Tally The Trip

 How to save money on a family USA road trip on food The full details, including a map of our trip and a list of more detailed posts can be found on the main post for the road trip section of our trip. We learned a few things on our 2 week road trip, of the western side of the USA. It started with a eye watering supermarket visit in Palm Springs which had us doubting if we could afford the rest of the trip at all! But thankfully we learned a lot along the way. Groceries The first supermarket we visited was Albertson's in Palm Springs. Sadly the exchange rate is not really in New Zealand's favour the bulk of the time. Our New Zealand Dollar was at the time worth about US$0.58. So we were looking at prices and doubling them to estimate how many NZ$ the item cost. We bought a few staples, buns, a rotisserie chicken, bag of salad, a six pack of beer, milk, instant coffee, cereal and a couple of small treats. This came to NZ$140.97 (US$81.76 / €76.12). Now we normally spend around...

Two nights in Palm Springs for a family of four  After our 12 hour flight from Auckland, New Zealand, we landed in Los Angeles (LAX) at 6:00am. Rather than pay for an extra night accommodation to be able to check in to a motel so early, we decided to get the rental car and get on the road. We chose Palm Springs for the warmer weather, even in winter and the short 2 hour drive. This is the first leg of our 14 day - two week USA road trip.   This link will take you to the main post with all the links to the rest of the trip. As I write them! Beautiful blue skies and of course palm trees - Palm Springs December 2024 Accommodation for 2 nights in Palm Springs We stayed at Desert Vacation Villas  in a two bedroom villa. Of course we arrived way too early but the receptionist was very kind and allowed us to swim in the pool while we waited for our room to be ready. I even had a little nap on the sun lounger next to the pool after the jet lag hit home! View from our villa's...

Welcome to the first leg of our epic 6 week family holiday in the USA and Europe. This is the main page for our... Two Week USA Road Trip for a Family  Landing in Los Angeles after what seemed like an eternity ... 12 hours and 10 minutes. New Zealand sure is far away from everywhere! Our next challenge was getting through US border security. Even though we had diligently filled in or ESTA visas online and weren't breaking any rules I am always a little nervous until we come out the other side. At the time I thought the lines were long, but as we learned on our return visit they were actually quite short. We landed at 6am so maybe that is a good time to arrive. Tip: Make sure any drinks or water bottles are empty! Off to get the rental car we went. Thankfully I put my phone on international roaming for the first few days. (We later did get a local sim and e-SIMs, but I will add a link here when that post is written.) It was only a short walk from our terminal to the shuttle service,...

Welcome to Tally the Trip! I will be sharing all the details (and COSTS) of our 6 week USA & Europe family holiday. We live in New Zealand, so I have all the costs in NZ$, but I will use an estimated conversion from the time to show both US Dollars and Euros. We travelled from the 1st of December 2024 to the 19th of January 2025. So all costs are from within that time period. Home - Auckland (Air New Zealand de Havilland Q300) We are a family of four. Mum, Dad and two teenagers. You might find costs will be a little less if you have younger children. You can take advantage of cheaper flights, family passes and they eat a little less than the teenagers! The Flights Auckland - Los Angeles - Houston - Amsterdam - Los Angeles - Auckland Our trip - three main sections USA Road Trip - 2 weeks Houston - 11 days Europe - 3 weeks I will be splitting our trip into the three sections above. Once I have written the first post for the section, I will add the link above. I will be adding them in...