I finished my Hot Springs, Arkansas, travel video! You can watch it below or click here. If you are interested to know how I made my videos, see this blog post.
You can watch other travel videos here. Now my next task is to put together all the recent survey results about sharing online photos of your kids. I ended up with 141 responses, so thanks to everyone who contributed!
Hot Springs, AR July 2019 from Amanda Bumgarner on Vimeo.
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Hot Springs, Arkansas | Part Final
8.08.2019
I wanted to share just a few more photos and stories from our trip to Arkansas a few weeks ago. Don't worry. This post doesn't involve anymore slightly horrifying stories about bodily fluids ;)
I plan the majority (okay all) of our trips, and one thing I like to do is make a general list of things to see and places to eat before we get there. I mean, I guess probably everyone who plans a trip does this. It's just good to have an idea of some things you want to be sure and make time for!
This was mentioned in my previous post, but while on vacation, we like to eat good food, and we had plenty of good options in Hot Springs. Saturday morning we went to Will's Cinnamon Shop and got cinnamon rolls. The kids each had their own portion of mini rolls with a side cup of icing, and they will add sprinkles for free! Jordan and I split a large cinnamon roll because we were trying to be good, but honestly we both wished we'd just gotten our own. They were delicious!
We had planned to head to the Mid-America Science Museum after cinnamon rolls, but we opted to go on a hike/walk before it got too hot in the afternoon. Plus we thought the kids might need to run off some of the sugar.
We started up a trail to the Mountain Overlook, which is where they have a large tower you can pay to go to the top of and get a great scenic view of the national forest. Jordan got ambitious and thought the kids would actually make it all the way up the trail, but I didn't get my hopes up. They enjoyed climbing the rocks and running through the forest, but we ended up stopping after a bit and carrying them all the way back down because they both said their legs got tired. We drove to the top like the adventurers we are ;) But we did get excited about the kids getting old enough to do some real hiking one day!
After everyone got hot and hungry, we went to lunch! I saw great reviews for a place called Bailey's Dairy Treat, which was supposed to have amazing burgers and really good fried rice. I'm usually slightly scared of places that claim to be good at serving both of those things, but if I've learned nothing else from growing up with my dad taking us on road trips, it's that if a place looks like a shack on the outside then the food is most likely amazing.
Bailey's certainly hit the spot! Suuuuper delicious, greasy, cheesy burgers. The kids both got hot dogs, and after having a total meltdown because our food wasn't coming fast enough, J took one bite of his hot dog and claimed he was done eating. So that was weird, but whatever. I don't try to understand toddlers. Well, sometimes I do, but I just end up being more confused haha.
After we had lunch and J took a nap (R hasn't napped in years), we went to the Mid-America Science Museum! We have a year pass to the Oklahoma City Science Museum, and no offense to Arkansas, but our science museum is way better. Just saying! But it was fun to get to see another city's science museum, and it was super hot out by this point so being able to have a space for the kids to play inside was nice.
There was this foam pit thing in the middle, and both kids stayed in there for like 45 minutes building forts, and R found a few little girls to play with. J was cracking me up. He kept throwing the foam blocks at these two boys who were at least 7 or 8 years old even after they tried to shoo him away. I probably should have gone in there and told him to stop, but it was so funny he was messing with boys like three times his age at least!
We ate dinner at a bathhouse on the main street and did a bit of walking before it was back to the Air BnB for bedtime! We were hopeful they would be super tired and pass out instantly, but J stayed awake foreeeeeeever and ended up sitting on my lap in the living room while Jordan and I watched Hitch on the TV. I guess he saw his first movie! ha. I usually would not endorse that, but it's vacation! On vacation you do things you wouldn't normally do.
All in all, this was a great first family vacation. A good drivable distance, lots of yummy food, lots of outside play time, and good memories! So far we haven't been on a vacation we wouldn't be happy to return to. I'm thankful for time off work, health, and some extra cash to able to take a long weekend trip like this.
It was challenging with the kids sometimes, and we definitely had our moments. I don't want to give the impression that everything was easy! It wasn't. There were meltdowns and tantrums and frustrating situations. But l loved having some extra time with my little family, and the good times outweighed the rough ones for sure. I wonder where we will end up going for our next trip!
Oh! And if you're wondering about car activities and how they did on the drive, check out this post I wrote a while back. Short story is that we don't (yet) do iPads or electronics in the car, and they just play and read books and do just fine! That post has some ideas for activities and things. Also, I took our Mimmo Caddy on the trip and it was the perfect thing! So handy, and I'm really glad we had it. I can verify that we did use it in real life and it was quite handy.
PLACES WE'VE TRAVELED THAT I'VE BLOGGED ABOUT
(Not in any order, and these are the ones that came to mind. I'm sure there are more.)
Branson, Missouri (with R; pregnant with J)
Charlottesville, Virginia (with R 7 months old)
Keystone, South Dakota (no kids)
Boston, Massachusetts (no kids)
Liverpool, Cambridge, York, London (UK) (no kids)
Nassau, Bahamas (30 weeks pregnant with R)
Chicago (with R 12 months old)
We started up a trail to the Mountain Overlook, which is where they have a large tower you can pay to go to the top of and get a great scenic view of the national forest. Jordan got ambitious and thought the kids would actually make it all the way up the trail, but I didn't get my hopes up. They enjoyed climbing the rocks and running through the forest, but we ended up stopping after a bit and carrying them all the way back down because they both said their legs got tired. We drove to the top like the adventurers we are ;) But we did get excited about the kids getting old enough to do some real hiking one day!
We ate dinner at a bathhouse on the main street and did a bit of walking before it was back to the Air BnB for bedtime! We were hopeful they would be super tired and pass out instantly, but J stayed awake foreeeeeeever and ended up sitting on my lap in the living room while Jordan and I watched Hitch on the TV. I guess he saw his first movie! ha. I usually would not endorse that, but it's vacation! On vacation you do things you wouldn't normally do.
It was challenging with the kids sometimes, and we definitely had our moments. I don't want to give the impression that everything was easy! It wasn't. There were meltdowns and tantrums and frustrating situations. But l loved having some extra time with my little family, and the good times outweighed the rough ones for sure. I wonder where we will end up going for our next trip!
Oh! And if you're wondering about car activities and how they did on the drive, check out this post I wrote a while back. Short story is that we don't (yet) do iPads or electronics in the car, and they just play and read books and do just fine! That post has some ideas for activities and things. Also, I took our Mimmo Caddy on the trip and it was the perfect thing! So handy, and I'm really glad we had it. I can verify that we did use it in real life and it was quite handy.
PLACES WE'VE TRAVELED THAT I'VE BLOGGED ABOUT
(Not in any order, and these are the ones that came to mind. I'm sure there are more.)
Branson, Missouri (with R; pregnant with J)
Charlottesville, Virginia (with R 7 months old)
Keystone, South Dakota (no kids)
Boston, Massachusetts (no kids)
Liverpool, Cambridge, York, London (UK) (no kids)
Nassau, Bahamas (30 weeks pregnant with R)
Chicago (with R 12 months old)
Hot Springs, Arkansas | Photos + A Story about Poop that Doesn't Involve Either of My Kids
8.05.2019
I uploaded all the pictures from our trip that I took on my big camera, and there are way more of J than of R! I feel a little guilty about it, but it seemed like on this trip for some reason whenever I wanted to take a picture, R was nowhere to be found or she just wouldn't stop running around. If you have multiple kids, do you ever feel like you take more pictures of one than the other sometimes? I definitely didn't mean to!
Anyway, I've digressed before I've even started. They pretty much both never stopped running, but by the end of the trip we could tell they were tired. They kept asking to be carried everywhere and we had to bust out the strollers. Their little legs aren't used to the kind of hills they had in Arkansas! (It felt like a mountain to us lol, but I'm sure people in the other parts of the country would chuckle at that.)
I know not everyone would choose Arkansas for a vacation spot, but I wanted somewhere within driving distance but longer than just 3 hours. Since we drive to Texas frequently, it has stopped feeling like 3 hours in the car exactly counts as a "trip." I wanted somewhere new, somewhere low key, and even though the kids are definitely not at an age where they can be formerly hiking anywhere, they both are obsessed with being outside, and I loved the idea of introducing them to an actual forest with lots of tall trees and rocks to climb on. Hot Springs did not disappoint!
We were there 3 nights + 2.5 days and didn't even see everything I had on my list. We'd be happy to go back and definitely recommend it as a vacation spot with kids or without :)
I found us a cute little Air Bnb house about 3 minutes away (driving) from the main touristy street. Side note: I am obsessed with Air Bnb. I've had such success finding great places to stay for good prices and honestly never had a bad experience (knock on wood!).
Back in the day, Hot Springs was the place to go if you wanted to soak in a bath house, and the main street has a row of beautiful bath houses you can go in and tour. The water that comes up from the ground is literally hot. That was one of the neatest things! They have natural springs and fountains that constantly flow, and when you touch the water it's hot. We could see steam rising from the water! The kids were more interested in climbing the stairs over and over and over (and over) than the water, but Jordan and I thought it was super neat. We kept looking at each other and saying, "It's HOT. So crazy!" ha.
Friday morning we ate breakfast at The Pancake Shop, which was on the main street. We honestly felt like the food was a little overpriced, but it was really good and definitely an "experience" type of place where locals go and also where it's fun for tourists because it's got a unique small-town vibe. So that's not to say we don't recommend it, just that you shouldn't go expecting to eat for a bargin. BUT. Good food is a high priority for us on vacation, so we don't really try too hard to eat cheap, and we have no regrets. That's why we budget in advance for all of our trips.
R can't read yet obviously, but she was looking at the menu like this for a solid minute, and it was cracking me up. This would totally be a good posed photo anyway, but it's totally candid! She kills me.
Probably the weirdest/coolest things we did was visit the local Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo. We went in the morning on Friday and were there for a few hours until it was time for lunch. The petting zoo has been family owned since 1902, and it was top on my list of kid-friendly events.
When we were paying, they asked if we wanted to pay $5 to feed the alligators. We said sure. Jordan and I both were imaging a giant slab of rabbit or something we toss into an alligator pen, but it was actually just pieces of hot dog on a stick (much less stressful and obviously makes way more sense). I honestly didn't think the kids would want to do it, but they both did! The guy was nice and let them do it twice, so I was able to take video the first time and pictures the second time.
The guy also pulled an alligator out of the pool for us to touch, which was neat! J touched it, but R didn't want to and we didn't force her.
The zoo was pretty small, and alligators took up the main portion (the photo of all the alligator by the tree is about 1/3 of the total amount they had in that pen), but there was also a tamer side where the kids got to feed goats and horses with pieces of bread and pet turtles and bunny rabbits. They loved it!
Okay I have another post with photos from our trip, but I can't not tell you the story of what happened to me on the drive to Arkansas. Jordan will be horrified for the rest of our lives, and I'm pretty sure I'll never live it down. This is also mildly (okay a lot) embarrassing, but I haven't had a funny story to tell here in ages, so you're welcome. I think. You might actually hate me for telling you this, but let's just see what happens.
Having kids that are potty trained is great for the fact that I don't have to spend money on diapers and don't have to wipe bottoms, but it definitely makes car rides, especially long ones, take forever. We could normally make it all the way to Texas without stopping, but R has us pull over to use the bathroom about every hour or so. The drive to Arkansas was no different, and we kept stopping to get out and let her use the bathroom.
So we were finally only about an hour from Hot Springs, and R says she has to use the bathroom. I had to also, and I told Jordan to pull over at the next place he saw. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of the National Forest by this point, and there weren't just McDonald's on the side of the road. We wound through the mountain (hill?), and I saw a rest area, but Jordan was moving too quickly and we passed it. He didn't believe me that there was a bathroom there anyway, even though I swear I saw the little symbol for a toilet on the sign.
He said he was going to turn around and go back, but the road was narrow and there really wasn't a good place to do it. We go around a bend and see a little path leading into the woods with a gravel area large enough to park a car and decide to stop and pee in the forest. I put my Chacos on and grabbed the pack of wet wipes and walked into the trees, where I immediately started panicking that I was going to find a snake. I was mildly freaking out, imagining squatting to pee and getting bitten by one, and I wasn't totally paying attention to where I was walking. I did my business and walked back to the car.
When I opened the car door, I smelled poop and checked J's diaper because I thought he might need a diaper change, but he was dry. So I figured he just farted, and I got R out of her carseat and took her back into the woods to pee. I was really bad at holding her in a squat, and she got pee all over her flip flop, which was completely my fault. Unfortunately that did not end up being our biggest problem.
We walked back to the car, and Jordan headed out down the trail to pee. I was helping R balance on one foot while I wiped her shoe down, when I heard Jordan yell: "Did you poop out here?"
I yelled back: "No, I just peed."
And he goes: "Well someone did, and it looks like someone stepped in it. There's half a footprint ... Um, did you step in it?"
"What? No." Super insulted he would imply such a thing. I am a lady.
Then I remembered the faint smell of poop when I was at the car before and looked down at my shoes.
The entire right heel of my Chaco was covered in poop. I repeat: I STEPPED IN ANOTHER HUMAN'S POOP.
Jordan was, obviously, horrified. To make matters worse, because I'd been bending down to help R go to the bathroom, the poop had smeared on the back of my leg! I wish I were exaggerating, but this did, in fact, happen in my actual real life.
We used almost an entire pack of wet wipes and a whole bottle of hand sanitizer wiping off my leg and my foot. Jordan poured his water bottle full of water on my shoe to get as much of the... matter... off as possible before putting it all in a plastic bag. (I should note that he requested I completely throw my shoes away, to which I put my poop-covered foot down and said he was insane and I was going to wash them like a normal human.) Jordan couldn't stop talking about how ridiculous I was for not paying attention enough to notice a pile of POOP ON THE GROUND.
I informed him I was too preoccupied with getting bitten in the butt by a snake to worry about poop. And also WHO POOPS IN THE MIDDLE OF A TRAIL???? Pee is one thing, but if you're going to take a dump, you should move off into the leaves or something, not leave a pile for unsuspecting victims who are terrified of coming across a reptile in the middle of a national forest.
So we all got back in the car, and Jordan gave me the silent treatment in protest of my condition until we got to the next gas station, where I spent 15 minutes in the bathroom using the soap to clean both of my legs and feet and the bottom of my shoe. Thankfully no one came in or they would have seen me standing barefoot washing the entire bottom half of my body in the sink like I was a homeless person.
GOOD TIMES.
When we left Hot Springs, we took the same road and drove past the spot of The Incident. Then we stopped at the original rest stop that I had seen and wanted to stop at, where there was indeed an actual bathroom. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble + a half hour of our lives + the cost of a pack of wet wipes + one bottle of purple meadow hand sanitizer.
Moral of the story: I am always right.
Second moral: I apparently need to pay more attention to where I'm walking.
Third moral: Be less afraid of hypothetical snakes.
Back in the day, Hot Springs was the place to go if you wanted to soak in a bath house, and the main street has a row of beautiful bath houses you can go in and tour. The water that comes up from the ground is literally hot. That was one of the neatest things! They have natural springs and fountains that constantly flow, and when you touch the water it's hot. We could see steam rising from the water! The kids were more interested in climbing the stairs over and over and over (and over) than the water, but Jordan and I thought it was super neat. We kept looking at each other and saying, "It's HOT. So crazy!" ha.
Friday morning we ate breakfast at The Pancake Shop, which was on the main street. We honestly felt like the food was a little overpriced, but it was really good and definitely an "experience" type of place where locals go and also where it's fun for tourists because it's got a unique small-town vibe. So that's not to say we don't recommend it, just that you shouldn't go expecting to eat for a bargin. BUT. Good food is a high priority for us on vacation, so we don't really try too hard to eat cheap, and we have no regrets. That's why we budget in advance for all of our trips.
R can't read yet obviously, but she was looking at the menu like this for a solid minute, and it was cracking me up. This would totally be a good posed photo anyway, but it's totally candid! She kills me.
Probably the weirdest/coolest things we did was visit the local Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo. We went in the morning on Friday and were there for a few hours until it was time for lunch. The petting zoo has been family owned since 1902, and it was top on my list of kid-friendly events.
When we were paying, they asked if we wanted to pay $5 to feed the alligators. We said sure. Jordan and I both were imaging a giant slab of rabbit or something we toss into an alligator pen, but it was actually just pieces of hot dog on a stick (much less stressful and obviously makes way more sense). I honestly didn't think the kids would want to do it, but they both did! The guy was nice and let them do it twice, so I was able to take video the first time and pictures the second time.
Okay I have another post with photos from our trip, but I can't not tell you the story of what happened to me on the drive to Arkansas. Jordan will be horrified for the rest of our lives, and I'm pretty sure I'll never live it down. This is also mildly (okay a lot) embarrassing, but I haven't had a funny story to tell here in ages, so you're welcome. I think. You might actually hate me for telling you this, but let's just see what happens.
Having kids that are potty trained is great for the fact that I don't have to spend money on diapers and don't have to wipe bottoms, but it definitely makes car rides, especially long ones, take forever. We could normally make it all the way to Texas without stopping, but R has us pull over to use the bathroom about every hour or so. The drive to Arkansas was no different, and we kept stopping to get out and let her use the bathroom.
So we were finally only about an hour from Hot Springs, and R says she has to use the bathroom. I had to also, and I told Jordan to pull over at the next place he saw. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of the National Forest by this point, and there weren't just McDonald's on the side of the road. We wound through the mountain (hill?), and I saw a rest area, but Jordan was moving too quickly and we passed it. He didn't believe me that there was a bathroom there anyway, even though I swear I saw the little symbol for a toilet on the sign.
He said he was going to turn around and go back, but the road was narrow and there really wasn't a good place to do it. We go around a bend and see a little path leading into the woods with a gravel area large enough to park a car and decide to stop and pee in the forest. I put my Chacos on and grabbed the pack of wet wipes and walked into the trees, where I immediately started panicking that I was going to find a snake. I was mildly freaking out, imagining squatting to pee and getting bitten by one, and I wasn't totally paying attention to where I was walking. I did my business and walked back to the car.
When I opened the car door, I smelled poop and checked J's diaper because I thought he might need a diaper change, but he was dry. So I figured he just farted, and I got R out of her carseat and took her back into the woods to pee. I was really bad at holding her in a squat, and she got pee all over her flip flop, which was completely my fault. Unfortunately that did not end up being our biggest problem.
We walked back to the car, and Jordan headed out down the trail to pee. I was helping R balance on one foot while I wiped her shoe down, when I heard Jordan yell: "Did you poop out here?"
I yelled back: "No, I just peed."
And he goes: "Well someone did, and it looks like someone stepped in it. There's half a footprint ... Um, did you step in it?"
"What? No." Super insulted he would imply such a thing. I am a lady.
Then I remembered the faint smell of poop when I was at the car before and looked down at my shoes.
The entire right heel of my Chaco was covered in poop. I repeat: I STEPPED IN ANOTHER HUMAN'S POOP.
Jordan was, obviously, horrified. To make matters worse, because I'd been bending down to help R go to the bathroom, the poop had smeared on the back of my leg! I wish I were exaggerating, but this did, in fact, happen in my actual real life.
We used almost an entire pack of wet wipes and a whole bottle of hand sanitizer wiping off my leg and my foot. Jordan poured his water bottle full of water on my shoe to get as much of the... matter... off as possible before putting it all in a plastic bag. (I should note that he requested I completely throw my shoes away, to which I put my poop-covered foot down and said he was insane and I was going to wash them like a normal human.) Jordan couldn't stop talking about how ridiculous I was for not paying attention enough to notice a pile of POOP ON THE GROUND.
I informed him I was too preoccupied with getting bitten in the butt by a snake to worry about poop. And also WHO POOPS IN THE MIDDLE OF A TRAIL???? Pee is one thing, but if you're going to take a dump, you should move off into the leaves or something, not leave a pile for unsuspecting victims who are terrified of coming across a reptile in the middle of a national forest.
So we all got back in the car, and Jordan gave me the silent treatment in protest of my condition until we got to the next gas station, where I spent 15 minutes in the bathroom using the soap to clean both of my legs and feet and the bottom of my shoe. Thankfully no one came in or they would have seen me standing barefoot washing the entire bottom half of my body in the sink like I was a homeless person.
GOOD TIMES.
When we left Hot Springs, we took the same road and drove past the spot of The Incident. Then we stopped at the original rest stop that I had seen and wanted to stop at, where there was indeed an actual bathroom. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble + a half hour of our lives + the cost of a pack of wet wipes + one bottle of purple meadow hand sanitizer.
Moral of the story: I am always right.
Second moral: I apparently need to pay more attention to where I'm walking.
Third moral: Be less afraid of hypothetical snakes.
There's more to come from Hot Springs! Though thankfully no more stories as ridiculous as this one. Just regular things like, you know, not stepping in a random person's human waste.
Also, you guys blew me away with your survey responses! I'll leave it up for a few more days. Then I shall collect my thoughts and share. So interesting to read everyone's opinions.
First Family Vacation!
7.29.2019
Hello and welcome to a new week, friends! On Sunday we got back from our first family vacation as a family of 4! We took the kids on a long weekend to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and had a lot of fun. Of course, J won't remember anything and told me the bug on the front porch of our air bnb was his favorite part of the whole trip, but I think R's getting to an age where she actually recalls events. (Although her idea of time is random, and every story she tells happened "yesterday" ha).
I've been going through the pictures I took and have more to share! I used to take a lot more pictures on trips, but it's so hard to bust out my nice camera when I'm chasing a 3yo and 2yo. I did take a bunch of videos, though, for a trip recap video I can hopefully get to soon.
Hot Springs is about a 6-hour drive from us. We left Thursday morning and came back Sunday afternoon. I felt like we did a pretty good job mixing in seeing some sights while also making it back to the air bnb for naps and such. We've actually taken R on a few different trips when she was younger than J, but other than our what feels like monthly visits to Texas to see my family, we've never gone anywhere with the 4 of us. Hopefully I'll get a post up with more pictures and stories soon. Have a great week!
Budgeting Our Trip to England: All the Numbers!
12.17.2018
Thanks for all your very nice comments on my last post. I always feel like a dork after making a post like that because it feels super whiny when in reality nothing all that dramatic is happening. I don't know why I feel like having sick kids would be so much easier if I stayed at home, and so I get extra angsty about working. But anyway, I think we are on the mend. Thankfully the kids don't have anything contagious, and I've been yelling at Jordan if he so much as touches anything in the house, so I'm hoping my superior immune system comes through for me once again and I don't get whatever he's got.
I wanted to get one final England trip post up before the end of the year, because I just don't feel like I should keep talking about this far into 2019. This is all about the budget, so if that doesn't interest you, keep on scrolling ;)
When I posted my first trip recap on my blog Facebook page, someone commented and asked if I was going to write a post sharing our budget. I admit that I am super nosey and love it when bloggers post budget posts and include actual numbers, but some things are obviously personal and not for general internet consumption. That said, I asked Jordan if he would be okay with me writing a post sharing all the money details for the trip we took to England back in September, and he gave me the go-ahead. Honestly, we were both a bit surprised with the final numbers!
I won't keep you in suspense about the actual total, in case that's all you care about. When all was said and done, the total spent for both of us combined for everything including souvenirs, domestic and international plane flights, BritRail train tickets, Ubers and Underground transportation, lodging for 10 nights, food and travel for 11 days, tickets to events, and travel protection on some of the flights and lodging: $4,438.18
I am not at all saying that $4,450 is not a ton of money. It is. It's a lot, and we are so thankful to have been able to take this trip. That said, we were so excited about that total, and it's actually $850 less than we had saved for this trip!
We have been saving for the last 3+ years, putting money aside when we had it and letting it collect interest in our savings account (Capital One account, not at our bank! Gets amazing interest!). As we paid for things, we paid with our credit card and then transferred the money from our savings account to our checking account. Before we left for our trip, we had saved a total of $5,280, which came from the following: tax returns, monthly savings toward this trip, my freelance editing projects.
I am not at all saying that $4,450 is not a ton of money. It is. It's a lot, and we are so thankful to have been able to take this trip. That said, we were so excited about that total, and it's actually $850 less than we had saved for this trip!
We have been saving for the last 3+ years, putting money aside when we had it and letting it collect interest in our savings account (Capital One account, not at our bank! Gets amazing interest!). As we paid for things, we paid with our credit card and then transferred the money from our savings account to our checking account. Before we left for our trip, we had saved a total of $5,280, which came from the following: tax returns, monthly savings toward this trip, my freelance editing projects.
Some people probably have Excel spreadsheets to track all their purchases and expenses, but I have a very official piece of notebook paper. ;) A list of expenses listed in USD is below! As you read through the list, please consider that this was our very first time taking a trip of this magnitude. I'm sure there are some things we did well and some areas we probably over spent or didn't use our money wisely. But we did our best with the information we had and feel pleased with how it all turned out!
TRAVEL
421.92 // Southwest airlines flight from Dallas to Boston for 2
1,023.58 // Norwegian airlines flight from Boston to London Gatwick for 2
70 // travel protection for our Norwegian flight
6.44 // Expedia booking fee
427.95 // BritRail consecutive 5-day pass for 2
76.65 // Lyft rides in Boston and from the Dallas airport back to my parents' house
Oyster cards for the Underground for 2 (put I think either 15 or 20 pounds on each and paid for using cash, see "other")
Oyster cards for the Underground for 2 (put I think either 15 or 20 pounds on each and paid for using cash, see "other")
LODGING
201.66 // Hotel in Boston for 1 night (this was a splurge hotel to start off the trip! I tried hard to stay around $100/night for the rest of our lodging)
94.71 // Air Bnb in Boston for 1 night coming home
385.59 // London hotel for 3 nights + travel protection (I think it was around $24)
289.12 - 128.82 // Air BnB in London that we cancelled and only got part of our reservation fee back due to a dumb cancellation policy
188.80 // Air BnB in Liverpool for 2 nights
93.82 // Air BnB in York for 1 night
103.20 // Cambridge hotel + travel protection (I think it was around $7)
TOURS
67.29 // Buckingham Palace tour tickets for 2
80.12 // Tour of Anfield Football Stadium in Liverpool for 2
103.34 // Big Bus Tour London (premium 2-day pass) tickets for 2
OTHER
397 // USD we exchanged for Pounds, which we used mostly for food and souvenirs and 2 Oyster cards
145.62 // Boston Discover card (food, souvenirs, and getting into a few Freedom Trail things)
14.97 // Foreign transaction fee for using US credit cards (we knew we would get charged a fee, so it wasn't a shock and we aren't just dumb)
FOOD/SOUVENIRS
*Please note: the below amounts are only what we charged to a credit card. I didn't keep track of specifically what we paid for in cash, so the $397 listed above in "other" was also used mainly for food in all these places plus some souvenirs. We spent more than the below amounts in these places!
14.52 // Airport Chick-Fil-A ;)
153.91 // Liverpool (2 days)
37.12 // York (1.5 days)
169.67 // London (3 days)
145.62* //Boston (2 days) *see "other"
Cambridge* I have no idea why I don't have any totals for this! We ate dinner and breakfast and lunch, but we didn't pay to do anything else and just walked around, so I'm guessing this is folded into the "other" 397 cash.
145.62* //Boston (2 days) *see "other"
Cambridge* I have no idea why I don't have any totals for this! We ate dinner and breakfast and lunch, but we didn't pay to do anything else and just walked around, so I'm guessing this is folded into the "other" 397 cash.
A few notes: we exchanged $397 USD for Pounds at our local bank in the US. We had multiple people tell us that it wasn't necessary to exchange money ahead of time, but we just felt more comfortable having some in hand. That said, we didn't want to be carrying around a crazy amount of cash, so we just did a little and figured we could exchange more when we got over there.
Well, we never ended up getting more and so we only had about 300 pounds for the whole trip, which we mainly used for food and souvenirs. Our backpacks were so packed, and we were obviously carrying everything we brought, so that kept us from buying too many extra items. Any souvenir had to be light, flat, and not easily breakable, which limited our options. We ended up using our credit card a bit more than we planned, but our Citi card is a double cash card, so we earn 2% back on any purchase, and since it was a 3% foreign transaction fee, we figured we were really just paying a 1% fee and that isn't all that much when you think about it.
We ended up having about 18 pounds or so leftover, and since I didn't want to waste it, I spent our waiting time at the London airport wandering around spending our final cash. I think we came home with something like 56 pence. The airport is where I bought the most Europe stuff! (Side note: Jordan says that British brand KitKats do not taste like American KitKats. Also their mints taste different! lol)
You probably also noticed that we paid extra for travel protection on our international flights and our hotels. We have never paid for the travel protection before on any previous trip, but we booked everything over 6 months in advance, and with 2 small kids there just wasn't any way to know if we would have a medical emergency or some other reason we couldn't leave. I know some people feel like it's a waste of money, but we felt like paying an extra fee was worth it to be able to get refunded for these larger nonrefundable amounts. Thankfully, we didn't need it!
This was of course just an overview of this specific trip. If you are interested in more specifics about our budgeting strategy, you can find more posts on my Budgeting Page here. You might specifically like:
Why We Budget
How We Budget for Travel
Budget Friendly Tips for Using a Credit Card
Any questions? Feel free to leave a comment and I'll reply in the comments section for everyone to see! Feel free to send me an email if it's something more personal :)
You probably also noticed that we paid extra for travel protection on our international flights and our hotels. We have never paid for the travel protection before on any previous trip, but we booked everything over 6 months in advance, and with 2 small kids there just wasn't any way to know if we would have a medical emergency or some other reason we couldn't leave. I know some people feel like it's a waste of money, but we felt like paying an extra fee was worth it to be able to get refunded for these larger nonrefundable amounts. Thankfully, we didn't need it!
This was of course just an overview of this specific trip. If you are interested in more specifics about our budgeting strategy, you can find more posts on my Budgeting Page here. You might specifically like:
Why We Budget
How We Budget for Travel
Budget Friendly Tips for Using a Credit Card
Any questions? Feel free to leave a comment and I'll reply in the comments section for everyone to see! Feel free to send me an email if it's something more personal :)
Travel Log: London
11.30.2018
And so we come to the end of my Europe travel recaps (although someone asked me if I was going to write a post about our budgeting and spending on this trip, which I might do!). This is kinda long, so I'm going to put a link to our London travel video here at the top. It's also embedded at the bottom of this post!
We left Cambridge on Thursday and took the train to London, where we stayed at a hotel very near the Paddington underground station (for anyone reading who knows where that is). The above photo was taken on the street outside our hotel on our last morning. There was a whole thing I'll have to mention if I do our budgeting post. I originally booked an Air BnB with what I now realize was a really bad cancellation policy. Lesson learned! After doing a bit more research, we realized that we didn't want to stay in that location because it would be too far and annoying to commute into central London each day. So we cancelled that (losing 50% of our payment super bummer!), and I was able to get one of the last rooms at a hotel that was a bit more expensive than the Air BnB but so much better location-wise. And it really wasn't even that expensive... right around $100 per night.
Anyway, enough about that. We spent the rest of Thursday, all day Friday, all day Saturday, and the morning on Sunday in London. Our flight back to Boston left in the late afternoon, and we ended up just going to the airport super early because we didn't want to carry our bags around and we had to check out of the hotel.
Our schedule for Friday and Saturday looked pretty much the same: set alarms for 8:00, leave the hotel by 9:00, stop at the bakery next door and get muffins for "take away" (to go in British speak), walk through Hyde Park into central London, and spend the day walking around. We didn't get back to our hotel until 6:30 or 7:00 or so and estimate that we walked at least 10 miles each day!
After spending 4.5 days in three smaller towns, London was definitely quite the experience. It was louder and busier and more expensive, and I think if we had to choose, we preferred our time in Liverpool and York the best. However, we thought London was super neat and had such a great time wandering around! It was fun to be somewhere that was so international. I mean there's just nowhere quite like it.
Our schedule for Friday and Saturday looked pretty much the same: set alarms for 8:00, leave the hotel by 9:00, stop at the bakery next door and get muffins for "take away" (to go in British speak), walk through Hyde Park into central London, and spend the day walking around. We didn't get back to our hotel until 6:30 or 7:00 or so and estimate that we walked at least 10 miles each day!
Travel Log: Liverpool, UK
10.15.2018
Continuing our travel posts! I can't believe it's already been two weeks since we came back. It was so nice not cooking or cleaning or, well just dealing with all of life for a bit ;)
I've only been to Europe once before, and that was in college for an 11-day January term trip with a class to Greece. Jordan has never been to another continent before. We liked the idea of going to England because we knew it was going to be relatively familiar to us at least as far as the language and general customs. We were definitely going to spend a few days in London during the trip, but we also wanted to travel to a couple different places around England.
Liverpool was Jordan's must-go #1 destination because he's a big fan of their football (soccer) team, and we either wanted to try to see a game or do an Anfield Stadium tour. So Liverpool was the first location we officially booked (and it was honestly what finally sold Jordan on the idea of actually doing the trip!). We were in Liverpool for 2 days and 2 nights and stayed in this Air Bnb. (If you have never used Air BnB before, you can use my referral link and get $40 off your first trip. I've now used Air BnB six separate times and had great experiences for all!)
You may have heard of Liverpool because it's the home of The Beatles. There was a carpool karaoke with Paul McCartney where they drove around Liverpool! You can watch it on YouTube, and if you skip ahead to 15:42, they go into the pub where Jordan and I ate dinner our first night (Sunday).
We flew into London (Gatwick) Sunday morning and immediately took a train from the airport to the main London Victoria station. From there we both bought an Oyster card and took the underground to another train station, which took us to Liverpool Lime Street Station (roughly a 2-hour train ride; Liverpool is to the north west of London). I ended up sitting next to a guy who was from Liverpool and worked in administration at one of the universities. He was super nice and suggested a few places to eat and things to do.
Travel Log: Boston, Massachusetts
10.06.2018
I am completely overwhelmed at the thought of recapping our trip because there's so much to say and so many photos, so I figure I should probably just dive on in.
We officially booked this trip back in March, but we've been talking about a trip to Europe for 4 or 5 years, mostly as a "wouldn't that be fun" kind of thing. Then last year around Christmas, we were thinking about what we wanted to do in 2018, and we decided the timing was pretty good for a fall vacation based on the ages of the kids and a gap before we might try for Baby Bum #3 and just the fact that we should just finally go ahead and do it while we could!
I honestly felt self-conscious even talking about our trip to anyone for a few reasons, but one of them was because I've read enough comments on blog posts and articles about working motherhood to know that a lot of people think families with two working parents have a lot of money and choose to work so they can have extra funds for fancy things. Every time I mentioned we were going to Europe, I wanted to follow it with, we aren't swimming in money. this is very unusual for us. we have never done anything like this before. But people will think what they want, I suppose, so that's neither here nor there. We saved for this trip just like we save for any other trip, which I talked about at length in this blog post if you're interested!
We decided to borrow backpacks from friends of ours who have traveled to Europe a few times. Since we were going to be moving around to a few locations in England and getting on and off trains, we wanted to pack as light as we could and liked the idea of being able to carry our stuff rather than pull a suitcase around. It ended up being the absolute perfect decision, and I am so glad we did it! I am also super impressed with myself that I was able to pack for 11 days of travel in just one backpack that I carried!
We decided to borrow backpacks from friends of ours who have traveled to Europe a few times. Since we were going to be moving around to a few locations in England and getting on and off trains, we wanted to pack as light as we could and liked the idea of being able to carry our stuff rather than pull a suitcase around. It ended up being the absolute perfect decision, and I am so glad we did it! I am also super impressed with myself that I was able to pack for 11 days of travel in just one backpack that I carried!
Of the two of us, I'm the one who plans our trips, books our flights and places to stay, and researches things to do and places to eat. Of course, I talk to Jordan about it before I confirm payment, but in general I make all of those types of decisions (because he doesn't really care and I kind of do care haha!). After looking at flight prices along with times and dates that might work with our work schedules, I decided that it would be the cheapest to catch a flight out of the Dallas airport to somewhere on the East Coast and then take a direct flight to London. That's how we ended up with a mini "trip within a trip" by spending a day and half in Boston before we flew to the UK! We drove from OKC to Dallas with both the kids so that my parents could take us to the airport and start out the first half of the week with R and J.
I've been to Boston once before on a family vacation when I was a teenager, but Jordan hadn't been. And honestly, I only remember it vaguely. We got to Boston around 3:30 in the afternoon and ended up taking a water taxi across the bay (long story short, we were supposed to take a ferry but didn't). That was super neat! We ate seafood for dinner and walked a bit of the Freedom Trail before heading to our hotel.
The next morning we ate quiche at the cutest breakfast place and then walked all day following the Freedom Trail and saw pretty much all the sights! After we walked up 294 stairs at the Bunker Hill Monument (which is at the end of the Freedom Trail), we ate lunch at Little Italy (after getting hangry and getting into a minor argument), and then took a Lyft to the airport. It was such a fun mini trip to start off our week in England.
Water taxi! Not the cheapest option, but it was fun. And it was really only like $10 more than our Lyft we took the next day so not crazy expensive.
One of our favorite parts of the Freedom Trail was going on board the USS Constitution. I just think it's neat how many ropes and things go into making and running a ship. It was cool to go into the lower decks and see the cannons and bunks and crazy to think about people actually being out in the middle of the ocean in one of these.
Our flight was delayed an hour, and we ended up leaving Boston at 10:30 pm for an overnight flight to London (Gatwick), getting in at 9:30 the next morning! From there we traveled to Liverpool, York, Cambridge, and back to London, so I'll have separate posts for each of those places. I know travel recap posts aren't everyone's favorite, but it's good motivation for me to get some photos edited and memories down in writing before I make my official Shutterfly photo book ;)
Also, feel free to let me know if you have any specific questions or want to know about anything in particular!
Water taxi! Not the cheapest option, but it was fun. And it was really only like $10 more than our Lyft we took the next day so not crazy expensive.
We had a minor panic in the morning involving our plane tickets. We weren't able to check in online, and there was a notice that our passports needed to be affirmed at least 3 days in advance and we hadn't done it yet. We freaked out and thought we weren't going to be able to fly, so we called the airline and talked to them directly. Everything was fine, but man we were panicking! New to international travel lol ;)
Our flight was delayed an hour, and we ended up leaving Boston at 10:30 pm for an overnight flight to London (Gatwick), getting in at 9:30 the next morning! From there we traveled to Liverpool, York, Cambridge, and back to London, so I'll have separate posts for each of those places. I know travel recap posts aren't everyone's favorite, but it's good motivation for me to get some photos edited and memories down in writing before I make my official Shutterfly photo book ;)
Also, feel free to let me know if you have any specific questions or want to know about anything in particular!