Vacation

The most obvious perk of being a teacher is that I have the summer off. And the most obvious perk of being married to a teacher (or at least a guy who works at a school and therefore has school hours) is that he's off, too. We know how rare that is, and we also know that we should take advantage of the time, especially before we're tied down a bit more with kids.

A couple of months ago, we started speculating about where we'd go this summer. Last summer we took our honeymoon to Denver, so we thought we'd do something different than the "out west" experience this year. I've practically lived on Travelzoo recently, searching for good deals, hoping we'd be able to snag something fabulous within our not-so-fabulous budget.

Last night, it happened. A couple of weeks ago, Cal had the idea to go to Puerto Rico -- all the atmosphere of Cancun without the hassle of passports, customs, language barriers, etc. He actually found a hotel online that he fell in love with; unfortunately, it was a luxury hotel and way out of our price range.

A few nights ago, though, he stumbled upon a package deal on cheaptickets.com that (coincidentally?) included four nights at the hotel that Cal liked plus airfare from Atlanta. Rooms were much more reasonably priced than they were on the resort's homepage, but they were still just a bit out of our price range. We decided to hold off a little longer, and even started looking elsewhere for more budget-wise destination options.

Yesterday afternoon, however, the price had dropped about $300. And by last night, it had dropped another $100. Suddenly, the trip fit into the price we had set. But then came the gamble ... to book? or wait and see if it dropped even more overnight?

We decided to wait. Cal went to play tennis, and I stayed at home. Bored, I checked the site again. One of the other flights mentioned that it had only 4 seats left. I started to get nervous. Refreshed the page. A second flight had only 3 seats. I knew I'd better act. After a comically long hesitation (that included frantic prayers) at the page that has the "Buy it" button, I pulled the trigger.

Just a few minutes ago, I very nervously checked the site again, just knowing that it would be down another couple hundred dollars. However, much to my relief, it had gone back up ... $200! We had timed it perfectly. We bought low. Phew!

So ... in less than two weeks, Cal and I will be headed to the Gran Melia in Puerto Rico for 5 days and 4 nights. We're leaving one day after my birthday, and one day before our first anniversary. Guess we'll have to use that wedding cake that's in my freezer for a birthday cake! It's got green icing, after all...