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Monday, January 19, 2009

London, Baby!

And, "Someone's Westminster crabby!"

Do you remember Aaron's and my trip to San Antonio? (Is that grammatically correct? I know it shouldn't be "mine & Aaron's" or "Aaron & my's." Hmm.) In case you've forgotten, (and for a fun trip down Memory Lane), click here.

About the same time we were planning for our San Antonio trip, Aaron and I started to dream about how fun it would be to go to London for our 10 year anniversary. See, our original honeymoon was 2 days in Dallas. Our trip to San Antonio was even better (and longer) than that, so we figured we'd just keep going. We checked prices off and on and kinda' kicked around ideas for being able to afford something that monumental. It was a pretty crazy thing, thinking of actually going overseas. It's something we've both wanted to do for a long time and it seemed like it would probably remain a dream, nothing more.

But somewhere along the way, this trip morphed from dream to plan. The trip morphed, too, from "London" to "London and Paris," and we found a travel website that would allow us to look at flight and hotel options for two destinations. (Props to Expedia, yo.) The price was still daunting, but it started to go down, especially after we decided to do 10 days instead of 2 weeks. We even nailed down dates: after Baylor commencement so Aaron & I don't have to worry about missing work, and between our own Spring and Summer school terms. After much, much research, we settled on a London hotel and a Paris hotel that were equal parts affordability and quality (gotta love customer reviews).

And then the price went down further and we started to get excited. Could this actually happen? About October the priced dropped to the lowest I'd seen it (about $3200) and I freaked out. We didn't have the money yet to book this trip and I was so worried that prices would start to go back up. But a couple of emails and phone calls with Angie assured me that prices would probably get even better. They did, especially after we started looking at flying out of Dallas instead of Waco, and then leveled out around $2800 to $3000, depending on where we wanted to stay. Considering we started out at $4200, things were looking good.

And then I got my student loan refund last week, which made us even more excited. This was half of our funding for our trip! All we had to do was wait for Aaron's student loan refund and we'd be set (gotta love student loans). And then one of our hotel possibilites went on sale, dropping the price down to $2600. This was great!!

And then, last night, when we were checking prices again, just to see how things were looking, a funny thing happened. US Airways dropped their fares. (We assume it has something to do with the recent crash-landing.) And guess what?

Aaron and I booked our airfare and hotels in London and Paris for 10 days, May 17-27, for less than $2300!

We're going to Europe! Happy 10th Anniversary to us!

P.S. If you find a cheaper fare on this trip between now and May, don't tell me about it.

7 comments:

andrea_jennine said...

Awesome! Oh my gosh, you're going to love it so much. Let me know if you want any writerly-minded tourist tips!

Anonymous said...

I knew it!!!!! I'm so happy for you two. I'm so excited you get to go. You both deserve this trip SO much!!!!!! YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!!!!!

Aaron said...

pics of the maddoxes at platform 9 and 3/4 forthcoming.

Jennie Quillen said...

Ohhh, that's SO exciting! :-) (...even though you are going to miss my graduation...)

Amy said...

I know. I'm a bad sister. But at least I have a good excuse. =)

Anonymous said...

Take me with you?

Oh, that's right, I'm keeping the kids while you're gone.

Never mind!

TM

Angela said...

"London, baby!" Sorry, I just re-read the first sentence and had a Joey flashback, and had to add it.