Monday, December 01, 2008

Miami and Boston Travel Plans

I'm mostly putting this on my blog cause I don't want to clutter up TWSS, but also so I can keep track of my own progress as far as making travel plans.

MIAMI HALF MARATHON, Sunday January 25

I booked my flights. I'm flying AirTran from BWI to MIA on Friday 1/23 at 10:59am. It was super cheap ($72). On the way out, I'm flying from FLL (Fort Lauderdale) to BWI on Sunday 1/25 at 5:41pm. That flight was $158. There were less expensive, earlier options, but I want as much of a beach day post-race as possible. Also on the way down you can probably find a few more flights into FLL (and also really cheap). Total for my flight was $251, booked direct via AirTran. Oh and hint, since I hadn't seen it before, don't select your seats unless you really want to, cause they charge you for that.

We don't have a hotel yet, but we'll be staying in South Beach. Rooms are probably in the $200-$300/night range, so if we have 2-4 people per room it will be about $200-$300 per person for the trip.

We may also rent a car, because we'll have a few people going back to FLL at the same time on Sunday, and also the race start is nowhere near where we'll be staying, so we'll need to get up there. That won't cost that much I feel like.


BOSTON MARATHON, Monday, April 20

It looks like we have a minimum of 14 people going up to this race (plus probably two more spectators), which is crazy. From what I understand, Alyssa and Chrissie have their own respective hotel arrangements, so that takes two out, but we'd probably need 3-4 rooms depending on what other people are doing.

My mom (who is a travel agent) has already booked a room for her and my dad at the Hyatt Harborside or something. A sample of the prices were: $600/night in Boston; $400/night in Cambridge; $240/night at this place, and it's just a water taxi ride across to downtown. To me that sounds like a good idea.

Since I would prefer to get this taken care of sooner than later, I'm going to email everyone who has expressed interest in doing this race and traveling with us to get strict counts. After the Philly Marathon debacle I just want to be sure it doesn't happen again. Hopefully we can come to some kind of decision within the next week and have it squared away.

I can already see how ridiculous that weekend is going to be trying to accommodate everyone's special needs prior to the marathon, but bring it on - how often do you get to race Boston with friends of this quantity and quality??

4 comments:

///MM said...

FYI- The water taxi doesn't start running until 7am. We'd have to take the T instead (~1.5mi walk from the hotel).

RM said...

Yeah I didn't mean that we would take the water taxi over the morning of the race, I just meant it would be convenient for getting around Boston for the rest of the weekend.

I figured race morning we'd either drive to the T, and then get to the buses that way, OR drive to the start-ish area, and then after the race get some people to drive us back/take the T again back there. Whatever's clever.

Jake Marren said...

I am hoping that Ella and I will be able to get down and watch this race. What spectators will be there?

RM said...

Spectator-wise it looks like Brennan and Melissa for sure, my parents apparently are going to go up as well.