First, the point of going to Windsor is literally to say that you've been out of the country, especially if you've never been on a cruise which achieves the same purpose without taking you too far outside of national boundaries and what you know...specifically ENGLISH. Windsor has just enough tourist attractions for a good three day trip, after that, you'd probably be bored.
Second, I already knew this from the other 3 trips I've made to Windsor, but I didn't follow my own advice, which will not happen again. The Casino Windsor has THE BEST exchange rate. Trust me! There is no reason to carry US cash while on Windsor soil and here's why... Admittedly the exchange rate sucks right now because its basically 1 for 1, I'd have to concede that its better than a negative but still. If you use US currency, each business gets to decide how much they will give you for your US dollar, which I think I mentioned before. Why let that happen? Exchange all of your cash at the casino, its stop #1 in my book.
On another note regarding the casino, if you have a Casino Windsor card you can park in their garage for free. If you don't have one there are parking lots right across the street where you can park $3 for 10 hours or $4 for 10 hours, that's not bad because there is stuff to do downtown, so you can get several hours out of the trip.
Third, we employed the envelope plan for the trip, which I think is smart when you're splitting expenses. We had a car envelope, a room envelope and a gas envelope. We knew how much went into each one and we put that in the envelopes before we left. This helps so there are no surprises at the end of the trip. I recommend this process even for families or couples...again the purpose is no surprises.
Which brings me to Travel Rule #9 - KNOW YOUR NUMBERS: Use AAA's fuel cost estimator to check your gas estimates for road trips. You can input the year, make and model of the car as well as your origin and destination. The site will provide a one way and round trip fuel estimate. No surprises and in my opinion if you're lucky...it will overestimate and you'll have extra dough at the end of the trip!
Fourth, I'm back to the "don't use the credit card" thought because I just checked the statement on the one card I used in Canada - I reserved my boat ticket online - and I was charged $1.29 in some service fee, probably for the transfer of funds from CAD to USD or vice versa. See, that's the kind of thing I don't like paying. What really annoys me is that the boat wasn't full and I could have just paid cash for the ticket at the booth. To be fair, if I'd done that I'd have taken the chance that the boat would fill up and I wouldn't have a ticket, so I guess I'd just be rolling the dice instead of just paying the price.
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“Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”— Gustave Flaubert