Pacific Coast Highway - Arrival

Since I have never been to San Francisco, we decided to try to do a budget trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco on the Pacific Coast Highway. We flew into LA last night, picked up our rental car, and are now on our way up the coast. We didn’t really have much planned in advanced, but figured we’d explore as we go along. We’ll keep you posted on the highlights of our day, and the overall cost of the trip as a running tally.

Pacific Coast Highway - Day 1 ... Los Angeles to Ventura (Camarillo to be more specific)

Arrival costs:

What	Cost	Comments
(1) Tickets from NYC to LAX	$-	Used 30,000 ThankYou Points each. Would have been $300 each.
(2) Thrifty “Standard Surprise” rental car	$466.00	One-way rental with unlimited miles from LAX to SFO. Cheapest elsewhere was $620. Got a Hyundai Sonata
(3) Hotel: Renaissance Hotel LAX	$70.30	Pricelined hotel for $55 night before tax. Normal rate was $130 before tax.

We arrived into LAX at a bit after midnight on Saturday morning, so didn’t have any activities upon arrival.

(1) Flight was on Delta, who now charges $25 per bag for checked luggage. We didn’t want to check any bags, but for the first time traveling, were given crap at the gate about the size of our carry on baggage (along with a majority of the rest of the flight). I ended up having to check my bag, but refused to pay to check and it actually worked out.

(2) We searched quite a bit for rental cars before our trip, and the cheapest option was called the “standard surprise” from Thrifty. I equate this to the cart food that I love so much in NYC ... you know you’re going to get a delicious styrofoam box full of meat, but you never really know what type of “chicken” you’re getting (best I could come up with).

Thrifty guarantees a mid-size or standard car, but gives you a car from their excess inventory. Apparently you can really luck out (people talk about SUVs and convertibles on flyertalk.com), and we ended up with our choice of a Hyundai Sonata, Kia Sorrento, Ford Fusion, or Subaru Impreza.


(3) The Renaissance Hotel is listed as a 4-star hotel on Expedia. Hotel was decent, but the rooms were a bit outdated and made it feel like less than 4-star worthy. Highlights were the amazingly comfortable bed, Aveda products in the bathroom, one of the best hotel gyms we’ve seen (forgot to take pictures), and the $55 priceline deal on the room ($70 after taxes). I have a pretty solid way of getting great deals on the “Name Your Own Price” through Priceline. I’ll share these ninja skills with you later.