This September is a milestone birthday for my wife, Annie. We wanted to celebrate with a long weekend in a fun city. We considered a few cities that have been on our “to-do” list, including Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans. Because fall hurricane season can be unpredictable, we decided to focus our search away from the east coast and Gulf of Mexico locations.
We also wanted a flight that was less than 3 hours to maximize our vacation time in our destination. So we decided on Austin, Texas. Austin is known for live music, BBQ, craft beers and numerous outdoor activities.
Airfare
We didn’t want to spend a ton of money on this trip so our goal from the outset was to book with miles. Both Annie and I have American AAdvantage miles so we started there.
Hotel
We wanted to stay in the heart of the action in downtown Austin. There are a lot of nice hotels downtown, including the Westin Austin Downtown, which went for ~$397 per night and the Hilton Austin for ~$590. There were also more reasonable hotels like the Hilton Garden Inn, the Omni any many others that had availability. Her birthday falls on the weekend of a Texas Longhorns football home game, so unfortunately Saturday night prices were pretty inflated.
Car Rental
After a little research, we quickly determined that we didn’t need our own car since we were staying downtown. It would cost $42 a day just to valet at the hotel and we plan to walk as much as possible. We’ll use Uber or Lyft whenever we need to go far or to serve as our designated driver.
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