A couple of years ago I wrote a post on this blog listing ten cheap girls trips in North America.
I had never been to a single one of them.
I’m not going to pretend that post was useful. It was ten places and a lot of adjectives, and it couldn’t tell you the one thing you actually want to know, which is what it costs when a real person goes.
So here are four trips I actually took, with the real numbers. They span from $137 a head to seven thousand dollars, and the one that cost the most is not the one I’d tell you to copy.
The thing I figured out somewhere in the middle of these
Cheap is not a destination. It’s three levers.
Points for the biggest line. Whatever the largest number on the trip is — usually the hotel — that’s the one to attack months before you go, not the week of.
Bodies in the room. A room costs what it costs whether one person sleeps in it or four. This is the least glamorous advice in travel and it is undefeated.
Then pay properly for one thing. Not everything. One thing. It’s almost never the expensive thing, and you usually can’t predict which one it’ll be.
Every trip below is some combination of those three, or a demonstration of what happens when you skip them.
Chicago: $137 each
Four of us, four days, the Fairmont right by Millennium Park.
We covered the stay with Amex points. The bill at the end was $546 total — the part points don’t cover — and we split it four ways.
The best night of that trip cost thirty dollars: a cover charge at Winter’s Jazz Club. Not the hotel, not dinner. Thirty dollars.
That’s all three levers in one trip, and it’s the one I’d tell you to copy first.
Washington DC: the one where I spent almost nothing on purpose
This one has no receipts worth publishing, and that’s the point of it.
It was friends, sushi, and deliberately not shopping — I went in specifically trying to tamp down some habits, and the trip turned into a week of doing considerably less than I’d planned.
My friends and I have a joke about it: useful amnesia. Conveniently forgetting the tasks and side projects and the running tally of what you should be doing.
The cheapest trip I’ve taken was the one where doing nothing was the plan rather than the failure.
Paris: about $5,000, and worth it once
Five days in June over Fête de la Musique weekend. The whole trip came to about $5,000, of which the hotel was $3,500.
That’s a lot. But comparable hotels that week were going for ten thousand and up — peak weekend, and the city knows it. So $3,500 was us being economical inside an expensive week, which is a different skill from going somewhere cheap.
The thing that actually saved us money: breakfast included. That one decision meant we weren’t panic-buying food at tourist prices every morning, and we ate out properly once a day for about $50 a head.
And the best night was free. Street musicians, whole blocks turned into a party nobody charged for. The ticketed events that weekend are entirely skippable.
Napa: $7,000, and my husband paid
I’m including this one because leaving it out would make the other numbers look better than they are.
Three days at Alila Napa Valley. About $7,000 all in for two — room, spa, dinners, the car, everything. Not my money.
The room earned it. The famous restaurant did not. And the thing I keep telling people: that room was big enough for four, which changes the maths completely — the room is the line worth splitting, even if the spa and the dinners aren’t.
So which one do you copy?
If you have a budget and you want a real trip: Chicago. Points, split the room, find the thirty-dollar thing.
If you’re tired more than you’re broke: the DC version. Go somewhere with people you like and do considerably less than you planned.
If you’re going somewhere expensive anyway: the Paris method. You can’t make peak season cheap, but you can make it survivable — book the breakfast, pick one meal a day, and take the free thing when the city hands it to you.
And if someone else is paying: enjoy it, and be honest about it when you write it down.
The actual conclusion
Two of the four best nights I’ve had travelling cost thirty dollars and nothing at all.
That’s not a cute line, it’s the pattern. The expensive parts of a trip are mostly the parts that get you there and keep you horizontal. The parts you remember are almost always cheaper than the ones you budgeted for.
Plan for the first category. Leave room for the second.
Before you book anything, run the money checklist below. A trip you saved for and a trip you’re still paying off in March are two completely different holidays. #bigsisenergy