Money Saving Mom®

Welcome to my 14-day series on our East Coast Road Trip where I share our adventures along the way, how we’re doing this on a budget, honest reviews of attractions & restaurants we visit, and money-saving tips and ideas. If you missed it, read Day 1 here, Day 2 here, Day 3 here, Day 4 here, Day 5 here, Day 6 here, Day 7 here, Day 8 here, and Day 9 here.

Day 10 on our road trip was a laid-back, quiet travel day. And after a few go-go-go days, it was just what we all needed, especially the 4 of us who are introverts! (Yes, can you believe that it appears Silas is the only extrovert in our family??!!)

The morning began with swimming and hanging out at the hotel and then we packed up and headed for Pennsylvania.

We made a pit stop at two different travel centers along the way. One had a farmer’s market stand where I found fresh whole wheat bread (it was $7/loaf, which is almost 5 times what I usually pay!! But I was out of the bread I had brought and I usually eat 3-4 slices of whole wheat bread every day, so I coughed up the money and bought it.)

…

We also got $0.50 frosty’s for the kids at the Wendy’s at the other travel center (that’s much more my kind of price range!)

We started reading the sequel to The Upstairs Room aloud today called The Journey Back, which we’re all excited to dive into as we loved the first book! (Note: Just like the first book, I’m editing it as there is some crass language.)

And I finished reading Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? (I really enjoyed this book and the fascinating look that it gives at what it’s like to work for the President, but it comes with a huge crass language warning.) and started reading What Falls From the Sky (I think it’s going to be an inspiring read!)

We made it to Harrisburg around 7 pm and enjoyed a completely laid-back evening at the hotel! Basically, today fed my introverted soul and I’m ready to hit the ground running again for the last five days of our trip!

Tomorrow: exploring Harrisburg, PA and then driving to Pittsburgh in the late afternoon/early evening.

…To be continued

Welcome to my 14-day series on our East Coast Road Trip where I share our adventures along the way, how we’re doing this on a budget, honest reviews of attractions & restaurants we visit, and money-saving tips and ideas. If you missed it, read Day 1 here, Day 2 here, Day 3 here, Day 4 here, Day 5 here, Day 6 here, Day 7 here, and Day 8 here.

Okay. It’s official. I have fallen madly in love with Boston.

As in, I think I want to move to Boston. Or at least rent an apartment in the North End and visit for a week every month. (Hey, a girl can dream, right?? ;))

The coffee shops. The open air restaurants. The quaint streets. The scenery. The smells. I almost felt like I was back in Rome!

On Day 9 of our trip, we slept in and the drove to downtown Boston where we got all-day parking a block from Boston Common for just $15.

A few notes about parking and traffic:

• Since we were visiting on Sunday, a local hotel offered all-day valet parking for just $15! From what I could tell — and what I heard — visiting on the weekends means that parking is much less expensive than it is on weekdays.
• You can read more about parking in Boston here. (Locals: is that list accurate? I wasn’t sure.)
• We also found that the roads were easy to drive and navigate (however, keep in mind that we are used to Nashville traffic!), traffic wasn’t really heavy like we expected, and was nothing like NYC. So it was no problem for us to drive into the city instead of taking the subway into the city. However, we were there on a Sunday, so I think that made traffic a lot lighter.

After visiting the Boston Common, we headed out to walk the Freedom Trail. We LOVED how there was such an eclectic mix of modern and historical.

We were pleasantly surprised to notice how much cheaper the prices were in Boston compared to the prices we’d been seeing in NYC and DC! (For instance, tourist-y t-shirts were $10 and water bottles were $1.)

We loved getting to spend time at the Old South Meeting House, the site of the Boston Massacre, and Faneuil Hall.

We went to the Rose Kennedy Greenway halfway through our day and then came back to it near the end of the day because our kids loved it so much!

One of the things my followers on Facebook had told me that we had to do was to check out Mike’s Pastry’s and Modern Pastry. It seems like there might be a sort of friendly disagreement between locals as to which shop is the best.

Some locals said we HAD to go to Mike’s and others said we HAD to go to Modern. And most of the locals had a strong opinion as to which one we should go to! So we decided to go to both. 😉

We went to Modern first. The line was out the door and they had quite a huge selection of options but they line moved so fast that we had barely made our decisions of what we wanted to get by the time we got up to purchase. Note: They only accept cash.

Mike’s was PACKED. As in, there were 6 (?) long lines out the door, you couldn’t really see what they offered (though it was clear there was a LOT of cannoli options!) because there were so many people in front of the display cases.

While Jesse waited in line, the kids ate what some of we bought at Modern Pastry… which was probably completely against the “rules”, but they were hungry and the wait was long! 🙂

We got a cannoli and a scone at Mike’s and they were both so yummy!

We also walked to see Old North Church and Park Street Church.

And then we walked over the bridge to the USS Constitution. We LOVED getting to go on board this ship and couldn’t believe how they let people just walk around and touch almost everything!

A few things I wish had known ahead of time:

• It’s a long walk to get to the USS Constitution from Boston Common — especially if you do it at the end of walking the Freedom Trail. Silas was pretty worn out, but he loved the ship.
• It’s free to go on the ship. The museum (which we didn’t go to) is a suggested donation of $5-$10 for adults, $3-$5 for children, or $20-$25 for families.
• The ship is not open all the time. Sometimes it is closed for repairs. You’ll want to check before going to it. (I’d hate for you to make that long trek for nothing!)
• You have to show your ID to get on the ship and your bags are searched.
• They allow you to bring sealed food and water bottles on the ship. (Or at least they let ours through without mentioning that it would be a problem!)

We walked back to Boston Common from the USS Constitution and saw Paul Revere’s house on the way.

We stopped by a SweetGreen to grab some salads to split for dinner and then had a picnic at Boston Public Garden where we fed the ducks and marveled at how perfect the weather was and how beautiful the evening was. This park is very worth visiting!

We hadn’t expected to stay in Boston until after dinner time, so my phone died for the last hour of the day so I wasn’t able to get all the pictures I would have liked to of the park, but we would highly recommend it.

We then headed back to our car around 7:30 p.m. and drove to New Hampshire (our first time there!) to be able to say that we’d visited the state and then headed to Albany, NY for the night and then it’s onto to PA!

To be continued…

Have you been to Boston before? Any suggestions for the best free or inexpensive places to visit there?

Welcome to my 14-day series on our East Coast Road Trip where I share our adventures along the way, how we’re doing this on a budget, honest reviews of attractions & restaurants we visit, and money-saving tips and ideas. If you missed it, read Day 1 here, Day 2 here, Day 3 here, Day 4 here, Day 5 here, Day 6 here, and Day 7 here.

Well, we had planned to get to Boston by late afternoon, but the day didn’t quite pan out like that…

We were just going to drive through Connecticut (our first time to visit the state!), but we stopped to buy a case of water (it’s SO much cheaper to buy water by the case than to buy individual bottles!) and 2 $6 footlongs to split at the Subway in Madison.

(Need an inexpensive but somewhat healthy meal option? We love to split footlongs — especially whatever is the special of the day priced at just $6 per footlong.)

We wanted to eat outside, but there was no place to eat outside at the rest stop. So we drove to the sign that said Hammonasset State Park and were going to pull in and eat at a picnic table there. Only it was $22 to park in the park — which we didn’t want to pay (of course!) since we were just planning to make it a quick 20-minute stop to eat our lunch!!

We found a nearby (free!) parking spot at the Shoreline Trail. There were signs about the beach and I just couldn’t really bear the thought that we were so close to a beach and couldn’t see it because of the trees. (If you know me well, you know that the beach is my happy place!)

I figured the beach must be super close so I asked Jesse if I could take the Shoreline Trail for a bit and go find it. Kaitlynn wanted to come with me. So off we went!

And I’m so glad we did — even if it ended up being a much longer walk than we had anticipated, because the beach was absolutely gorgeous!!! And the weather was perfect.

I called Jesse (who was still back at the trail head with Kathrynne and Silas) and was like, “I know we were only planning to stay here for 20 minutes, but this beach is AMAZING! Is there any way that you could walk here and meet us? I don’t think you’ll regret it!”

Always one for adventure, he walked to meet us at the beach and we all had fun playing in the water (well, as much as the kids could since they didn’t want to get completely drenched!) and just enjoying the beautiful view!

So much for the 20 minute pit stop! We were probably there at least an hour and half! But it was worth it!

We then drove on through Rhode Island (our first time to be there!) and made it to Massachusetts (another new state for us!) We stopped at Cape Cod for a short while (it was beautiful!) and then headed to Plymouth.

Plymouth was quite the hopping place, which somewhat surprised us — especially since it was past 8 pm on a Saturday evening. We got dinner at a total tourist-y place (Pebbles Restaurant) because it was the only place close and we were so hungry! But it ended up being great food and I got to try Fried Dough for the first time (yum!!)

We pulled into our hotel in Boston only to discover Jesse had booked it for the wrong night on accident and they were sold out. So 11 pm found us sitting in our car searching online for a hotel in a good area that was a good rate that didn’t charge $40 for parking! We finally found one and crashed there around midnight!

Have you been to Connecticut or Rhode Island before? Any suggestions for the best free or inexpensive places to visit there?

Welcome to my 14-day series on our East Coast Road Trip where I share our adventures along the way, how we’re doing this on a budget, honest reviews of attractions & restaurants we visit, and money-saving tips and ideas. If you missed it, read Day 1 here, Day 2 here, Day 3 here, Day 4 here, Day 5 here, and Day 6 here.

We had SUCH a fun adventure in NYC and I had a terrible time picking the pictures to share with this post, because there were so many I wanted to share!

It was my 4th time to be in NYC, Jesse’s 2nd time, and our kids’ first. The first time I came, I was overwhelmed. This time, it was still thrilling, but it felt much more familiar and much easier to navigate (even though the subway is still a challenge!)

Riding the Bus from New Jersey

Instead of staying in the city, which would mean we’d also have to drive in the city (something we wanted to avoid!), we took a bus from our hotel in New Jersey to the Port Authority Bus Station in Times Square. It cost $8.50 for a round-trip ticket for ages 12 to adult and it’s $4.25 for kids 11 and under.

This was our first time to stay outside the city and this worked really well. It was also much cheaper and simpler than trying to stay in the city ever would have been.

When the bus dropped us off at the bus station, we then walked to Times Square for a little while. Our kids basically stood in Times Square with their jaws dropped. “You see the pictures, but it’s nothing like actually being here!” Yup, that’s the truth!

9/11 Memorial & Museum

After spending a little time in Times Square, we took the subway to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum and spent the afternoon there. The memorial is beautiful and such a poignant reminder of the lives lost.

Some things you should know before visiting:

• The memorial is free to visit, but the museum is a little on the costly side (though they were incredibly kind to give our family free press passes since I’m a blogger and would be blogging/sharing on social media about our time there).
• If you are wanting to go and can’t afford the ticket price, they offer Free Admission Tuesdays where you can get in completely free from 5 p.m. to close!
• They also offer discounts to FDNY/NYPD/PAPD and free admission to military members and 9/11 Families & Rescue and Recovery Workers.
• They allow you to bring water bottles and sealed snacks into the museum. We had these in our backpack. However, they asked us to check our backpack at the coat check as they don’t allow you to carry around large bags/backpacks in the museum. (Update: Here’s what I found out about bringing food into the museum from the staff there: “Food can only be brought into the museum if it is completely sealed and put away. Then it can only be eaten in the upstairs atrium of the museum. In other words, if you brought a closed bag of chips in your purse, we wouldn’t ask you to throw it away before entering the museum, but we would ask that it only be opened in that designated area.”)
• It was really chilly in the museum (at least for me!). I wish I had brought a sweater. It’s mostly all underground and is a lot bigger and more spacious than I expected.
• The main exhibit chronicles the entire day of 9/11, as well as what led up to the attacks, and how America responded. It was very, very well done and, even though I’ve read a lot of books and watched a lot of videos on 9/11, I learned quite a bit. They did a really amazing job of honoring everyone impacted and affected by this tragic day and honoring those who lost their lives.
• The topics and videos might be upsetting to very sensitive kids. Again, I went through the museum with Silas (8) in order to explain things to him at his own level of being able to take it in. We mostly skipped over the part where it talks in-depth about terrorism and the attackers because I felt like he isn’t quite ready to take all of that in just yet and it would be pretty overwhelming for him and possibly a little scary (especially since he was SO impacted by the Berlin Wall display at the Newseum and has brought that up over and over since then).

I would strongly, strongly encourage everyone to make going to the memorial and the museum a priority. I’m so glad we went — just like Arlington and the Holocaust Museum, it was a heavy sort of experience, but one that is an important piece of our history and that we want our kids to understand.

Staten Island Ferry

We then walked to the Staten Island Ferry to take a round-trip on it. It was almost 7 p.m. when we left, if I’m remembering correctly, so we got to see amazing views of NYC and the Statue of Liberty — at dusk and at night.

I would highly recommend making this Ferry Ride a priority if you visit NYC. It’s such a fun experience and it’s the best price: FREE!

Times Square & Good Conversations

We then took the subway back to Times Square and decided to let our kids get a little taste of NYC at night. We walked around with the eclectic masses of people for awhile and then splurge on Frozen Yogurt with toppings and a Tiramisu Crepe at 10:30 pm at night!

And then we road the bus back to our hotel and got in around midnight! I thought everyone would be ready to crash (I sure was!), but nope! The kids wanted to process the day and talk about their thoughts and feelings about the whole experience!

That’s one of the beautiful things about this trip that we didn’t really expect: the questions that our kids asked and the conversations that have resulted from all the experiences we had and the many varied and interesting people from all walks of life that we met and saw and interacted with.

I feel like it has expanded their horizons, deepened their appreciation for our country, and given them a very different taste of culture outside of Kansas and Tennessee!

Next stop: Boston!

To be continued…

Have you been to NYC before? If so, any inexpensive or free suggestions of places to visit or things to do?