At the end of the week I have to make a trip to San Francisco. It’s a one day trip that will see me fly halfway across the country on Friday, then back home on Saturday. I’ll only be gone for slightly over 24 hours.

With that in mind, it seems kind of silly to stay at a hotel for this trip. I don’t want to drop $100+ on a room that I’ll spend, at most, 4 hours in.

So, I’ve decided to skip the luggage, skip the room, and just spend the night at the airport.

If you’re traveling on a tight budget (or if you’re just a tight-wad like me) you can all kinds of info about which airports are safe to nap in at Sleeping in Airports.net.

If you’re a penny-pinching tight-wad like me, chances are you spend FAR too much time online, trying to scrape a few dollars off the total cost of your travel expenses.

I just found myself having spent over 2 hours on various travel sites attempting to get the cheapest rate on a trip to San Francisco at the end of the month.

After all that time what happened?

I saved a whopping $8 – and ultimately chose not to do that because it would require booking on two different sites, which is a royal pain.

So what does this teach us?

Basically that the sites are all the same. Sure, there is a dollar or two there that can be saved, but ultimately, I should just go to my favorite site, Orbitz, and book the damn thing.

It’ll save time, and confusion – and the money will virtually be the same either way.

So do yourself a favor – don’t over think it. If you compare two or three sites and its all about the same – don’t bother pulling your hair out over it – just book the darn thing and move on.

When traveling, it’s often a good idea to research your hotel options. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve decided to do just that.

As I write this, I’m sitting on an uncomfortable bed, in a hot room, in The Wellington Hotel in New York City. Tomorrow I will be heading back to my home in Texas, having had a great trip to New York in spite of this hotel – not because of it.

For starters, the rooms are very small. That’s not a big problem for me, because I didn’t intend on spending much time in the room anyway, but you should know going into it that you’re basically getting a very small room with a very small bathroom and a very old TV.

Even the elevators are compact in size, but I’m sure a good portion of that can be attributed to the fact that the hotel was built in 1906.

The fact that some people got stuck in the elevator while we were here can probably also be attributed to that fact – but it doesn’t make me any less nervous as I consider taking the stairs every time I have to go down to the lobby.

The beds are uncomfortable. The room is very hot – and I have no control over the thermostat. An “engineer” came by yesterday to “fix” the problem – but nothing has changed.

The wi-fi Internet access here is also pretty terrible, and not something I would recommend to anyone who needs the ‘net while traveling.

The cleaning lady also has a habit of coming into the room without knocking – which is a bit upsetting to say the least.

All in all, we’ve had a great time in New York, but I can’t really say that any of it has had to do with this hotel. The next time we take a trip to his city, we will be staying elsewhere.