My family is holding the memorial service and spreading of ashes for my father at the end of next month. I spoke with Michael and we decided it’d be less tiring and cheaper all around if we just fly up and rent a car.
The first thing I did was to check out orbitz.com for the cost of a round trip plane flight from Philadelphia to Manchester, NH. I was surprised to learn that the ticket only cost $83! Apparently they’re trying to promote the Manchester airport. In fact, it’s now cheaper to fly into Manchester than it is to Boston ($133 to fly into Boston). That’s crazy. But good, since my family lives very close to the Manchester airport.
Then my family started telling me their plans. we’d arrive on the evening of Wednesday the 27th, spent the night at my Aunt’s. On Thursday or Friday they’d hold the memorial service, visit the storage facility, sometime I’d visit with family.
Now, both the memorial service and the storage facility are in Maine, which is about a 1.5 hour drive from where we are staying with family. I figure we’ll spend wed-fri with family and then friday we’ll just stay up in Maine.
I spoke with our friend Morgana, who we visited with last time we were in Maine, and worked out that we’d stay at her place Friday and Saturday night, sweet!
I looked into plane flights out of Portland, Maine, since I thought it might be better flying out of there on Sunday morning than driving back to Manchester. I was surprised with the results:
First off, even the cheapest rental car from Enterprise offers unlimited mileage within New England, no need to worry about putting too many miles on the car.
Secondly, and more importantly, it’s crazy expensive to fly out of Portland! The only non-stop flight costs $530, one way. The cheapest flight is $192, and goes from Portland, ME to New York, NY to Raleigh, NC to Philadelphia, and it takes 8 and a half hours! That’s nearly as long as it takes to drive!
So it looks like we’ll be flying in and out of Manchester, renting a car there at the airport. I’ll be making the reservations this weekend.