Reward

I’ve recently taken on 70h+ work weeks. Working 9AM–5PM in an office (x40h), 7PM-3AM as a bartender (x30h), and occasional promo work shifts.

But…working that many hours months on end is draining if there isn’t anything to look forward to…so I planned a mini 2-week trip and thought I’d share how this came about because it’s so simple and affordable.

My mother and I are driving to Boston for Christmas. Knowing this, I figured out when my half-brother in Portland, Maine is available for us to visit (4h drive away) as we have yet to meet his wife and two daughters. And when I found out my mom didn’t want to drive home before New Years Eve…and given that this is my favourite holiday ever…I started asking American/traveling friends what their plans were. The best option came from an Aussie I met in Serbia (and Hungary, and Germany, and again in Toronto just recently!): LAS VEGAS.

So I’ve made a complete itinerary to head from Boston to Maine to Las Vegas (where my best friend will join me)…a day trip to the Grand Canyon…renting a car and driving to Yosemite National Park on our way to San Francisco, and then Los Angeles. A two week mini-vacation that makes working to exhaustion these past few weeks feel like they were nothing at all.

And this…this is how people should reward themselves. With what they love most when they know they have been working hard and deserve it.

Life is meant to be lived!

But how…??

Given that I don’t have time constraints, I decided to fly into Vegas a day before the bestie to stay in a cheap hostel and get over to the Grand Canyon the following morning (she’s already been). Looking at a map, Cali is super close and it turns out the flights back to Toronto are cheapest from L.A. rather than Vegas or San Fran…so this was the best place to depart from. Since cars are cheap to rent in America (I use rentalcars.com), the next best idea was to get over to San Fran for the bestie to see (I’ve been with my mom when I was 21) while I got to throw in Yosemite National Park on the way, and then down to L.A. where I can spend my last few days lazing on Venice Beach until the cheapest flight into Toronto came up (on a Tuesday).

How the planning worked? Skyscanner and Google flights are miracle workers. They find you the cheapest flights. Luckily, both of mine are direct. But sometimes if you see a connecting flight, it usually means you can book an individual flight over to that place, stay there for a night or two, then book another individual flight to your final destination…still being cheaper than what it would have originally cost total. Or you can figure out which relatively nearby location is cheapest to fly into or out of. And this is how I’m getting from Boston to Vegas, and L.A. to Toronto for less than $700. That’s across the entire continent (and cheap for the North Americas). Other than flights, hostelworld.com finds you cheap accommodation, then it’s up to you how much you spend on extracurriculars!

America…here I comeeeee!