10 Ways to Save Money Dining On Vacation

Unlike some other things on vacation, like souvenirs and alcohol, you have to actually eat. Lots of us go on vacation without buying anything to bring home, but none of us travel without buying food. It's something you have to build into your budget, and there are many ways you can save on it, so it doesn't take up a big chunk of your overall budget. 

Just because you are trying to save money doesn’t mean that you have to eat fast food or sandwiches for every meal or can’t experience the best cuisine a place has to offer. Below is my top 10 list of ways to stretch your food funds.

Ask the locals where they eat

Odds are, people who live where you’re traveling don’t eat at the fanciest restaurant in town. You know who eats there? Tourists and people celebrating their anniversaries. The “normal” people eat at affordable dining establishments that are also delicious and serve food from the local area. They are going to want to point you towards some of the city’s gems and impress you because, unlike hotel staff, they don’t get paid for recommending the crazy expensive steakhouse down the street.

Look forward to lunch

You probably aren’t always frugal. While on vacation, it’s okay to splurge sometimes. If that includes going to a top-rated restaurant that you know is spendy, make reservations for lunch instead of dinner. The food will be just as tasty, but cheaper than at dinnertime.

Split an entrée

Most restaurants serve you at least twice as much food as you can eat. Don’t be weighted down having to carry around leftovers or feel bad about food left on your plate. Share a main dish with your travel companion. Most hotels will split an entrée for no fee, but even if you have to pay for an extra plate, it only costs a few dollars, which is cheaper than paying for a whole other meal.  

Order an appetizer for a meal

Most appetizers can be plenty to fill you up and can be as little as a third of the price of an entrée. This is also a great option for you if you like to try many different dishes. Order two to three for the same price as a meal.

Hit up the food carts

Food carts can offer 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.

Shop the farmers market

There’s no better way to experience local cuisine and interacting with residents than a visit to the closest farmers market. You will find a variety of food, including meats, fruits, vegetables and cheeses. Purchase enough for lunch and enjoy the afternoon having a picnic in a nearby park.

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. Make many of your own meals and save considerably. I don’t often like to spend money on eating breakfast out, so I love to buy new cereals and pastries I can enjoy in my room.

Sign up for Groupon

If you haven't been using Groupon, what are you even waiting for? Save 40-90% off food and more, meaning you can eat for way less than you originally planned, meaning you can splurge on a fancy meal, spend that money elsewhere, or actually just stay on budget. 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!

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.

Don’t order off the kids’ menu

If you travel with children, you’ll notice that most 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.

While there are other ways to save on dining, these have proven to be the most useful for my travels and are my first suggestions to anyone asking how to cut costs on their trip. They are easy to do and will enable you to try a bigger variety of foods, too. You’ll experience more of the city and its people, giving you a greater vacation experience.

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

Saving with the Denver CityPASS

Last week, Eric and I were in Denver for a quick 3-day trip before he had to attend a work conference. We had a few things we planned to do, so when we were offered a pair of Denver CityPASSes to make the most of our short trip, we quickly accepted and made a pretty ambitious plan of activities.

If you don't know, CityPASS allows you to skip some ticket lines, because you already have tickets right on your phone. Most attractions will scan your code and give you a physical ticket or wristband. There is a list of attractions you can choose from, so you pick what you want to do and then you have 7 days to use it from your first day of use. 

We were using a 5-attraction CityPASS, which means we could choose up to 5 things from the list of participating attractions. I love this, because you can always pivot and change up what you're going to do on each day and depending on what everyone in your group is interested in. The Denver CityPASS has entrance to the following activities:

• Denver Downtown Aquarium - $26.99/20.99
• Denver Museum of Nature & Science - $25.95/20.95
• Denver Botanic Gardens - $15.75/11.50
• Children's Museum of Denver at Marsico Campus - $18.75/16.75
• Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum - $19.95/12.95
• Denver Art Museum - $22/under 18 are free
• History Colorado Center  - $15/under 18 are free

None of these required advance reservations, but if they did, your app tells you. Once you've used your "ticket", it will show as used on your app as well. So, if you want to return to an attraction, you will have to pay regular admission fees if it's on a different day or your entrance doesn't include all-day admission.

We started our visit off strong by heading to the Downtown Aquarium (it's not downtown, that's just the name of this particular strings of aquariums). We walked along the riverfront to get there, which was pretty and had good sidewalks, but if you're driving, there is a huge parking lot across the street. The aquarium has a decent selection of things to please everyone. There are birds, amphibians, a shark tunnel, sea turtles, manta rays, and some hands-on exhibits, like bat rays and even jellyfish. 

While there are also fish I've never seen in real life before, like the arowana, you'll find the usual suspects, like clown fish. There are some animatronics, a recreation of a flash flood, tigers (for some reason), and a lot of great information about everything inside. If you can't get enough of the aquarium, you can book a shark dive, a scuba with fish, or make a reservation for their restaurant that has a whole aquarium wall. We spent almost two hours there, but if you have littles, you could easily spend more.

Next up was the Museum of Nature & Science. I had heard that they  had a special exhibit on poisons, so I was pretty intrigued and excited to check it out. This dealt with poisons in nature, manmade poisons, mythological poisons, as well as antidotes, stories, and a short demonstration on how an old murder case was solved. It was as interesting as I thought it would be.

If you've been to a museum of natural history, much of this museum was that. Animals of the world in exhibits, dinosaurs, other historical things like mummies, and gemstones. There is a whole exhibit on space and astronauts that we spent quite a bit of time in, but mostly we were there to see poisons and dinosaurs. We both saw some things we hadn't heard of before and got to see some actual fossils that were in the process of being uncovered by the museum scientists. 

The whole place is fascinating, and you can sit on their terrace, or just inside, and look over City Park to take a break. You could easily spend half the day here. There's a café for when you get hungry, then you can go back and see even more, since there are 3 floors packed full of things to check out, read about, and even touch. 

After the Museum, we decided it was too nice to be inside and the Denver Botanic Gardens were not too far away, so we hopped on a bus and headed over there to see some flowers. Now, if you've been following me for a while, you know I never miss a chance to visit a botanical garden. I just love to see local flora and get ideas for my eventual garden. Each botanical garden offers something completely different from others and this was no exception. I learned about Steppe gardens, there were these lovely spirit animals dotted around the grounds, and a science building. 

While not the biggest gardens we've ever visited, it was nicely broken up into sections and easy to navigate. There was a wedding happening on part of the grounds and it wasn't hard to understand why anyone would choose that space. I especially loved the section that featured bonsai trees, but I equally enjoyed seeing the different kinds of drought-resistant plants, and ways to display succulents in terrariums. We had lunch at the café here and the food was better than expected. Don't miss the sensory garden before you exit through the gift shop. You're encouraged to smell and touch the plants there, unlike on the rest of the grounds.

The next day, we got up early for breakfast and to get to the Denver Art Museum right as they opened. We learned that it has 7 floors, which is a lot of art and might be overwhelming if you aren't prepared with a plan of action. 

We knew we were interested in seeing the Arts of Africa exhibit, the Islands Beyond Blue exhibit, and Indigenous Arts of North America exhibit, so we spent the majority of our time there.

Having a large art museum at home in Portland, we knew that this visit could easily have taken up most of our day, but we made the decision to put our time into looking at art that was quite different than what we have at home. Sure, we could have looked at European artists, like Renoir and  Monet for quite a while, but we have also seen those artists everywhere else we've been, so we focused more on the amazing African artwork and textiles, Indigenous clothing, oceanic collection like that giant floral jellyfish and a tattoo art wooden leg that may or may not have been part of a set that went on a bed or other furniture.  If you love all types of art, this museum can be your whole day. It spans two buildings and there's even art outside to enjoy, and the main elevators and hallways are even works of art. 

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Unfortunately, we ran out of time to get to our 5th place, which would have been History Colorado Center, but we had another thing we needed to get to and it took most of the day. Next year, Eric's work will probably have the same retreat, so we'll be renting a car and trying to finish this list with a new CityPASS, because I'd also like to return to the Denver Art Museum to see more of their permanent exhibits and what else has rotated in. I also noticed there's a Women's History Museum right next to it, and I'd love to visit that as well.

If we had paid a la carte for all 4 attractions, it would have cost us $90.69 per person (or $53.44 per child). The CityPASS for 4 attractions is $57/$46 and for 5 attractions is $64/$54, which means even not using that last attraction, we still saved almost $27 per person. You may not want to purchase a full pass for children in your group if you are planning to visit attractions where they are free. The CityPASS for Denver has a 3-, 4-, and 5-attraction option, so it can work for any length trip you have. 

I'll be doing more in-depth posts on these attractions, and you can also see more about them on my Instagram. CityPASS isn't just confined to Denver either. It's available in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Southern California, Tampa Bay, and Toronto. That means, there are a lot of places you can save a lot on with CityPASS.

Have you ever used a CityPASS or other attractions pass on your travels?

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Disclaimer: I was gifted Denver CityPASS for the purposes of this review, but all opinions are my own. I have used CityPASS in the past and loved it just as much as I did here and highly recommend using it when you travel to a participating city. This post also includes affiliate links. If you make a purchase through them, I will receive compensation, at no extra cost to you. This helps me to continue bringing you great ways to save on all your trips, so thanks in advance for supporting me and this blog. 

The New Portland International Airport

For the last 4 or so years, PDX (Portland International Airport) has been going through a transition. Now, we were voted Best Airport by Travel + Leisure for 5 years in a row before this, and everyone has always said how much the loved coming to it, because we have local shops and restaurants and it feels inviting and we don't mark up prices like every other airport does, so when they said we were getting a huge remodel, I wasn't sure why...but we're halfway through it and I am in love.

Let's look at what the old airport looked like, before and during renovations:

PDX has always been pretty open. We had specialty carpet put in in the 80s (that looked like the title photo) and almost a decade ago it was torn out and replaced with the carpet you see in this picture. People were devastated. The PDX carpet was iconic. We took shoe selfies with it, had merchandise with the print on it, and this new carpet was just...not it. The old carpet was, well, old and disgusting and would cost entirely too much to have replicated, so they cut up that old carpet and instead of throwing it out, they sold it in square foot pieces for those of us that were sad to see it go. Obviously, I'm one of those people who paid $50 for a square of ugly carpet that I also loved. I framed it and it's hanging on my living room wall. 

Our airport was covered in this new carpet, making it kind of difficult to drag the new 4-wheeled roller bags along with you, but we made it work. Sometimes, you would just go to the airport to shop and eat, because there was a lot pre-security and it was a fun place to people watch. 

There was a lot of open space and skylights where they were needed, so you weren't just walking around in a dark box, but it really needed an upgrade.

For years, we've been showing up for flights and much of what we were used to seeing was behind walls, though they put up these fun giant post-its to make it feel more whimsical. You would have to walk a long ways to your flight one time, and then another time you would have to walk a long way in a different direction, because a different part of the building was being worked on. It was always a surprise, but the concept art was beautiful and our airport would finally be safe during an earthquake.

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Now, after 3-4 years and a lot of anticipation, the first phase of the airport is finally open. I went the Saturday after the official grand opening and was certainly not disappointed. The new areas are bright, airy, and bring in all the best of the Pacific Northwest. They had new "old" carpet made and put it in areas where people could still enjoy it and take their show selfies: in upstairs seating areas and in the public entertainment areas (i.e. under a piano in the atrium)

Our new atrium is vast, has real trees, video walls, wooden benches made from fallen trees from wildfires, and all local shops and food options in new airy surroundings.

The ceilings are so high that we now have space for even more great art. 

Plants have been added strategically, to bring the outside in and create a soothing atmosphere. 

Our TSA and security procedures are so much faster and less crammed together. 3 people at a time can bin their stuff to go through the x-ray. 

I especially love these new seating areas that look like branches and river rocks. There are places to plug in your devices, and it's out of the way of the main walkways, so it's also quiet and relaxing.

Last, but not least, here's what you used to come home to. This sterile set of doors that I know a lot of other airports also have. They are always awkward and kind of the worst photo op. 

Here's a video of what you come home to now. That stadium seating is made with the wildfire wood and now there's room for your loved ones to comfortably wait for you and not be all scrunched up in a tiny corner of the lobby. I saw several people holding signs again, excited to welcome people home. I love that. 

Next year we should see the second phase opened, which will mean all the walls will come down and we won't have to walk forever to get to the majority of the gates. I'll update again when that's done. 

Tell me about your favorite airport