Booking complicated, multi-leg international flights online a whole year ahead is a smart idea, if you're interested in saving money.
Twelve months ago I booked our creative cobweb of multi-leg flights to and from North America, for our little Australian family of three, using Expedia. Afterwards I worried for a long time about whether I'd done the right thing or not. Three months ago I did a quote comparison to see what it would cost if I booked then. I discovered that what I paid for three return, muti-leg flights was one third of the going cost then. I was most relieved. In other words, I got the three flights for the current price of one.
Tonight I phoned Expedia just to see what it would cost to extend our stay in Denver by two nights. Following about thirty minutes on hold, while a very lovely guy, located somewhere in the less-developed world, looked into it for me, the answer was "Thousands of dollars, Madam." And there it is. Plan ahead!
While I was on hold, sitting in front of my big screen, I did some fast research, and worked out that we can have quite a lovely day in Denver after we check out of our Art Hotel. I have found that there is a historic sensibility to Denver, and we'll be exploring it on an architectural walking tour of LoDo (the downtown heart of Denver city).
Our guided tour is focused on the arrival and impact of railway, how buildings grew up around Union Station and the neighbourhood's transformation over time. They claim we'll view one of the finest collections of late 19th and early 20th century commercial buildings in America, including historic hotels, warehouses and adaptive reuse projects (the exact focus of my PhD thesis!) Apparently, we'll even gain a sense of what it might have felt like to arrive in Denver at the turn of the 20th century. Should be fun. Thanks to Historic Denver, it's just $15 each for 90 minutes of knowledge enrichment. So it seems Denver can make sense within a heritage framework, after-all. Yay! Happy about that. Afterwards we'll grab some lunch in a part of town called Larimer Square, where not so long ago locals saved a host of old buildings from demolition and now it's thriving. That's my kind of place.
We'll have 22 nights away on land, and that's over 3 whole weeks spent in totally astonishing places: Montreal (7 nights), Quebec City (3 nights), Charleston (3 nights), Savannah (3 nights), Boston (5 nights) and Denver (1 night), plus two nights in the sky.
Occasionally people shake their heads when I say we're away for 3.5 weeks all up. These sceptics exclaim "That's not long at all. Hardly worth going!" I look at the people speaking and think to myself "Excuse me, and who exactly is paying for this trip? And when did you last make the effort to go anywhere out of the ordinary?"
These self-appointed critics are almost always retired, with all the time in the world on their hands, and no concept of how every moment away has a lost income cost for self-employed people, not to mention the weighty awareness of accruing work related tasks awaiting one's return. Further, they've often never even been overseas at all, so have absolutely no clue what they're talking about. Don't misunderstand me: I'm not bagging all retirees', just those that vocalise unsolicited, barely-baked thoughts.
We all look for different things in a holiday. Personally, doing my research to ensure that I'm staying in stylish places in the right locations of cultural relevance and interest to me is important. And I'd rather go for 3ish weeks than not go at all. So, that is exactly what we are doing!
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