Violet Sky

This trip was kind of a fun trip from a costs perspective, because I am a person who is perhaps bizarrely tickled by being able to get things for a discount or free. With my Alaska Airlines Visa, I get a yearly companion fare, and this was my first time using that benefit since I opened the card back in summer 2023. I was also just short of enough Hyatt points to pay for our hotel entirely with points, so I took advantage of a 20% discount on points purchases and bought enough to get us over the edge. Thrilling!

Lodging

Merchant	Expense	Category
Hyatt	$165.36	Lodging

$165.36 was the cost of the extra points I bought – not a bad price for three nights at a hotel.

Food

Category	Expense
Airport	$86.50
Coffee	$7.71
Grocery	$73.69
Minimart	$38.33
Restaurant	$442.39
Total	$648.52

It always shocks me how much money we end up spending on vacations. It’s true, we could grocery shop more strategically (though we were hampered by not having a microwave in the hotel, only a minifridge and a coffee maker – one of my husband’s breakfasts was instant ramen he poured hot water from the coffee maker into) and try to reduce our restaurant spend, but also we really love trying new cuisine when we go new areas, so it would reduce our expenses but also our enjoyment of being somewhere new.

We had two somewhat expensive meals (one at Barcelona Wine Bar and one at Balvanera) but otherwise, the restaurant costs were largely $60 or less.

Transportation

Category	Expense
Airfare	$766.82
Car rentals	$97.16
Parking	$86.00
Rideshare	$220.60
Total	$1,170.58

I came prepared to evaluate this and declare that I once again poorly managed our transportation situation (remembering how much extra money we spent in Québec City on Ubers) but between the daily $26 parking cost at the hotel and the overall daily rate of the car rental, I think it was pretty much a wash.

We did end up wasting $28.33 applying to join Zipcar, where I was immediately rejected for having an invalid drivers license. This was odd because I am, and have been for many years, a fully-licensed driver with no accidents or points on my record, but we were really trying to avoid paying another $62 to get an Uber to the airport just to pick up a rental car and drive it back to downtown Pittsburgh. Next time, I’ll just go straight to Costco Travel and skip the attempt at Zipcar.

Entertainment

Merchant	Expense
AXS	$124.60
National Aviary	$39.90
Total	$164.50

For being the focus of this trip, this was the cheapest category! The Opeth tickets were affordable and the only other non-free piece of entertainment we participated in was the National Aviary, which was even more affordable.

Shopping

Category	Expense
Shopping	$235.28

Honestly, most of the “shopping” this trip was done at the airport. I immediately bought a book upon going through security, because the book I was reading at the time wasn’t the most scintillating and I thought I might want something more interesting. Every time we go through SeaTac, my husband scopes out the Sub-Pop store, and almost every single time, we’re on our way out (and thus aren’t in the position to carry around vinyl) or we arrive to SeaTac after they’ve closed. This time, we were returning and they were open, so he bought $75 worth of vinyl and carried it home.

Summary

Category	Expense
Lodging	$165.36
Food	$648.52
Transportation	$1,170.58
Entertainment	$164.50
Shopping	$235.28
Total	$2,384.34

Even with the discount on airfare, transportation managed to consume half of the resources spent on this trip. This is my second time flying to the rust belt, and I’m currently tracking prices for a trip to Detroit next summer, and it’s really kind of annoying how expensive it is to get to these medium-sized midwest/east coast cities from the west coast. It costs essentially the same to fly to Pittsburgh as it does to fly to Miami, despite the latter trip being 1200 more miles. Supply and demand strikes again, I suppose.