Going Dutch in Amsterdam

The Dutch are known for being pragmatic, straightforward and - best of all - cheap. Here's a breakdown of our expenses for the two of us for four days in Amsterdam:

$0 Airfare
$45 Transportation to and from airports
$111 Food
$185 Hotels
$90 Museums
$27 Leggings
Total: $459 USD

Here's what the same trip would have cost us without the free airfare and hotel discounts:

$3260 Airfare
$1023 Hotels
Total: $4,556

Our free trip was a staggering one-tenth the cost of regular price, all courtesy of the world wide web. (See this post for details about how we won.)

Of course, our "free" trip still ended up costing us almost five hundred bucks that we weren't planning on. We could have spent the weekend in Brooklyn eating pasta and watching What Not to Wear and paid ourselves $460 for staying home. But there's more to life than being cheap. There is an unquantifiable value that comes from enriching our lives via travel. So glad we got to see the Heineken brewery.