Quick Tip-Rental Cars and Airport Food

Here are two new Quick Tips that I learned from my travels down to Houston/Dallas.

#1-Rental Cars-if you reserve the cheapest economy car the place offers, you will often be upgraded. I rented two different cars from two different companies (Advantage for the 1 day, 1 way car from Houston to Dallas, then Budget for the 3 day rental in Dallas) and both times had requested their Economy size car, which was listed as a Hyundai Accent (or similar). In both cases I got a free upgrade because they didn’t HAVE and economy sized one on the lot. The first time I got a Jeep Liberty, and the second time I got a PT cruiser. Both of them were brand new vehicles for the rental agencies. Yeah for free upgrades!

#2-If you want to avoid airport food you need to bring a snack. In my case I had a couple of Pria bars in my purse (yes, they cost about a buck each, but they are only 110 calories and about 3 points on weight watchers), which really saved me on the way down, since I had a 1 hour delay in Syracuse, then we circled above the airport in Philly for 40 minutes, meaning my 2 hour layover when I had planned to grab lunch turned into a full out run from my gate in one terminal to the gate in the next terminal over for my connecting flight-I made it, my bags didn’t. The Philly to Dallas flight didn’t even have any food to offer other than those mini pretzels (and they were MINI, let me tell you. each pretzel was like 1/3 of an inch long!). If I hadn’t had a Pria bar in my purse I would have had to go from 7am to 4pm with no chance to get any food.

A little truth in advertising here-I admit on my flight back I both bought a snickers bar and ate in the TGI Fridays in the Philly airport. All in total that probably cost about $12 (I drank water). I also paid $30 for a 15 min massage at the “ExpressSpa” there in the terminal – but my neck had been spasming for about 4 days straight so I considered that medicinal. . . .