No Turkey, but at Least It's Free Food
Yet another way to vacation cheaply ... take your parents. The past few days I've been celebrating faux Thanksgiving with my mom, dad and sister in Jacksonville, Florida. (We'll all be working on real Thanksgiving, except for Dad, who's going to represent for all of us at the family Thanksgiving in Kansas.)
There are drawbacks, of course. Apparently, since Courtenay and I have left the house, my parents have filled in space by repeating the same conversation over and over. The roadtrip soundtrack went a little like this: "Did you check the map?" "Yes I checked the map." "What does the GPS say?" "Same as the map." "Did we talk to the woman at the rest stop?"
Also, if you're with my parents, you have to put up with the two of them always lagging behind so they can make out on the pier or something. Then they'll say they have to go back to the hotel because they're "tired," but you notice them sneaking away with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
On the upside, my dad won't let me pay for anything. Granted, I haven't exactly been breaking the bank. But it's nice to be able to grab a bag of Ritz Bitz and an orange juice at the gas station without obsessing about money.
In fact, it's been a pretty cheap trip for all of us. We ate most of our meals at cheap places with a lot of local character (if people in Jacksonville drive anything other than bicycles and scooters, I didn't see them) and spent the rest of the time window shopping (The Book Mark is the best-stocked small bookstore I've been to yet) and walking on the beach, discussing the differences between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico (we're from Pensacola).
I'm typing this from my grandparents' house, a layover on the way back to Birmingham. My parents live here now, both to save themselves some money and to help my grandparents out. It's all very familiar, since we all lived here before (for similar reasons). So I'm planning on laying around, eating my grandmother's free food, and checking out back issues of Real Simple and Wired that my parents subscribe to but I've been skipping for Cheap Women.
It doesn't sound like much of a vacation, but it's exactly what I'd want. And, since my dad rarely sends me back home without at least $20, I'll probably come back richer than I left ... both in money and in spirit.
There are drawbacks, of course. Apparently, since Courtenay and I have left the house, my parents have filled in space by repeating the same conversation over and over. The roadtrip soundtrack went a little like this: "Did you check the map?" "Yes I checked the map." "What does the GPS say?" "Same as the map." "Did we talk to the woman at the rest stop?"
Also, if you're with my parents, you have to put up with the two of them always lagging behind so they can make out on the pier or something. Then they'll say they have to go back to the hotel because they're "tired," but you notice them sneaking away with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
On the upside, my dad won't let me pay for anything. Granted, I haven't exactly been breaking the bank. But it's nice to be able to grab a bag of Ritz Bitz and an orange juice at the gas station without obsessing about money.
In fact, it's been a pretty cheap trip for all of us. We ate most of our meals at cheap places with a lot of local character (if people in Jacksonville drive anything other than bicycles and scooters, I didn't see them) and spent the rest of the time window shopping (The Book Mark is the best-stocked small bookstore I've been to yet) and walking on the beach, discussing the differences between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico (we're from Pensacola).
I'm typing this from my grandparents' house, a layover on the way back to Birmingham. My parents live here now, both to save themselves some money and to help my grandparents out. It's all very familiar, since we all lived here before (for similar reasons). So I'm planning on laying around, eating my grandmother's free food, and checking out back issues of Real Simple and Wired that my parents subscribe to but I've been skipping for Cheap Women.
It doesn't sound like much of a vacation, but it's exactly what I'd want. And, since my dad rarely sends me back home without at least $20, I'll probably come back richer than I left ... both in money and in spirit.
2 Comments:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/9809
cary
I would love to hear about these cheap places with local character. I grew up in Jacksonville, and I'm STILL trying to figure out what the local character is!
(But maybe that's just because I am not a beach girl...)
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