Melbourne, here we come!

May and June tend to be an expensive month for the wife and I, actually more so for me. In the middle of May Cari always seems to get a year older, and at the end of May we celebrate another successful year of holding our marriage together. (only someone with a happy and fulfilled marriage could get away with typing that.....cough...) June of course, I openly embraced another year of wisdom as I turned a year older.
So this year we decided to pool our money and instead of getting gifts etc.... for each other, we're going to visit one of Australia's most iconic cities, Melbourne.
Last night I sat down and booked everything from the comfort of my kitchen, while snacking on a home made cookie that Cari made that morning, and a dog drooling at my feet hoping for a piece of the cookie.
Most of the time I get a little balled up when I'm booking plane tickets and hotel rooms. The cost of doing anything these days is mind blowing. Decent hotel rooms are at least $300 a night and plane tickets are always expensive.....
But not this time......
I was armed and ready for action. I had a game plan....an awesome trip, at a decent price...and I think I did it.
First up were the plane tickets. Unless we were willing to fly out at 6am one day and come home at midnight on another we were looking at about $500 - $650 round trip. Not to bad when I think about how much it used to cost Cari to fly home to Halifax from Montreal. But more then I wanted to spend.
Just like home they have credit cards in Australia that you can collect points with and use them for air fare. We use our credit card for everything, and of course it is paid off by the end of the month,(usually) so we have a lot of points. Long story short we ended up getting over 50% off the plane ticket. BAM! tickets booked.....
A minute after booking the tickets our bank account was a little lower and our credit card points were at zero.
Bring on the Hotel booking.... I was armed with my Entertainment book. Pandemic sells An Australian version of the Entertainment Book to raise money for social events. Its basically a book full of coupons and deals for $60 bucks. Its already paid for itself twice over. Along with hundreds a coupons there are hundreds of hotels you can stay at, at a discount price. Most of the time its 50% off the full room price. So I logged onto the Entertainment Book website and searched for hotels in down town Melbourne. I finally settled on the "Oaks On Collins"
(http://www.theoaksgroup.com.au/Property.aspx?sid=5)
and got it at 70% off the rack rate.
I was a happy camper.

Speaking of camping, we're going camping next weekend so we'll have lots of pics next weekend.

Steve (still cheap) Dickinson