In November our family of 8 took an amazing 10-day trip to Washington DC. It was our first family trip flying instead of driving!
Mike and I had visited Washington DC (just the two of us) two years ago, but felt like we barely scratched the surface. We knew it was something the whole family would enjoy, especially since we have been studying American History this year in our homeschool. Since we were familiar with the city’s attractions and had experience navigating the city via public transportation, we felt comfortable bringing the whole crew. We even invited our parents to join us and had one (my mom) take us up on the offer.
As you’ll see below, Washington DC is a super affordable destination for a family vacation because most of the attractions are free. You could spend weeks scouring all of the museums and still not see everything. We packed our ten days full and had a wonderful time, but there was still so, so much more to see.
When all was said and done, we spent $5,335 on our 10-day trip for our family I’m excited to show you the cost breakdown of exactly what we spent.
$2,198 Airfare for 7 (our youngest was barely under 2, so he flew free)
We flew from Sacramento to DC (Reagan). We flew with Southwest Airlines for several reasons.
First, leg room. The last time Mike and I flew was to Washington DC two years ago. The long cross country flight in the ultra budget seats of another airline nearly killed him (he’s 6’7″), so I researched which airlines have the most leg room.
Second, bags are free. We knew we were going to check luggage and that really adds up with other airlines. Although they may appear to have cheaper tickets, once you take the baggage into account they really aren’t less expensive.
Third, if we needed to change plans we could. You can change your plans without losing money on Southwest as long as you cancel your flight within 10 minutes of departure. We saw how a trip can quickly get ruined back in July, so we wanted to be cautious and not lose money.
My mom got her own plane ticket. I found her a Southwest flight arriving nearly at the same time as us. And when we left DC we even flew out on the same flight!
$0 Rental Car
As you’ll see below, we were very intentional about planning our trip so that we wouldn’t need a rental car. Renting cars is especially expensive now. At the start of the pandemic rental car companies sold off much of their fleet because of low demand, then replacement auto prices went up with supply chain issues. Getting a rental car (or two) for a big group like ours would have been especially expensive. Plus, driving and parking in a big city is not my idea of a good time, so we just used public transportation.
$2,403 Airbnb for 10 nights
Originally I looked at getting a hotel near the National Mall so we would be within walking distance of all the museums and monuments, but that poses some complications for a big family. Since there are 8 of us we would need at least two rooms. That means we would have to split up, which isn’t much fun for parents. Plus, (obviously) is double the cost of one room. Also, hotel rooms are also pretty small for ten days with six energetic kids. One of the biggest reasons we chose an Airbnb over a hotel, though, was to have a real kitchen. And that really paid off.
Airbnbs are harder to find in DC than in other places because the laws are more restrictive, but we managed to find a gem about two miles north of the Capitol. There was room for one more person, and we were delighted to have my mom join us.
$301 Metro Passes
We didn’t want to rent a car in DC because then we would have to drive and park. Plus, we would have to get a huge van to fit all of us. When deciding between a hotel where we would be close to everything and an Airbnb where we would need to take public transportation, I factored in the cost of Metro passes. I didn’t want to have to “budget” the cost of each individual ride, so I opted for unlimited passes. I ordered the Metro cards online and they sent them to our home in California so we could have them in hand when we arrived. Lucky for us, when I ordered them they were having a sale on Metro passes in hopes of recovering some of the ridership lost during Covid.
Kids under 5 don’t need to pay on the Metro, so that covered two of the people in our group. We bought passes for the other six of us, plus my mom.
Each pass ended up costing $43. That breaks down like this:
$2– Initial cost of the empty card
$14– 3-day unlimited pass (regularly $28)
$19– 7-day short trip pass (regularly $38)
$8— additional cash credit per card (see below)
The unlimited Metro passes took us everywhere we needed to go around DC at any time of day. We used the cash credit when we took the Fairfax Connector bus to and from Mount Vernon ($2 each way) and to the Air and Space Udvar-Hazy Smithsonian Center in Virginia ($2 each way).
$49 MARC Train
On Sunday we took a train to Maryland to visit Mike’s sister’s family. Even when we’re on vacation, we try to treat Sunday as a special day. We don’t shop, play sports, or do the entertainment sorts of things we do on other days. So we went to church with their family and got to meet our niece’s brand new baby. Our kids enjoyed playing games with cousins that they don’t know very well. They have a large van so they brought us back to our Airbnb that night. That allowed us to stay later to enjoy dinner together and let the kids play into the night.
$201 Attractions
Washington DC is a very unique travel destination because nearly everything is free! There are 16 Smithsonian museums and galleries to visit, plus dozens of monuments, beautiful parks and historical sites. Most are open 7 days a week and are completely free. Some of the most popular attractions require a reservation (a covid accommodation) which sometimes requires a $1-2 fee.
Here’s a list of all of the places we visited and the cost if there was one (if no cost is listed it was free).
- National Zoo– You need a reservation, but there is not a fee make one.
- Capitol Grounds Tour– We contacted our state representative and one of his staff gave us a nice tour.
- Library of Congress– We gave ourselves a tour of the Library of Congress and enjoyed the special exhibits there.
- National Postal Museum– The Postal Museum was one of our favorites! There were lots of hands-on, kid-friendly exhibits.
- American Art Museum– This was the kids’ first time in an art museum. I was a little nervous but they actually did really well!
- National Portrait Gallery– This museum shares a building with the American Art Museum. We especially enjoyed seeing the presidents portraits. They’re more interesting than they sound.
- Museum of the American Indian– Mike and I explored this museum extensively on our last trip and we knew our kids would enjoy it.
- National Air and Space Museum– We visited during a time when the hands-on kids’ area was open. We also loved seeing the Wright brothers exhibit and the history of space exploration exhibits.
- Hirshhorn Museum of Modern Art– None of us are big into modern art, so it was fun to learn about something new. The installations were definitely interesting!
- Museum of American History– There are so many cool exhibits throughout the American History museum.
- National Archives– Reservations are required but don’t cost anything. You get to see the actual Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill or Rights.
- Museum of Natural History– The rock and gem collection in the Natural History Museum had our kids wanting to go back again. We also loved the animal, bug, DNA, fossil, and virus exhibits.
- Museum of African American History and Culture $9 There is so much to see in the African American museum. We enjoyed learning about both history and culture there.
- Ford’s Theater– You can reserve tickets online for $3 each, but there are free tickets available at the box office as well. We went on a Monday that we figured would not be busy and were able to get tickets of all 9 of us for free. We got to go through the museum and then walk through the theater to see where Lincoln was shot. There are some additional exhibits, but they were closed due to covid.
- Holocaust Museum $9– Mike and I were very impacted by the Holocaust Museum on our last trip, so we wanted to bring the kids. After the first floor, we realized it was too heavy for our 10-year-old, so Mike took him and the three little ones outside while the rest of us went through the whole museum.
- Mount Vernon $174– Definitely our priciest excursion, we thought George Washington’s plantation, Mount Vernon, was worth the cost. The plantation is set up like it was in Washington’s day. There was lots to do and see. We wish we had more time for the museum which we saved for the end. It was very well done with lots of interactive exhibits.
- Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center– This huge hangar is filled with hundreds of aircraft and spacecraft, including the space shuttle Discovery.
- Lincoln Memorial– We visited this iconic memorial at night.
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall– Seeing all of the individual names on the wall is sobering.
- Jefferson Memorial– The walk along the Tidal Basin out to the Jefferson Memorial is beautiful.
- Roosevelt Memorial– The FDR memorial was one of our favorite memorials, a beautiful and extensive tribute to a great president.
- George Mason Memorial– We enjoyed learning about this founding father whose memory is often neglected.
- Martin Luther King Memorial– I love reading the powerful quotes carved throughout this memorial.
- Washington Monument $9– We took the elevator up 500 feet to the top so we could look out the windows at the amazing view. Tickets become available each morning for tours taking place the following day. You can only order 6 tickets at a time (and they sell out within minutes), so part of our group went one day and the rest went the next day.
Things we didn’t do, but wanted to:
- Arlington National Cemetery— We had it in our plans for the last day, but felt like it would be too much uphill walking for our exhausted crew, plus they wanted to go back to the Museum of Natural History again before we left.
- White House— There were no tours due to covid.
- Supreme Court— There was no access due to covid.
- National Bureau of Engraving and Printing– Mike and I enjoyed this tour on our last trip and know the kids would be fascinated, but it was closed due to covid.
- International Spy Museum $26– With all of the amazing free museums on the National Mall, we didn’t look seriously into any paid ones. It’s probably cool, but it didn’t make the cut for this trip.
$0 Food
Okay technically we spent $43 on groceries while we were in DC, but that just came from our regular grocery budget (which is about $500 per month). The rest of our food we brought with us.
Yep, we packed several suitcases of just food. Another reason why flying Southwest with free baggage was important.
I’m sure that sounds outrageous (and maybe even ridiculous!) to some of you, but hear me out. This was a move that made our trip so much more affordable and laid back than it could have been.
Even fast food for a family of 8 adds up fast, so we just don’t eat out. Like ever. Well, we get pizza sometimes, but other than that we eat home-cooked meals every single day. That wasn’t going to change, even on vacation.
We could have done the grocery shopping in DC, but knowing that we would be getting around via the Metro buses and trains, it didn’t sound like much fun to do a 10-day grocery haul on vacation. Plus, I knew I could get better prices on groceries at home. It’s not that California is cheaper (it’s not). It’s that I know where and how to shop at home. Shopping in DC I would not be nearly the savvy shopper I am at home. Give me some time and I would figure it out, but as fun as it is to compare unit prices and find deals, it wasn’t what I went on vacation to do!
With our plane tickets we could have checked up to 14 bags for free. We ended up checking 11 bags total, nearly all of them carry-on size since we have a lot of smaller travelers. About 4 of them were full of food because on the way home we consolidated down to only 7 checked bags.
One thing that really helped was that Mike’s mom offered to freeze dry some things for us to bring. She has a freeze dryer that she uses to preserve her garden produce and other foods. I should really do a whole post on freeze drying because it’s pretty amazing. The start-up costs are expensive, but it is a great way to preserve food without losing any of the nutrition. And nutritionally it’s much better than canning or dehydrating.
We brought freeze-dried apples, peaches, blueberries, and strawberries for snacks and to put in oatmeal. It was a great way to bring fruit without the weight or risk of bruising. Freeze dried food has all the moisture removed, so it weighs next to nothing (that’s why backpackers love it). We freeze dried cooked ground sausage, grilled chicken, grilled pork loin, and cheese. We just soaked the meat in water to rehydrate and you would never know it wasn’t freshly cooked. We freeze dried tomatoes and zucchini from our garden and brought it to make spaghetti sauce. She even freeze dried ice cream sandwiches for us as a fun treat when we visited the Air and Space Museum.
What food did we bring? What did we eat?
Here’s a rough idea of our menu (sadly I didn’t take any meal pictures on the trip!):
Breakfast
-
- Zucchini bread/Pumpkin bread – I baked and froze about 10 loaves to bring on the trip for breakfast and snacks.
- Oatmeal – We brought individual packets, as well as regular oats, raisins, and brown sugar to make a big pot of oats.
- Cold cereal – We did buy milk at a nearby grocery store in DC.
- Toast with peanut butter
Lunch
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- Peanut butter and jelly/honey sandwiches or bagels and cream cheese – I brought about 10 loaves of sandwich bread with us as well as peanut butter, honey, bagels, and cream cheese. We bought jam in DC since I didn’t want to fly with glass jars.
- Snacks (see list below)
When you forget to bring a knife with lunch, you improvise and spread cream cheese with part of a bagel.
-
Snacks
- Apple slices
- Carrot sticks
- String cheese
- Granola bars
- Crackers
- Cookies
- Nuts
- Trail mix
- Freeze-dried fruit
- Yogurt
Dinner
-
- Lasagna – We brought a frozen lasagna with us.
- Creamy Taco casserole – We brought all of the ingredients on the plane except milk.
- Spaghetti – I brought all the freeze dried ingredients to make homemade spaghetti sauce (all of which came from our garden except the sausage)
- Grilled chicken with mashed potatoes – We brought instant mashed potatoes and freeze dried grilled chicken.
- Pork with mac and cheese – This was a quick one which was a big hit with the kids.
- Leftovers – We made some of these meals more than once and also had some leftovers.
$60 Stroller
I bought a double stroller on Facebook Marketplace specifically for this trip. With young kids on a long trip that included lots of walking and lots of museums, I knew we needed a good stroller. I looked for one that would collapse easily for getting on and off the bus, was skinny enough to fit through normal doorways, and had lots of cargo space for jackets, umbrellas, and our food for the day. When I knew what strollers would be good possibilities I watched Facebook Marketplace for a good deal. I wanted one that was in good enough condition that I could easily sell back afterwards (though we haven’t done that yet). This is the side-by-side double stroller we got and LOVED. It has so much cargo space, is super easy to push and maneuver, each side reclines individually, and it folds up small and fast!
$13 Bike rental
On the day were we did lots of walking around the National Mall to see all of the monuments, we rented a bike from Capitol Bike Share for my mom. The kids would have liked to get bikes or scooters too just for fun, but the app rules say that you need to be 16 to use the bikes or scooters.
$110 Airport parking in Sacramento
We parked our van in the economy long-term parking at the airport for 11 days.
That covers it!
Our total including airfare, accommodations, entertainment, everything else for a 10-day trip to Washington DC for our family of 8 was $5,335. We had a fabulous time!
Is there anything we forgot? Do you have any questions for us?
As we landed in Sacramento, the captain announced our arrival and invited us to fly again with them soon. The kids heard that and exclaimed, “Yes!! We should do that!”
Where should we go next? What’s a great place for a fun and affordable family vacation?
Do you go on vacation without eating out?
This is a great breakdown of your trip costs! I especially appreciate the tip about using Southwest Airlines for a family of 8 – having free checked bags is a huge perk. We recently took a similar trip to Washington D.C. with our family and found that groceries were definitely the most expensive part of our trip. Did you find that there were any grocery stores within walking distance of your Airbnb? Having access to a kitchen is such a smart way to save money on meals.
Thanks for the great advice, our family really enjoyed it.
Would you be willing to share your Airbnb? We have 5 children and I’m looking at all the options. Thanks!
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Hey there, I’m sorry if I missed it, but did you also use the metro to transport you from the airport to your Airbnb? That part I wasn’t clear about and it’s stopped me from booking a place since I figured that would require a car rental… if you or anyone has suggestions on regions to look at when booking, I’d appreciate it!
Yes! We took the Metro from the airport all the way to the Airbnb. I think it required three transfers and a walk at the end, but we did the research ahead of time, so when knew all of the schedules and transfer locations. The DC Metro system is pretty thorough, so you really can get anywhere if you do the research to find the right routes.
Thanks for the info. What a great article. How were you able to get the metro card at a discounted rate? I think that would really help us.
We are going to DC for Christmas break. I can’t wait. Thanks for all the great ideas and I told my kids- We are brining a frozen lasagna!!! lol!!! YOU my friend, are a genius!!
Food doesn’t make memories for me and besides saving money, it saves time to not have to wait for everyone to decide what they want to eat AND then have it cooked and brought to the table.
We live in Northern VA and there are great rentals in the VA area near the metro but it does sound like you found a great place. If you decide to come back to visit, I hope you check out the VA places to stay because we don’t have the strange rules in DC (Crystal City is basically where you land at National Airport which is VA already). It sounds like you got to go to a ton of places and I don’t think that you missed much with the spy museum. I think that it is an expensive ticket and not as much fun as a lot of the Smithsonian museums. You must have been exhausted after all that walking! I love going on vacation somewhere there is a kitchen because it is so much nicer and calmer to sit down to dinner together as a family and not try to wait at restaurants. There is nothing worse then waiting for over an hour to get a meal that wasn’t as good as you thought it should be and then having to pay for it. We love the extra time it gives us as a family to set our own pace to see all of the sites on vacation because we can have breakfast, lunch and dinner out of our room. I almost always pack all of our food and have a short list of things to get at the store like ice cream on our beach vacation because a few gallons of ice cream gives everyone a treat for less then one cone.
I loved reading about your family adventure! I can’t wait to read the future post on freeze dried foods!!
Yes! We ALWAYS take our food on our trips. And I plot trips where I know there’s Aldi or Walmart nearby for milk, etc. We drive though. I would have to think about the flying LOL, I’d probably do it though. To me, not worrying about spending money on food so we can actually afford to travel with our kids before they are in college is so important. We also camp almost exclusively.
Sadly, we did have an Airbnb reservation and plans to go to DC after Christmas but the COVID conditions were too uncertain, and we didn’t want to spend the $ and find all of a sudden a bunch of stuff closed. 🙁 Hopefully we can get there yet this year!
Thanks for sharing, I picked up some great tips, particularly on the Metro card and getting out to Mt Vernon.
Yes! Not worrying about the cost of food is worth all of the trouble in my opinion. It makes trips much more affordable!
I hope you get to visit DC soon Lindsey! It’s a great family trip!
I loved reading this! It is so fun to take a large family on a vacation and do it for a reasonable cost. We have a family of 12 and budgets make it work!
I would love to know more about freeze dried foods. How do you ‘cook’ with them? For the dried fruit to snack on, do you just eat it as is, or rehydrate? How does it all work? I’ve never had anything freeze dried and have been hearing more about it but don’t know anyone to ask.
Thank you for sharing!
Great questions Tristan! Freeze dried food is really quite amazing. I’ll have to do a whole post/video about it in the future. The fruit we snacked on we ate as is, without rehydrating. Have you ever had cereal with dried strawberries in it? Those are freeze dried. They have a crunch to them, then just kind of melt in your mouth. All of the fruit was sooo delicious. Some of my kids who don’t like certain fruits fresh, liked them freeze dried.
Other things (meat, cheese, veggies, etc) I rehydrate as I cook with them or just add more water into whatever it is I’m making. If you’ve ever had backpacking food like Mountain House meals, that is freeze dried food.
Another freeze dried staple in our kitchen is egg powder. In the summer our hens lay more eggs than we can use (and in the winter not as many eggs as we need), so my MIL will freeze dry scrambled up raw eggs for us. They crush into a powder that you can use for baking or scrambled eggs. One egg = 1 Tbsp egg powder + 2 Tbsp water. It’s super handy to have in the kitchen or in your emergency supply.
When my husband and I eloped to Hawaii to get married we didn’t want to spend a lot on eating out and blow our $2000 budget (which had to cover everything). So as soon as we flew into Honolulu we got our rental car and drove to Costco. We had packed a lot of food for the plane ride but we needed some fresh food for the week. We got premade deli sandwich samplers, nuts, granola bars, fruit and yogurt. All for about $50 or $60 (can’t remember the exact number but it was pretty cheap) and we had a lot of it left to take on the plane for the ride home. We did eat out a few times because we wanted authentic Hawaiian food which you can find for reasonable prices if you leave the touristy areas. We ended up keeping our entire wedding and Hawaiian trip for less than $2000, mostly because we didn’t eat out for every meal.
Also, when we did the DC trip we did it cheaply by staying in campgrounds. We started in DC and saw 6 other states in the area. I loved the campgrounds and it was the first time I had ever seen fireflies. Amazing trip with so many good memories.
That’s so awesome Jennifer! What a fun adventure! Way to rock the low-spending on food and keep to your $2,000 trip budget! What a cool way to start out your marriage!
Sounds like an amazing family trip. If your family likes to camp then Wyoming has lots of mountain campgrounds (they usually have a small fee, but nothing like a hotel or b&b) and plenty of free hiking and scenery, plus plenty of wild west history. If you have family members that are seniors they can get a lifetime free pass to national parks — and their entire carload gets into places like Yellowstone on their pass. (I’ve had mine for over 10 years, so you might want to research that as the rules may have changed! They are good for all national parks in the United States!) Places like Cody, just outside of Yellowstone have night rodeos and gun fights downtown, plus a wonderful museum. Further east you can cross the Big Horn Mountains (good mountain camping!) into small western towns with loads of history and then it is only half a day to the Black Hills where there are plenty of things to see, like Mount Rushmore. Colorado and Montana also have plenty of history, beautiful national parks (like Rocky Mountain National Park and Glacier National Park) and great camping if you wanted to do a big circle and see different country.
We DO love to camp! In fact we will be visiting Yellowstone this summer! It sounds like there are lots of amazing places out that direction. We’re excited to check it out!
Eating out for at least one meal a day is part of the fun of vacation for us. Although we were gifted a blue apron box when we got home from our last trip and think a blue apron shipped to the Airbnb would be nice, instead of eating out on our next trip. We like trips out in nature. Hiking, the beach etc.
That’s a good idea to get a Blue Apron delivery to your Airbnb! We love outdoor adventure trips too!
A great place for history and kids is Boston and Philadelphia. Having lived int that area for many years, we took seriously advantage of all the historical sites in the Northeast. It makes it so much more fun to learn history. In Lexington, MA they have a reiactment every year, As the kids got older we would follow the paths of the different wars – French-Indian warm Civil war, etcc. – and a war few know about is the anti-rent war in the low mountains around Albany, NY against the Dutch patrooms. You should look it up.
Oooo Alice that sounds amazing! My kids would love being so “close” to history! Thanks for sharing those ideas!
And the award for best budgeting while on vacation goes to you all 😁👍🏽! Wow-The highlight was seeing how little you spent on groceries for 10 days on vacation which was absolutely amazing!! When I go on vacation with my mom, eating out at nicer restaurants or popular food places is usually a big part of our trips. But we always budget for that and we make sure to use prepaid credit/debit gift cards so we don’t have debt we have to face and payoff after we get back. We actually have a separate joint savings account that we call our vacation fund that we each put $25/week ($100 monthly) so we have a nice amount saved up for our annual summer vacation. We usually have a good amount leftover in the account that rolls over to be used towards the next vacation. Excellent tips! Well done!! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Gail! That’s a neat idea to have the joint account and each put money in weekly. What a great way to fund an annual vacation without making a big financial dent! Very cool!
I love Washington DC! My parents live 45 min from the city, in Virginia, and I convinced my husband to look for work out there so we could live by the city. We lived there with our 3 kids for 2.5 years. It was so fun and we hardly saw everything! We have a trip planned to go see my parents in May and I want to take my kids to the postal museum!
What a fun place to live Lisa! Definitely check out the Postal Museum when you visit! There was so much hands-on things for the kids and the exhibits were really interesting too!
That’s awesome! We went on our first family vacation last September and while we drove we also brought all our food. My husband did take the kids out for ice cream the last evening while I packed and cleaned the airbnb a bit (it was fine, I really didnt want to go out) but it was a fun vacation (Black Hills SD). I would love to go as a family to DC. The National Art Gallery would be high on my list. Thanks for all the details here!
That sounds awesome Julie! We drove through the Black Hills several years ago and it was beautiful!
Thank you for sharing all of the budget details. Our family camped outside Toronto and Quebec City. There were so many interesting attractions. However, we drove and camped to make it affordable.
That sounds like fun! We love camping!
One of our favorite family vacations was to go to the Philmont scout ranch in New Mexico. My husband was there for training, but the rest of us just had fun. I know they are doing family adventure times where you don’t even have to have someone there for training. It is very reasonable for what you get. While you are “camping”, it is the easiest camping ever. They make the food, provide entertaining outdoor activities for all age groups and just provide a fun and friendly atmosphere. I haven’t read that your family is doing scouting, but just wanted to throw out the idea of what budget-friendly vacation tops the list for my family.
That actually sounds really fun Laurie! We might look into that! Thanks for sharing!
This was great. The start of this, unsurprisingly, is the food budget. Other than airfare (which can be pretty cheap if you can travel on one of the budget airlines) and accommodations, dining out is the most expensive part of the trip. Honestly, sometimes it has been more than accommodations or airfare for me. I think one of the awesome things about having a partner or a family is that you can be on the same page about keeping food costs low. When you are single and visiting friends it’s often difficult or awkward to decline to dine out or to communicate about a low travel budget.
Thanks for sharing this. Maybe I can solo travel and use some of the food ideas.
I hadn’t thought of that benefit of traveling with a family/spouse versus going with friends. That’s a great point. It’s really nice to be on the same page and not have outside pressure to spend more. Thanks for sharing that point.
I don’t go on vacation without eating out because sometimes Mom would like to have a break, too. Instead of spending many days ahead making food for a trip, packing four suitcases full of food, and then cooking on vacation. I’d rather add a thousand or two to the budget and have a really good time.
That’s the beautiful thing about personal finance– it’s personal! 🙂 We can each prioritize what’s important to us individually.
Most people wouldn’t be interested in doing what we did, but it worked great for us. We never eat out, so it wouldn’t be relaxing for me to see the bill for 8 people eating out for ten days. I would probably have a heart attack! 🙂 Since I did the prep and planning ahead of time, making food on our trip wasn’t hard for me and it still definitely felt like a vacation. 🙂
I have to agree but I’m older 63 and I’m getting to the point of not liking to cook too much. If your family is happy that is all that matters.
I’m curious if you’d be willing to share your Airbnb!
I’ll email you. 🙂
We went to DC in September and loved it! Can’t wait to go back. I thought I was a little crazy because I packed a suitcase with frozen meats and ice packs, but maybe not, lol.
I, too, am contemplating our next trip. Would love to hear ideas from others.
That’s awesome Jennifer!! Glad we can both be crazy!!
WOW, I’m impressed! We’ve often gone places where meals were either included in the hotel cost (breakfast) and where there was a fridge in our room to cut down on costs, but I’ve never gone on a trip where I packed ALL my own food!
Also, your kids are getting soooo big — your daughter is as tall as you, it looks like! So crazy! (And I kind of can’t believe you only have two kids now under 5…I’ve been reading your blog for longer than I realized!)
This was the first time I ever did it too! We’re used to road trips where we can stop by stores along the way, but this was our first time flying with everyone.
And yes, they are getting so big! My oldest two are about the same height as me (and I’m 5’9″)! It’s crazy how time flies!
Your guys a simply awesome! This vacation sounds wonderful. And to spend that “little” amount of money for a ~10~ day trip (including airfare) for all of you is absolutely incredible.
But how did you keep the bread from squishing?
Thank you Yma! It was a wonderful trip. The bread was in a suitcase that had firm sides where it wouldn’t get squished. That suitcase just had bread if I remember right.
Yes, I have certainly gone on vacations and trips and not eaten out, but you went the extra mile. In your situation, I would probably have ordered groceries to be delivered to my airbnb, but it would have been more expensive because you did so much meal prep ahead of time.
I appreciate hearing your experiences as I also want to plan a (road) trip to D.C. and stay in an airbnb after we get out of debt . . . hopefully by the end of next year (2023)!
A road trip would be a great way to celebrate! That’s awesome that you’re so close to being debt-free! Keep up for good work Jen!