Dining On A Budget

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I love to eat and it can be one of the best things about traveling. I will plan whole days around places I want to eat, but I also plan ahead to save money on food before I leave, so I can afford to splurge on a few meals and also eat more often than usual, since I am always hungry when out in the fresh air. 

If you’re like me and want to eat all day long, you’re going to need some tips on how to do it inexpensively, so at least you don’t go broke doing it. Here are just a few of the rules I follow to get the best bargains and keep my wallet from emptying out by the end of the first day.

Bring snacks

Trick your stomach by bringing snacks with you in your bag each day. This way, if you’re tempted to nibble on something, you know you have them on you and are less likely to spend money on food you don’t really need.

Eat where the locals eat

Just by avoiding touristy areas, you can save a lot on your meals. When you’re out, ask a few people where they recommend. They aren’t going to tell you they prefer a chain restaurant over their favorite local pub. The food is likely more authentic than those that you can find right near tourist attractions, making it cheaper, because it’s local and not shipped in from a different country.

Make lunch your main meal

If you really want to try one of the “hip” restaurants by a celebrity chef, make reservations for lunch. The food will be just as good, but it’s usually much cheaper at lunch than at dinner.

Hit up the food carts

Food carts can have a huge variety of different local and international foods, but can be half the price of (or less) than dining at a sit-down restaurant. With this kind of savings, you can try fare from several carts with no regrets.

Rent a vacation home or stay in a hotel with a kitchen(ette)

This is my favorite way to stretch my food budget, because there are so many options. Renting can be a great value over hotel stays if you’ll be visiting for a week or more, plus it gives you the chance to check out the local grocery store. I am not a big breakfast person, so instead of eating out for that meal, I shop for new cereals and pastries that I can’t get at home. There’s never a better time to try new foods! 

Stay at a hotel that offers free breakfast

You don’t realize how much dining out can cost until you go on vacation. A reasonable breakfast can cost between $8-15 per person. If you multiply that by the number of people you’re traveling with and the number of days you’ll be staying, that number can be huge. If you find a hotel in your price range that offers free breakfast, you’ve hit a jackpot of savings.

Sign up for Groupon (or other daily deal sites)

Groupon is an amazing little site that offers daily deals on a wide assortment of things, not least of which is dining. Each day a new offer goes up at a big discount off the regular price. Dining certificates can be purchased quite often and many times I have gotten a half-off gift certificate to a new local restaurant or one just trying to bring in new customers. It works! Sign up at Groupon for the destination of your next vacation (they cover many international locations as well as the United States) and eat for less!

photo credit

Don’t order off the kids’ menu

If you travel with children, you’ll notice that all kids’ menus seem to have the same small rotation of foods. Obviously, little ones don’t just live on hot dogs, pizza, chicken nuggets and PB&J sandwiches. Not only do they charge an outrageous amount for these “staples” that cost hardly anything to make, but they offer hardly any nutritional value and your kids are likely to eat only half of it before declaring they’re full. Instead, order a meal that you both will eat and share. This saves you money and might get them to eat a vegetable or two.

Split your meals

Because I want to eat all day, and everything looks awesome, we often split meals, so we aren't super full, but also so we can sample a little bit more during the day. I find that most restaurants serve at least twice as much food as you should eat anyway. You might also want to just order a few different appetizers to share. This works even better if you're a little too hungry for only half a meal and the restaurant offers free bread you can fill up a bit on.

If you travel with children, having them split a main meal, instead of spending practically the same amount each on two (or more) children's menu items that is the same thing you could eat at home or down the street at a fast food restaurant.

This is just a small list of things you can do to help stretch your food budget on your future trips, but they can save you quite a bit, as they have me and my family on our travels. Remember, the more money you save on meals, the more money you can spend on doing something else!

How do you save money on dining out when you travel?

Gift a Staycation in a Box

The last year and a half has been weird and stressful and unpredictable, and I anticipate the next 3-6 months will probably be more of the same. People are tired of being at home, but also not ready to go anywhere, because there are so many variables, including anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, new variants, no way to social distance, and everything else, so for a friend's birthday, I decided she was getting a vacation.

No, no one is getting a real vacation yet, but staycations are easy, and with all the experience I now have putting one together, I figured I could do the same for her. I wanted it to be creative and fun, plus include a bunch of things that were either useful, unique, pretty, or all three. 

I started out with a great pottery bowl made by a local artist here in Portland that I picked up at an Asian market/festival earlier this year. It was specified as a succulent or bulb pot and had a metallic-y band around it that reminded me a lot of the Japanese art of fixing pottery with gold, thereby both fixing it and making it more beautiful while still having been broken (pretty much how when bad things happen, you try to find the good in it at some point). This process is called kintsukuroi, which translates to "to repair with gold". 

With this bowl, I decided to plan an entire staycation around this Japanese theme, finding a beautiful Japan landscape backdrop, and then going to my local Asian supermarket and loading up on all the things. Now, obviously, you don't have to go as extreme as I did, but travel makes me happy, and so does giving gifts, so I went a bit overboard, including finding a mini trunk suitcase to pack it all in. I mean, what's a trip without luggage?

The suitcase was a bit smaller than I anticipated, but that's okay, because I just put the overflow in a fun, matching bag I just happened to have on-hand. What else was in the package? I'll show you!

photo by Nancy Jennings

I picked up some ramen packets (like good ramen, not those square crunchy ones that cost 33 cents at Safeway) and a jar of ramen seasoning, which I didn't know was a thing, but apparently we make such things here in Portland at Jacobsen Salt Co. This means I had to get a ramen bowl and matching spoon. I had previously gifted her some sake cups and a few bottles of locally-made sake (from Sake One), so I skipped another sake and instead got a personal bottle of sparkling ume wine (plum blossom) to round out the actual meal. 

photo by Nancy Jennings

Dessert and snacks were easy, because I picked a little bit of everything that looked weird and/or delicious and used that all as packing material. When in doubt, candy that you don't mind if it breaks, will absolutely not break, and will pad everything in your box and add whimsy. So, there's shrimp chips, and Pocky, and gummy candies, and gum, and chocolate treats stuffed in there. 

Since I had included a background, I also wanted to include stuff for the table that wasn't food, but was also small and would travel well. I chose an awesome pop-up card with two geishas and a cherry blossom tree that sits flat and creates a lovely scene all by itself, but I also rounded it off with a mini pagoda, that I thought might hold a candle, but was a bit too small for that, because it's actually a metal aquarium prop. In fact, I found these to be really great in adding a bit of flair, but not being too expensive or too big, when your dinner is done and you don't really have space for another thing in your house. Or maybe you have a fish and he can enjoy it after you.

photo by Nancy Jennings

But wait! That's not all! No trip is complete without sightseeing! Yes, I know technically a backdrop counts as seeing sights, but also, a static picture goes only so far. To complement it, I made a playlist of walking tours and JPop on YouTube and printed out a QR code for it.

Once I Tetrised all my goodies inside the suitcase (or as much as would fit), I added real packing, like bubble wrap in a few open spots and on top, and stuck in the QR code before I closed it up. The few things that didn't fit when into my overflow bag: the background, the pagoda, and a few candies that didn't have a home). I adorned my suitcase with some travel "stamps" and then added a birthday greeting both in (probably very bad) Japanese that I used Google Translate for and then in English with a metallic paint pen. I boxed it up with my overflow bag and added the card on top, and then used sticky notes to number them, so they would be opened in the correct order (yes, I am a nerd, and I'm perfectly secure in that).

There you have it. With a little creativity, you can give your friends and family a lovely little trip that they can take in their own home. Happy Birthday again to my wonderful friend, Nancy!

If you could go anywhere now, where would you go and who would you take with you?

Our Chicago Staycation

As you know, we're still not really traveling. We have a road trip planned, but only because it looked like things were getting better and then as quickly as that came, it went back to being horrible again. So, yes, we will be going on that trip, but that's probably it for the near future. For now, we're continuing our Destination Date Night series. 

We've been wanting to visit Chicago for quite some time, and we've done a few virtual tours during the pandemic to help feel like we're going somewhere and to support tour guides who are out of work for the time being. One was a haunted history of Lincoln Park and another was a cool haunted river tour. (Can you tell we like haunted stories?) So, while we're waiting until we can really visit Chicago, this was the next best thing.

I chose a great evening view of the Chicago River, because I knew that would be a big part of our "trip". I liked that we could see the skyline. I also chose a background with the Buckingham Fountain, a landmark of Millennium Park that isn't The Bean (Cloud Gate) that is part of everyone's photos. I thought this was a more interesting and unique view and didn't make me think of Anish Kapoor and how he's the jerk of the art world. If you don't know this story, please take some time to read about it when you're done here. 

A lot of my backdrop had a blue color, so I went full out and added a bight blue tablecloth to my table then added some Chicago mainstays: 

• Ferris wheel, first built in 1892, and now an iconic part of Navy Pier (a different wheel was built for this). This was America's answer to the Eiffel Tower. 
• The Chicago flag. I didn't actually know that cities within states had their own flags, but the Chicago flag is pretty good looking.
• The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. This was a fun one, since I love the Wienermobile and once looked into touring with it. Oscar Mayer moved from Germany to Detroit and then to Chicago where he started his famous deli brand. I figured I needed a mini version of the mobile, and all orders come with a Wienermobile whistle, which is what you see in the mums.

I also just threw out a jar of flowers that complemented the rest of the things.

I decided to order the things I would definitely eat when I visit Chicago, that I can actually get here at a Chicagoan restaurant.  

The first was a deep dish Chicago pizza with sausage, pepperoni, and mushrooms. Generally, we get thin crust or regular pizza, as I find that deep dish is too filling. Because of that, I only ordered a personal size to share. 

Next, I ordered a giant calzone. Okay, I didn't have an option to order a size, but this was way more than 2 normal people can eat.

Chicago has tons of microbreweries now, so I know I would have stopped into one of those places and gotten a taster of some of those and tried some delish bar foods. 

Beer and pizza are great together. 

While we ate, we took a long, leisurely stroll along the waterfront. The video we watched was taken during Covid, so we had pretty unobstructed views of everything and that was nice. Then we moved onto dessert, because of course we saved room for that.

Make way for...cheesecake. Yes, none of these things we've eaten were anything super special, but it is what that region of the country is known for and easily found nearby where we live, and (bonus) was offered by delivery. It wasn't life changing or super exciting, but it was nice and chill and we ended up with leftovers, too.

As we wrapped up dessert, we watched some videos of the must-eat foods and must-do things in Chicago. 

Cheers to a Chicago staycation. If you want to have your own, you totally can. Here are some ways to make it special:

• A backdrop of the Chicago river/skyline
• One of Buckingham Fountain
• Chicago Bean/Cloud Gate statue
• Chicago flag
• Ferris wheel
• This is the wooden one I got, but it's pretty bad for splinters, so this one might be better
• And you don't have to put this one together at all
• Wienermobile
• I also like this one from Funko
• Or this beanie one
• Beer tasting tray
• This one has funky glasses, but nowhere to mark which beer is which
• Chicago Bears merch, like this jersey
• Or Cubs merch, like this hat
• Plan your trip like a local with the Not For Tourists Guide
• A YouTube playlist - this is mine that you can use

I won't be making a follow-up post to this, because I have this 48-hour guide for you. Our next date will take us down under with a visit to Australia. 

I hope you enjoyed this and are planning a fun staycation for yourself/your family. If so, let me know in the comments and/or tag me in any of your social media posts so I can see where  you went!

Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links, and I may be compensated should you choose to make any purchases through them. This allows me to keep this blog running for you.