'll ever get through the free stuff.

Anonymous said...

Definitely!