Purchases

My favorite part of the trip planning is the actual purchasing. That is when things start to look real - when I hit print reservation an see that paper that says we have a flight seat or a hotel room waiting for us.

My husband read an article that says that the best time to shop for travel deals is Wednesday between 1-2 am. Well, I didn't wait. On Saturday afternoon, after doing a lot of searches, I purchased our flights, car rental and 2 hotel reservations.

For the flight, what a deal. I was going on expedia and looking for the best dals they offered then going on each specific airline and purchasing it from them. Well, I thought I was going to get pretty sweet deals, but then I resolved to search expedia for individual parts of the trip - that is, one way. It turned out I got even sweeter deals. $1,012.00 round trip for both of us going with Delta and returning with US airways, instead of $1,110.00 (expedia) or $1,096.00 (individual airline websites) going with American and returning with US Airways.

Oh, by the way, careful when purchasing from the AA website. For some unknown reason - maybe a glitch in the website, they do not show all flights in the desktop website, but they show them on the mobile website. The flight missing on the desktop was actually the best priced and the best timed one.

But I didn't purchase AA. Because before I could purchase it, I chose to go on expedia and serach for one-way flights and Delta, instead of AA came up.

Of course, do bear in mind that neither Delta nor US let your checked bags travel free. So travel lightly and only carry cabin luggage.

Now, car rentals.

We chose to go with E-Z rent-a-car . No,we had never heard of it, but instead of almost $300.00, or over 400 of most popular names in car rental.

I figured, I have already experienced so many disappointments with famous big renters, why not try the not so famous one? $184. -1% for joining their rewrads program, -3% for liking them on facebok. $173.00