In Boston, New York and Washington, sightseeing by car is impractical and highly discouraged. So if we had rented a car for this trip, chances are good it would have spent a lot of time in parking garages as we toured the cities.
In Boston, we used Priceline to find the Park Plaza Hotel, which is beautifully located near Boston Common and the Arlington Street "T" station ("T" is Boston slang for mass transit trains). But parking at Park Plaza is a pricey proposition: $36 USD/day for valet parking or $28/day for self-parking at the nearby Motor Mart Garage.
So parking the rental car for three days in this Boston neighborhood could easily cost at least $84.
In New York, our budget hotels do not have parking garages. But if you look carefully, you can find parking in the city for as little as $20/day. Let's assume that is reasonably convenient and book three more days for $60. We're now out $144 for parking with four more days in Washington to go.
Our Priceline hotel here was the Hyatt Arlington, adjacent to the Rosslyn Metro station. The relatively good news here is that self-parking in an underground garage is $12/day. This adds $48 to our total and brings the grand total for parking on this trip to $192.
When this amount is added to the train ticket savings on car rental costs, the total approaches $450 in savings for the 10-day vacation.
That's $45/day to spend on meals, shopping or admissions.
