Saturday, December 15, 2007

My vacation plans...

I want to spend less than $100/day for 2 people eating out every meal. We did not reserve a room with a kitchen, and while we might eat breakfast in, we are looking forward to dining out in Vancouver a lot. We dearly miss Asian cuisine and it's time to indulge. We're going to have everything that grew up with and no longer can get.

To save money I'm sticking 2 boxes of granola bars in my suitcase, 1 box of oatmeal as quick snacks. This is because we're going snowboarding for 3 days and we want to maximize our time snowboarding. Another trick I'll be using, is I plan on not drinking during this trip because I am in the process of losing weight and it will keep the daily expense of food down.

Today I booked our hotel in Vancouver for $89/night including taxes. Taxes were $16/night so the room actually only cost $73/night. The taxes in Canada includes a General Sale Tax (GST) or consumption tax. Our room originally cost $92/night but we got a $50 credit for booking a hotel room using a mastercard on travelocity. Nice deal, so 3 nights for $269.

For snowboarding, we're spending $1062 for 4 nights/3 days of skiing and hotel. This includes the 10% lodging tax and 6% GST. So we're paying $265/day for skiing and hotel for 2 people. Not bad considering lift tickets are $70/day/per person.

An added expense is our dog boarding. We dropped the dogs off a day early (today) because of the storm coming and I was worried about driving out tomorrow night to drop them off. Unfortunately the only kennel we trust is about a 1 hour drive. It cost us $307 for 11 days of boarding, not a bad deal because we got a 10% off for the number of days.

So our running total thus far for the trip
Airline Tickets $90
Dog Boarding $307
Snowboarding $1062
Vancouver Hotel $269

Running Total - $1728

Estimated Food $800
Sights $500

Estimated Total $3028, I wonder what the real total will be.

3 comments:

Momma O said...

Does it really cost $50 a person to eat???? Even at a pretty nice resturant here, two people can eat for about $50 including tip, if one is not drinking alcohol.

Anonymous said...

The $50/person budget is not for one meal but for three meals per day.

Barb1954

Living Almost Large said...

Spot on Barb. And out where I live $50/per person doesn't get you into a nice restaurant. It will buy you dinner at an okay restaurant. Easily with entrees running $20-25/per person, then tax and tip you are lookin more like $75 for dinner.

Lunch maybe $40. It really depends on where you lives.