Penny pinching at it's very best!

Have I mentioned my friend Dipti? She's the best! She is new here too, having just moved from Toronto, Canada on a teaching exchange program and coincidentally we met while touring the same apartment complex back in Oct. We recognized in each other a need for like-minded friendship. We've had long talks about dealing with moving from a large city to a small suburb in Virginia and we've explored a lot of DC together too. So, we've been bouncing around the idea of going up to Manhattan for the weekend but with work, company in town for both of us, and every day life it was almost impossible to plan it. So we decided to just try and fly by the seat of our pants when the time was right and it worked!! There were definitely challenges. We couldn't afford to spend a lot of money and NYC is a notoriously expensive city. We only had 3 days (Fri, Sat, Sun). Since both of us love it there, we had A LOT we wanted to show each other and do while in the city. Here's how we figured it out and I really hope it inspires someone to do it for themselves too!! Get away and enjoy life!

Question: How do you find a reasonable price for a hotel when you try to book just 6days before your arrival?
Answer: Hotels.com- 2 nights at the Paramount Hotel in Times Square, mid-town Manhattan. Cost= 94.50 per night!!!

Q: How do you get from DC to Manhattan in the least amount of time/hassle without paying a fortune?
A: Megabus.com- Dropped us off in mid-town at 11am on Fri and picked us up at Penn Station at 6pm on Sun.
Cost= 40.00 roundtrip!

Q: How can you possibly see a SOLD-OUT Broadway show on OPENING WEEKEND?!
A: Box office at the theater. West Side Story standing-room only tickets on opening weekend.
Cost= 26.50 per person!!

Q: How do you go have dessert at Serendipity when every single other visit before to NY you've walked in and there is a 2hr+ wait and you just end up saying screw that?!
A: Midnight, baby!! (FYI: I'm so glad I finally ate at that place! WAY over-rated. If you want good dessert go to Max Brenner's instead. That place was rad!) http://www.maxbrenner.com/

There are other things we did to keep costs down. It was my first time in NY that I didn't sit in the back of a taxi-cab. Dipti convinced me to just take the subway for everything and she was totally right. Once you resign yourself to walking everywhere, it was fine. We bought day passes and just told ourselves we were walking off all that dessert. Also, we didn't shop til we dropped either. We hit up Canal Street, but nothing was really all that appealing. We had 2 meals a day after our morning coffees.

So, there you have it. Penny pinching at it's very best. It was a wonderful weekend and we are gonna try and do this again. We'll see if it's anything worth blogging about!

xo
C