If you are a fan of Becentsable on facebook you probably recall my family’s trip to California last month.
For my son’s 4th birthday we wanted to take everyone on a much overdue vacation. Since we’ve never been nearer an ocean than we are here in Arizona, we decided we should take advantage of it now.
Our itinerary:
6 days
Legoland/SeaLife Aquarium
Beach
Transportation:
We are close enough to drive to San Diego (just 6 hours) so we were lucky not to have to fly or spend a lot of time on the road.
- Cost: $92 (for fuel)
Lodging:
We really prefer to bring food from home and cook meals when we vacation and it’s almost a necessity when you are working around food allergies. Hotel rooms with kitchens are apparently a dying breed. After seeing the price of the couple of hotel rooms in California that included a kitchen we decided it would be much cheaper for us to rent a house or condo on the beach.
We checked VRBO.com and after a couple of days of searching, we found a last minute cancellation that gave us a 2 bedroom house on the beach in Carlsbad for just $150 a night! The hotel rooms we were looking at with any sort of kitchen in them were around $200 per night.
- Cost: $812.00 (including taxes) plus $125 cleaning fee
Events:
We really just wanted to visit Legoland and spend the other days of the vacation relaxing on the beach and exploring coastal California. As Costco members we were able to get combination tickets to Legoland and SeaLife Aquarium for $55 (adults) and $45 (child). That’s $20 savings on EACH ticket, and we bought 3 of them.
- Cost: $155 plus tax (for three tickets)
Food:
As I mentioned above we brought all the food we would need with us from home. We ate one meal out in 6 days. We always ate breakfast at “home”, lunch and snacks were packed up in the coolers and eaten on the beach most days and dinner was a simple one-dish meal at “home” again.
- Cost: $65 (including perishables we had to replenish while we were there)
Souvenirs:
We typically don’t buy souvenirs, but we knew that we’d get each of the kids some Legos and since it was our son’s birthday we bought him a little more than we would have otherwise. It was money well spent though! My husband also bought a t-shirt after spilling greasy food on the one he was wearing on our day of exploring the coast, and each of the kids picked out a beachy necklace before we left town.
- Cost: $120
Our total cost for the trip was just under $1200!
That’s 6 days, 3 tickets to Legoland and SeaLife Aquarium, 4 days on the beach, a driving tour of Coastal California, an afternoon tour of Balboa Park, Los Angeles and San Diego Bay and 18 yummy meals for just $300 a person.
Not bad for us!
We saved at least $500 between food, discounted tickets and the rate for the house we rented, just by doing a little digging!
