Traveling on the Cheap: Boston

Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Bruce Beck, I was able to attend Pappas Patristic Institute summer program in June on a scholarship that included room and board. However, I still needed to provide my own airfare to Massachusetts. Since it’s a no-spend month, I wanted to be as cheap as possible, but I had several flights to purchase. One of my best friends was having a bridal shower that I was surprising her at. So I needed a flight from California to Virginia. Virginia to Massachusetts, and Massachusetts back home.  

After price looking at several different airlines, I settled on Spirit. Because it’s a budget airline, I couldn’t take much luggage. But other than that, the service is fairly good. Here’s a breakdown of the flights

Leg 1: $176.

Leg 2: $69.

Leg 3: $204.

I tried to buy them as cheaply as possible by avoiding any bells and whistles. However, I didn’t notice until the second leg that you can skip purchasing a specific seat and be assigned one for free. If I had known that, Leg 1 would have been $30 cheaper.  

Flying to VA was a red-eye so I ate before I left and slept on the flight. Another friend was in cahoots about my surprise plan and picked me up from the airport. All in all, no extra money spent on traveling.

I didn’t spend any money there, either. The party was a lowkey eat tacos and watch movies affair. Pretty much the best! And they took me back to the airport (which was another 3am flight, bless their hearts).

I’m pretty good at avoiding food at airports, and the flight was short (about an hour) so I was in and out of the airport without much of a problem. Thankfully, transit away from the airport is also free. But I ran into a hitch when my purse was stolen, and I tried to go back to the airport to see if I could find it. No luck, and transit back cost $2.75. Not exactly an exciting purchase, but the bus ticket back looks cool. And thankfully, I always carry cash in places other than my purse, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

During the week, all my meals were paid for, and I ate in the cafeteria. I had the option to eat out on the town, and it would have been nice–the caf was in a vegetarian phase–but in the spirit of saving money, I ate a lot of salads that week.

As a group, we went out to ice cream twice. One of the difficulties of our culture is that it’s very food based, and I wanted to hang out with friends, but I didn’t want to spend money. It’s an act of discipline to not order something good and watch other people enjoy it. I held out though, and didn’t buy anything. I ended up splitting a shake with someone the first night though, and a kind gentleman offered to buy me a scoop the second.

We went out to eat the Friday before everyone flew out. I ate before hand and ordered water at the restaurant.

All in all, during the program, I had a week of no-spend days, and I’m really proud of myself. Saturday, however, was slightly different. We ate brunch at the caf, packed up our things, and took an uber to downtown Boston to wander around the city for the rest of the day. It was amazing. We saw Paul Revere’s grave and where Ben Franklin might have been buried, and the site of the Boston Massacre, and where they dumped tea into the harbor. And the Cheers bar, although, I have to admit, I was a little shaky on my pop culture references. As a final rendezvous, we went to a mexican restaurant and I spent $12 on tacos after tip before parting ways.

Then I needed to find my way to Framingham, MA, where I had some military connections who were going to let me stay the night. I had tried to find a cheap flight that Saturday, but alas, the only flight less than $400 was on Sunday. The uber there was $25, which isn’t bad considering it was a 40-minute drive.

However, I used Uber pool, which makes you walk a little ways to catch your uber. It only gives you cross streets and the GPS isn’t that great at locating you so I walked the wrong way, realized it, and started walking the other direction. As I was walking up, my uber drove away and the company charged me $5 for missing my uber. So the ride ended up costing me $30 instead of $25.

The next day, they dropped me off at the Logan Express, and I bought a $12 ticket to the airport. Because my purse was stolen, and thus all forms of identification, TSA pulled me aside to ask me some verification questions, give me a full pat down, and search my bag. The whole endeavor was insanely stressful, and afterwards I was famished. Normally, I don’t buy airport food because they jack up their prices, but Dunkin Donuts had a special going on so I bought two breakfast soft tacos and a coffee for $3.54, probably the cheapest meal I’ve ever eaten while travelling.

In all, travel included, the trip cost me $514.29, not bad for a week away from home. Next year, Pappas won’t be so cheap, and my husband is planning on coming with me, but I’m glad I took the trip to see just how cheap I could travel and still enjoy myself.