Park Place

It's hard to believe, but we've been in our house for a year! That's another post for another time. Like when I have more time to pull together pictures and craft a big 'ole recap post. Until then, I'd like to share with how we're coping with driving into Chicago now that we live in the 'burbs. Mainly, the cost of parking....ugh.

As expected, parking costs an arm and a leg. Yes, we take public transportation, but sometimes logistics require we drive. For instance, I drove downtown after work last week for the Chase Corporate Challenge. Traffic was lovely, as usual, but I was really dreading shelling out $20-30 to park for a few hours.

That is, until I decided to Google "Chicago parking rates" and found this awesome website: Chicago Best Parking!

It's a freakin' search engine containing all the parking lots and garages in your selected area of Chicago! For this post, I searched for parking near Millenium Park (to see the Bean, obviously). Without thinking, I would probably park in the garages beneath Millenium Park, setting me back $23 for 3 hours on a Wednesday night. But now that I can see the other parking rates, I could only pay $13 by parking in the Prudential or Aon garages.

What's even cooler is that you can click on each garage or lot and check out their hourly rates throughout the week and if there are any other specials. When I drove in for the Corporate Challenge, I found an evening special ($6!) at the Aon garage if I was in by 6pm. Plus, you can change the dates and times to give you a better estimate of your parking costs. Though only some of the garages have guaranteed rates.

Don't worry if you don't live in Chicago, the bestparking website is available for several major metropolitan areas and airports. Even Cleveland and a few cities in Canada!

How do you save a few bucks when travelling?

PS - I wasn't compensated by bestparking, I just thought this was a cool tool to share. All opinions are my own.
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