It Starts With A Plan...

My mom is a major Murder, She Wrote fan and because of this, she's always wanted to go to Maine. Several years ago I decided to surprise her with a trip for her Christmas and Mother's Day gift. Since I have always wanted to go to Boston, I decided to add this into the same trip. I also decided to add Salem in since it was so close and my mom is such a Hocus Pocus fan. On Black Friday, I went to a department store that was having a sale on their luggage sets and purchased her a set in her favorite color, purple. In the suitcase, I placed gift-wrapped Boston and Maine guidebooks that I purchased along with a kid's book on Salem. At first, she just thought those were the gifts but then we revealed the real gift.

We determined the best time we could go would be the beginning of June and then I began planning. I started with our flight and used a very basic spreadsheet to determine which was the best deal. We have 3 airports within a couple of hours' drive that I checked. At that time our local airport had very few flights available and what they did have was very expensive. Even with the cost of parking and gas it was determined that the airport 2 hours away would be the cheapest option.

My next planning step was hotels.

One thing we really wanted to do on this trip was use public transportation, especially the train, so I downloaded all the apps and studied the routes we would take. You do not have to do this, I am just an over-planner at times. I booked us train tickets from Boston to Salem for a day visit and round-trip tickets from Boston to Maine.

After months of planning it was finally time for us to set out on our adventure. After our flight landed we took "the T" (Boston's subway system) to a stop where we then took a bus to Charlestown, the area of Boston where our hotel was at. We got off at our stop in Charlestown and I felt so proud that the first leg of our trip was a success...or so I thought.

To be continued in the next blog post.