GOING OUT OF OUR WAY

Again England awaits your illustrious team of intrepid travelers and we are willing to go out of our way to get there. Our motto should be: “Anything to save a buck.” We have done some silly things in the past to save money, but on this particular trip we have scored big. The normal flight for us to get to Manchester England, the airport nearest to Nantwich, our ultimate destination in England, is to fly from Philadelphia, but costs were quite steep at $1.400 each. We are still flying from Philadelphia, on the same day we intended to go, but paying only $700 each for the tickets.

How? I asked the same thing of Team VFH’s Grand Poo-bah Janet. “How,” I asked?

Turns out we are flying out of Baltimore’s BWI on a regional jet service before rendezvousing with our normal flight to Manchester and the entire ticket is just $700; half the price off the Philadelphia to Manchester leg. We are saving $1,400!!!

Of course the “inconvenience” of flying out of an airport farther from home as well as the extra hours necessary to be in Philadelphia airport needed to be considered. Our 30 minute flight departed BWI at 4:30 and our flight from Philadelphia would not leave until 9 pm. Gosh, the things we’ll do to save $!,400!!! That’s a lot of Bloody Mary’s at Chickie’s and Pete’s.

The plan was smooth and really the logistics of the day really weren’t that much different than fighting traffic on the Blue Route to get to the airport.

This was our day: First we got a ride to the 30^th Street Station and took Amtrak directly to the airport stop just south of Baltimore. Janet had never been in the station before so she marveled at the architecture.  We tipped a red cap to tend to our bags and while we waited for the train to arrive; it was late; we ambled around and drank coffee. When the time came he found us, loaded our bags on the train and took the roughly 1 ½ hour ride down to Baltimore trying to score tickets for the Springsteen on Broadway. We were successful, but only because we opted for more expensive tickets (that $1,400 gets eaten up quickly.)

The Amtrak was $130 for the two of us, but the shuttle to the airport was free.

Second, we got on our flight in BWI. We checked our bags at BWI and picked them up in Manchester, UK. The flight from BWI was just 30 minutes to Philadelphia, but 15 minutes of taxiing to our gate.

Third, we walked from one end of the Philadelphia Airport, gate F!, to our departing gate, A25. There was a shuttle bus between the two terminals, but Janet needed to get her steps in.

Fourth, we found a Chickie’s and Pete’s and had a few drinks before it was time to leave.

 WHERE TO DRINK?

Yeah, it was that easy and we got the Bruce Springsteen tickets! She IS the real Grand Poo-bah!