San Antonio Vacation and Associated spending

I know most of you, my sweet readers, are not personal finance blog readers so here is the deal. PF bloggers post their spending and analyse it on their site so this is my attempt at being a real PF blogger.


Our vacation spending looked something like this:

• food-$280.17
• hotel-$275.58
• parking-$32.00
• activities-$268.43
• gas-$85.00
• shopping-$217.21

Food- Would I have liked to spend less on food?Yes,of course. But I did plan on eating out every meal and me being me, I looked forward to it very much. I was disappointed because our hotel did not have a mini fridge in the room so leftovers were not an option. Also I hate shopping before a trip and packing a cooler- I mean it's a vacation. Let's eat some delicious food. Next time I'll probably book a room with a fridge and microwave just so there is less waste. But I stand by eating out as one of my favorite passtimes.Some of our meals included the hard rock, the hotel restaurant, and the Oasis. The kids ate free at the hotel so that was a huge savings-you just can't see the savings because we turned our savings into desert.The Oasis is a little whole in the wall Devin found with the Garmin and we ate breakfast there twice. It was cheap and authentic and we will be back.


Hotel-I had done tons of research to find us a reasonable rate on the riverwalk and finally was able to book El Tropicano for $111.00 a night. It was a nice hotel in a great location. The kids really liked staying somewhere "fancy". The pool lights changed color at night which they enjoyed very much. It was worth the extra to see how much they enjoyed the little luxuries, but I will probably hit up La Quinta for our next outing.

Parking-I hate paying for parking. It just doesn't make sense to small towners like myself. Paying for parking is about as gratifying purchase as hemorrhoid creme. You need it and usually don't have other options but what are you really getting for that money. I did call ahead and ask that our hotel discount our parking and they graciously agreed to let us park for half price. We walked everywhere once we arrived so we didn't have to pay to park anywhere else.


Activities-Ughhh. I cannot justify all of this category. We paid $100 to do three adventures at Ripleys. STUPID. Adventure 1-Guinness Museum, fun for the whole family. Adventure 2-Haunted adventure, stupid and not appropriate for our ubersheltered offspring. Adventure 3-Tomb Rider, a short carnival ride. I should have known better. I had gone on the website beforehand. One hundred dollars worth of shame on me. It would have cost $53 per adult to go into the wax museum. Are these people nuts?  Obviously I am for giving them my hard earned money. Fiesta Texas tickets were purchased a while back for $136 at our local mall. The lines there we short and we enjoyed both parks. That's a lie. I thought the water park water was really nasty but whatever it washed off. Also included in this expense was the riverboat tour for $33. We all had fun except for little man who was hot and zoned out for most of the tour.


Gas-I had been sitting on a hundred dollar bill for a few weeks and sent Devin to get us a Wal-mart gas card the night before. We filled up before we left and stopped once on the way home and ended up with a quarter of tank when we parked at home.  Not too bad for a V8 engine. I am sure all that walking contributed to savings in this area.

Shopping-I need to EVER go out of town without making shopping part of the fun. This category includes Alamo souvenirs($32.32), souvenir pictures from Ripley's($21.52) and four convenience store stops($38.01). Fourteen dollars worth of the convenience store purchases was EmergenC. We had to buy the souvenir photo at Ripley's because the boys pic came out awesome.It looked like a still from an action film the way they were holding their laser guns. I didn't have the heart to tell my daughter that her covering her ears while I closed my eyes was a less than precious moment so we bought both. My son had been looking forward to going to the Disney store as he was in desperate need of more Phineas and Ferb gear. He found an Agent P that converts into Perry and makes sounds. I am pretty sure I told him that would come out of his own money, but at this point I don't remember who paid.

He also needed some Toms shoes to start school. Did I mention this was tax free weekend? The weekend our family usually stays wholed-up at home for the purpose of safety. We went to Whole Foods first. They didn't have kids sizes and referred us to some other natureish place who didn't have his size in the design he wanted. They referred us to a third location; again, they were out of his size. The husband was sick and also sick of Garmin sending him on  this footwear quest. Our last possible store was Neiman Marcus. They did not have the design we picked out online but my boy liked the camo shoe with the orange sole. Sold. Notsofast. Did you know Neimanns doesn't take mastercard(my debit card). "Our accepted tender is Amex,NM card, or check," the quiet saleslady informed me, as if I had a third eye. So I wrote a check, judged their company, and left with our treasure. The daughter had a 40% off coupon for Justice so she and I ran in and spent $104 in about 20 minutes getting her some tops for school. 


Anybody else take a long weekend that cost a zillion dollars?