Unpacking the Costs: A Detailed Breakdown of our Washington DC Trip Expenses

The White House, Washington, DC.

Anyone who knows us well, knows our family loves to travel. It’s what we prioritize. We don’t want fancy cars, a massive home, or a whole bunch of things that sit around the house and collect dust. We strive for long-lasting memories and unforgettable experiences. I mean, we are millennials after all and we definitely align with the experiences instead of stuff stereotypes. But the main point is, focus on what you prioritize. You can prioritize anything but you can’t prioritize everything.

Now when it comes to travel, we always have a budget in mind. This blog post will break down our whole trip to Washington DC and Virginia and I will go through all the costs associated. I will also mention what we especially value when we travel and what we don’t. Our total budget for this trip was $3500. That includes transportation, accommodations, attractions, shopping and food. Our total spend came in under our budget at $3105. 11% less than what we budgeted for. Now let’s unpack all the costs, category by category.

Accommodations

When it comes to accommodations, this is what I like to prioritize. A beautiful hotel to go back to at the end of touring for the day is great. Going in a pool or hot tub to wind down before hitting the hay is a great way to end the day. When I was initially looking at hotels, the Salamander DC wasn’t initially on our radar. I was looking at Chinatown hotels as well as downtown DC hotels. But in hindsight, I was so happy we went with the Salamander as the location was fantastic. It was near all the Smithsonian museums, the monuments and memorials, and with the heat in DC around 40 degrees celsius, we couldn’t have handled the longer walks.

I usually start looking for an accommodation on Tripadvisor or Google Maps, simply because these two show all prices in comparison among the travel sites such as Priceline, Expedia, Booking, Tripadvisor, etc. I’ll talk more about this in a few weeks. So with the Salamander DC, it wasn’t on our radar initially because of the price. Then when I looked again a week later, the price was showing up as significantly less than the retail price for a room there. The reason for this is because they started a promotion that if you pay for 2 nights, you get the 3rd night free. This is one of the ways to get a 5 star hotel with 4 star pricing. From when I started looking till when I booked, was probably about a month, checking once a week. I always book the refundable rate, because you never know what will come up in life that may cause you to need or want a refund.

The hotel itself was amazing. The moment you walk in, you’re hit with an incredible fragrance. Check-in was super easy and saying the staff were helpful is a massive understatement. I kindly asked for an upgrade, the lady at the front desk reciprocated and gave us a room with a nice view.

*Tip: whenever checking in, always ask for an upgrade. The worst thing they can say is no. I’d say we get upgraded almost 30% of the time. Simply from asking.

This property had everything from a restaurant, coffee in the lobby each morning, pool, large gym, beautiful outdoor patio, fantastic location and most importantly, a free shuttle, which I pictured above. They wouldn’t take you all over town, but something that would normally be a 20 minute walk, they’d have no problem driving you. We are big fans of walking, but when starting the day in the heat, it was very nice to start with a shuttle ride to our first destination of the day. Everyone from the front desk workers, to the bellhops, to the pool attendants, the level of service was tremendous.

Our second property we stayed at was one night at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia. This seems random but we stayed here because it was nice and close to the Dulles International Airport. We chose this specific hotel since it was at a decent price, had a pool and hot tub, was in a small city so we could explore a different town and we could enjoy something else even on the tail end of the trip. It was more money than the hotels right near the airport, but what fun are those?

The Numbers

The DC property was worth every penny if you ask me, mostly because I’m a huge hotel lover, always have been since I was little. The Hyatt was good and we definitely don’t regret staying there, as it was the only hotel in the nice downtown of Reston. We paid a total of $1711.13 CAD on our hotels for 4 nights in total ($1311.13 for DC and $400 for Reston). This took up the biggest portion of our budget at 55%! Still no regrets from me! That’s an average of $427.78 CAD per night. The per night prices are quite high right now.

When it comes to traveling, especially the peak season of summer 2023, there still seems to be some Covid-era revenge travel going on. In addition, the exchange rate isn’t in the favour of Canadians right now and prices are much higher than the typical rates, but there are deals out there for sure if you dedicate some time and effort.

Transportation

Speaking of deals, finding great deals on flights with dates that work for you is not always easy. We typically start with looking at flight deals, and trying to see when the cheapest flights are and working the accommodations around the flights. From my experience, flights fluctuate a lot more day-to-day, than accommodations do. So when we started looking, we went straight to Google Flights to get an idea of the best deals. It gives you prices of various different airlines and it makes it super simple to find the best deals*.

*Note: Southwest Airlines isn’t featured on Google Flights.

We ended up crossing the border and flying out of Detroit Metro Airport. It’s an easy airport to navigate and their flights are very dependable, according to Forbes. The airline we used was United. We’ve had a lot of negative experiences on United in the past but this time around was a completely different story.

When we arrived at Dulles International Airport, my first response was, “wow, this airport is huge”. Significantly bigger than DTW in Detroit. We had intentions on taking a taxi to DC, as it is a little faster but expensive. Because of the price, we opted for taking the subway. It took approximately an hour, but it brought us almost directly to the hotel, only a short walk after we got off the subway. The total cost of a taxi from Dulles to DC was $105 CAD! The subway ended up costing us $11 CAD! That is for all three of us. If we already had a DC metro card, it would have been $5.50 CAD. Huge savings to start the trip. The other transportation costs we had throughout the trip were some miscellaneous subway and bus rides, taxi from Reston to Dulles Airport and the ferry back to Canada.

The Numbers

Our flights of course were the majority of cost here. However, we scored great deals on them. From Detroit to Virginia (round trip) ended up being $762 CAD for all three of us. The total subway/bus cost we had on the trip was $38 CAD. The taxi to Dulles Airport from Reston was $30 CAD and the ferry and gas back to Canada after we arrived in Michigan was $12 and $30 respectively. So the total transportation cost to us was $871.50 CAD, which took 28% of our total spend.

Attractions

The attractions and the attraction costs in DC are amazing. Cheapest by far of any city I’ve ever been to. That’s because the total amount we spent on DC attractions is $0! Majority of the DC attractions are all FREE. And I’m talking about the great attractions too, such as all the Smithsonian museums, Capitol Hill, Library of Congress, etc.

*Note: Some of these places do require timed tickets, which are still free, but they get scooped up very quickly.

There are other attractions of course there that you could pay for, but we were so busy seeing all the free museums, monuments, memorials and other iconic sites that we never bothered checking out any of the paid places. Among the popular paid ones is the SPY Museum and the Washington National Cathedral. We wanted to do the National Geographic Museum but it is actually closed until 2026!

But like I said, the free museums here are top-notch. Some of the free museums and sites include:

  1. Museum of Natural History
  2. Botanical Gardens
  3. National Air & Space Museum
  4. American Art Museum
  5. Smithsonian Castle (Under Construction)
  6. National Museum of the American Indian
  7. National Portrait Gallery
  8. National Museum of Asian Art
  9. Lincoln Memorial
  10. Various other monuments and memorials
It’s quite an extensive list and I could go on, but I’ll stop at 10. So as you could guess, this was the cheapest part of our whole trip since it came in at $0.

Food

The first thing we do when we get to any city is locate the closest grocery store. The last thing we want to do is fork out tons of money to buy overpriced breakfast and snacks for the three of us. In DC, thankfully the hotel we stayed at has that handy shuttle I mentioned. They were able to drive us (which would have been 25 minutes in the heat) to the grocery store, wait out front, and then drive us back. My wife and I are plant based and my son vegetarian, so we typically get fresh produce, plant based yogurt, hummus, bread, among some other items. This provides us with an in-room, nutritious breakfast without breaking the bank.

When it came to lunches and dinners, we went out. For the plant based readers here, DC has plenty of options. Our hotel was near the Wharf in DC, so we went down there on the first night and the last night to enjoy Falafel Inc., which was simply amazing, and very affordable. For the dessert lovers out there, there was a vegan donut shop almost next door called District Donut. It was very good and among the best we’ve had. Our Egypt loving son was so happy to dine for lunch at a restaurant called The Fava Pot. This was an Egyptian restaurant that was very vegan friendly but also had meat for the meat eaters. Service was top-notch as were the flavours. Other spots we went to were everything from arepa’s to bowls to delicious pizza to burgers.

The Numbers

When it came to the spending, we spent a total of $348.98 (11% of total spend) on all the food over the course of 5 days. That’s all the snacks, restaurants and grocery spots as well. This works out to be about $70/day. It is higher than we prefer because of the Canadian to US exchange rate being around 75 cents on every Canadian dollar, which meant we were bound to spend more. But in comparison to others, it is much lower. Per person, we spent around $23 CAD/day, which is much lower than the $78 CAD ($58 USD) per person/day that Budget Your Trip reports. With all things considered, we were quite thrilled with how our food costs ended up at the end of this great trip. We credit our savvy breakfast/snack trick for a lot of the savings as well as not being meat eaters and lastly, we aren’t big on fine dining establishments.

Shopping

The shopping scene in DC isn’t like New York or Chicago, but there are still many options. We typically aren’t big shoppers while traveling though, so this category isn’t our strong suit. One thing we do love however, is checking out if there are any local flea markets. We found one in Washington DC, in the Capitol Hill area, which turned out to be pretty good. Lots of unique booths there plus food options.

We do tend to buy some souvenirs if there are any quality type souvenirs we find on our travels. Another part of the criteria we have is if the item is useful as well. We don’t want to be in the habit of buying an item to sit on a shelf and collect dust. I understand some are ok with that, and that’s fine, but that’s not us.

So in DC, we ended up with:

  • a t-shirt for myself
  • a t-shirt for my wife,
  • a silver bracelet for my wife,
  • a necklace for my son and a magnet.

All these items will be of immediate use to us. For my son’s necklace, he used his smart spend money for his necklace. If you’re unfamiliar with what smart spend is, check out an earlier post I wrote titled The Best $6 We Spend All Week.

The Numbers

This category was our 2nd lowest, behind attractions of course. Our total for shopping was $174.15 CAD and that was only 6% of our total spend. Like I mentioned above, these items will have immediate use and they are items we actually value so we had no problem spending this amount on shopping.

Visual Breakdown

Conclusion

Washington DC doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, it can be an incredibly affordable trip. It’s a very child friendly city, tons of iconic sites, great food and accommodations for every price range. It’s a city we’ll definitely go back to in a few years and I highly recommend it.

One of the reasons I became a money coach is so I could help individuals and families create memories and enjoy vacations similar to this one. If you aren’t in a position to do vacations and you want to free up money, or you are struggling with money management or debt, feel free to reach out and book a free call with me. If you want to subscribe to my newsletter, scroll to the bottom of the home page and sign up – I appreciate every subscriber, like, comment and share.

 

Now what do you value and prioritize when you travel? Accommodations? Shopping? Food? I’d love to hear in the comments!

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