So I always thought of myself as pretty savvy when it comes to online travel deals, but fortuitously enough, today I stumbled upon Lowestravel.com. I put in our planned travel dates and, just for the hell of it, I put in Cedar Rapids as the starting point. I love flying out of Cedar Rapids–it’s just a short drive from home, small and easy to navigate, security’s a breeze. Unfortunately, a lot of times it adds $250 to your ticket. We were pretty well resigned to flying out of Chicago or Minneapolis.

But! Dig this! We got tickets flying out of Cedar Rapids for about the same price as the very best deal flying out of Minneapolis. Most of the tickets out of Chicago or Minneapolis that we priced out during the research phase were a couple hundred bucks more than the deal we got.

Another thing I like about Lowestravel.com is that even though it looked like a Priceline or Hotwire-style site at first (e.g., not telling you what airline you were flying or the exact flight times or connections), you could find those things out before you progress to the point of paying. We’ll be flying Cedar Rapids > Minneapolis > Amsterdam > Lisbon, which is much less convoluted of a trip than some of the major carriers suggested (such as Cedar Rapids > Detroit > Newark > London > Copenhagen > Lisbon. Forget that.).

Also (and this is a real charmer), unlike a lot of flight discounters, you can still get your frequent flyer miles. Denny and I both have miles with Northwest/KLM, which is the airline this trip happens to be on, so that’s just swell.

Have I mentioned I’m excited about going to Portugal?