Monday, July 23, 2012

Making the most of a very long drive - part 3


As for planning ahead and saving money for our hotel during the trip we tried something different. We all know that walking up to a hotel tends to be the most expensive way to book. Online from different sites like Hotwire you can get awesome deals, but it has to be ahead of time. With us going through the night after a fairly long day to start we didn't know how far we would get, we didn't want to underestimate and get stuck in not getting to go farther or overestimate and not be able to make it or push ourselves to a dangerous spot in driving too tired. 

So we decided to hold off and then plan to stop at a McDonalds for lunch (or when we knew we were a few hours from wanting to stop). The key was that we know that most McDs now have internet, so there we could go online and book. 

Online searching we looked at places within an hour from eachother comparing prices and what hotels had to offer. 

Obviously we wanted as low of a price as possible, but we also wanted a place with a pool for Hannah to get to do something fun at the end of the day and get out some of that energy and free breakfast so we could just eat and go easily. 

We found a great rated hotel for $49. It had a pool and free breakfast and although it was slightly off our original course, taking that route did not take any more time! Even better when we arrived to our nice hotel we were informed by the desk guy that the rate was $130 for the night usually and they had just sold out, so clearly we saved a lot by booking online ahead of time! 


Truth be told it was not perfect. We were not informed when we got in that the outdoor pool closed at 7pm. So us slowly getting settled for 30 minutes before going to the pool at 7:03 backfired in us just missing that chance. So instead Hannah blew bubbles and pretended to swim in the tub...it worked, but not our original plan! 

Truth be told, something no matter how much you prepare and ask ahead of time you can not predict some things. Like a fire alarm going off just as you are drifting off to sleep, waking you all up and having to go outside and wait for the trucks to come to check things out can mean less sleep than you intended. (It was just a little kid that pulled it accidentily but still they had to do it all to code). As a result, we ended up changing our alarm time and sleeping in longer since we needed a good nights sleep! It just meant getting into Halifax later than planned, but it all worked out okay! 


No comments:

Post a Comment