If you read our last post, you know that we don’t use our local airport, and if you haven’t read it yet, you can check it out here. Since it’s much cheaper to fly out of a larger airport, we head to Chicago. There’s one problem with that though, Chicago isn’t twenty minutes away, it’s about three hours away. But, that doesn’t have to be a problem!
There are many different forms of transportation to get you there, but the cheapest way is actually to drive yourself. We have looked at Uber, car services and much more, but they all end up being way more than the cost of driving yourself.
The drive there and back costs us about $40 all together. And, the drive there isn’t bad at all, just grab some snacks, coffee and put on your favorite music! However, if you are heading into a big city to fly out of, be sure to give yourself some extra time for traffic! We always run into traffic.
The last time that we flew out of Chicago was actually our first time driving up there, and leaving our car. We weren’t sure how it was going to be since we were going to be gone for 7 days, and we would have to pay daily parking. So, we checked out O’hare’s airport parking, and they had many different lots, some you could reserve but others you just pulled in the day of and grabbed a ticket.
We chose the cheapest one, G Lot, which was also the furthest one away. That was $70 for parking. Now, we had never left our car there before, and we had no clue how long it was going to take to get to the actual airport from G Lot. But, we decided to try it out anyway. Upon reaching the airport, we could not find G Lot anywhere! I mean, we drove around for a good thirty minutes, and found every other lot, except for G. What the heck?! Then, for some reason we decided to try putting it into GPS, and crazy enough, it was there! Google maps took us right to the dang Lot! So, if you’re ever going to an airport and you don’t know where the lot is, just GPS it, apparently it’s that easy.
Now, for the next part. Once we finally found the lot it was extremely easy to get our ticket and get parked. At the beginning of every few parking lanes you could access a shuttle stop. We just got on the shuttle, which then took us to the trans, and amazingly enough, it was that simple! Once you reach the trans, just make sure that you get off on the right section, you can look at the letter for your flight, which can be found on your ticket, or sometimes they announce in before you get exit. We were so worried that we would be short on time, because we would have to find the airport. Turns out we were worried about nothing.
Driving ended up costing about $110, which we just split. It was much cheaper than paying for a car service, they were at least $100 a person. And, it was nice that we had our own vehicle in case anything happened. If you’re going on vacation, wanting to spend less money, and are debating about how to get there. We highly recommend driving yourself, you will spend less money, it’s easy to navigate and there’s always the plus of spending quality time together!
–Sam and Victoria
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