Rough idea of food costs in the USA

[TimO]

I'm off to the USA in a few days, to deliver a Flight Instrument to our colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, and need to put in an advance claim for expenses, otherwise my Christmas could be a bit bare!

Would anyone care to make a suggestion over roughly how much I'm going to need per day, considering that I'll have to buy all my meals (and any other odds and sods) from this, although I'm already putting a claim in for the Flight and Hotel bill, which I've booked over the Internet (thanks to the wonders of modern technology!)  I'm guessing I'll beat eating in a mixture of diners, possibly the odd restaurant in the evenings, and whatever catering Berkeley has for it's staff.

I really don't have much of a clue how much I'm likely to be spending, since it's over a decade since I was last in the USA.  I seem to recall that food was cheaper there than it is here, but then again, I didn't live in London then, so food was cheaper anyway!

[Ariadne]

Jason travels to the US a fair bit, so I've just quizzed him - he says it's a wee bit cheaper than here, so if you budget what you'd spend here, it'll probably be slightly less.

It's also worth factoring in any taxis you'll have to get - public transport can be hard/ non-existent.

[TimO]

Unusually, San Francisco has the BART which looks like I can use to get from the Airport to Downtown Berkeley.  I may have to use a taxi from there to the hotel though, which is about a mile, which is further than I'll want to walk with a couple of suitcases (one for my clothes, the other for the instrument).

Of course, I have even less idea of US taxi costs!

[TimO]

Answering my own question, it looks like the 0.9 miles from BART to the station would cost less than £4, from the Taxe Fare Finder website.

[Ariadne]

I just found that and was about to link to it 

Do try to have some change ready for tips, and make sure you know which are $1 bills, or you can end up tipping more than you meant to!

[PaulF]

For downtown San Francisco I'd budget central London prices. will be a little less but then you'll be safe.

Don't forget to tip!  Rule of thumb is to add the tax again

And as you'll have a spare luggage allowance on the way back you'll have to allow for a new bike. Citizen Chain on Brannan have some nice bikes....

[ian]

It depends. Generally, I find it more expensive, but then I'm one of the those evil corporate expense hounds who only sneaks into Arby's when he thinks no one is looking. Some of us wear ladies underwear, some of us snaffle low grade BBQ pork sandwiches. We all have our dark secrets. Ssssh. Mind you, I expense both.

Restaurants tend to be about the same price, but factor in the obligatory 20% you owe Heather-your-amphetamine-perked-server-today for interrupting you every time you thought you had got away with a mouthful of food, otherwise she'll stab you in the eyes with guns, as is the American Way. California likes its sales tax, and the Bay Area is a place with disposable incomes, so not the cheapest part of the US. Budget London prices, effectively.

Indeed taxis, which you may need, though getting around the Berkeley campus is not a challenge and there's transport into SF.

Don't be tempted by supermarkets, otherwise you'll end up sitting in your hotel room wondering quite what you are going to do with a family sized bag of potato chips, given that it seems to intended to feed the Waltons, and was oddly the smallest size they had.

[Jurek]

Once again...... ian paints a picture ......   

[TimO]

... though getting around the Berkeley campus is not a challenge ...

I'll be working in the Space Science Laboratory, which is up the hill.  I checked out the route earlier, and even what looks to be a serpentine route, turns out to be 2.5 miles on 1 in 13.

(It's about 1000 feet above the main University campus).

I was toying with taking the Brompton, but given that hill, and the three bags I'll be carrying (checked in luggage, carry on case with the flight instrument in it, and laptop bag), moving the Brompton around as well could be interesting.

I won't be able to get rid of the flight instrument case and make the return journey easier, because (i) we'll almost certainly need it for the the three more instruments we may be building & (ii) I need to bring one of our engineering units back from UCB, since they currently have both of them.

[ian]

There's a campus shuttle bus that goes to the top of that hill.

[ian]

There's a campus shuttle bus that goes to the top of that hill.

Edit: what I am thinking? Get a American to drive down the hill and collect you.

[Zipperhead]

There's a campus shuttle bus that goes to the top of that hill.

I don't know if the shuttle bus will be the same as the other busses there, but the public transport busses in and around SF all have bike racks on the front.

I took a bike with me last time I was there (in Cupertino) and it was great to be able to ride around and see and experience things there.

[Charlotte]

Tim, old fruit...  Am I right in thinking that you're going to attempt to board a commercial aircraft carrying a real, genuine space flight instrument package of some kind?  Big old Peli case containing some sort of complicated, custom-built electronic device, possibly involving lots of complicated wires and circuit boards?

You might want to take your own lube, just in case the nice man at the airport has run out... 

[Kim]

Nahh, too obvious.  Suspect it's like checking a flask of liquid nitrogen in a flightcase plastered in biohazard stickers: surprisingly easy, as they'll whizz through the relevant paperwork to get rid of you as quickly as possible. (DAHIKT)

If it looks like it might be tricky, just put some sort of firearm in the box and declare that.  I hear that works wonders for airport efficiency.

[TimO]

We've carried flight kit through airports quite a lot over the years.

This one is actually relatively simple, because due to the nature of Cubesats, it's just a 10cm×10cm PCB, and a 2cm×2cm×2cm cube with the sensor in it.  The whole lot weighs less 150g.

Out historical instruments have tended to be boxes bigger than the entire CINEMA spacecraft, and weighing significantly more, with bits of shielding in them, that might even block the X-Ray machine (the function is to block radiation getting at sensitive components).  We've certainly had them swabbed and tested for dodgy chemicals in the past (before that became more common in airports).

I'm carrying it as carry on luggage, because we don't really like to risk flight equipment being shipped by commercial companies.  The one bit of one of out instruments that was shipped in that fashion in recent memory, was temporarily lost, and caused much angst until it was recovered (one of the institutes working with us shipped a Double Star ADC board to us).  Luckily that was a board that could have been replaced, and we had enough time to deal with it, but if this board or sensor went AWOL, the schedule is so tight that we wouldn't have time to replace it, and the spacecraft would loose it's flight opportunity.

[alexb]

Tim,
I tend to find lunch costs around $10-12 inc. a drink and tips (I tend to eat in convenience snack bars - Subway, Taco Bell, Chipotle etc.), in the evening, a restaurant will cost you closer to $20-25 with a drink.
I used to think the USA was cheap, but it's gotten steadily more and more expensive with the quality sliding downhill at the same rate.

[TimO]

Hmm, so maybe a guesstimate might be $50 a day, which would be $400 or roughly £250 for the eight days I'm there, allowing for food, some taxis, random small expenditures etc.

I can buy anything relatively expensive on my Visa card, and likewise if I need to get any more cash, using ATMs should work (or did last time I was there).

[PaulF]

ATMs will work fine but depending how neurotic your bank is you may want to let them know that you're away in case they block your card "for your protection"

RBS once kindly blocked mine in New York and then called me at home to ask if I was in New York

[rafletcher]

Add another $10 a day for tips, minimum. EVERYONE expects one, and they're usually around 15%.

[alexb]

Tim, if you're with NatWest, then they don't charge you anything for using their credit cards (currently Mastercard) overseas.
So you won't pay commision or get charged a conversion rate. I tended to use my credit card to pay for absolutely everything that didn't have to be cash.
You can then use your credit card statement to submit your expenses and actually not get stiffed by forgetting to include comission when you withdraw cash etc.!

[ian]

Add another $10 a day for tips, minimum. EVERYONE expects one, and they're usually around 15%.

15%! Why don't you set fire to an American flag and stuff it in your waitperson's eyes, because that's what a measly 15% is to your server. It's saying YOU DON'T CARE about your waitperson. What kind of sick monster are you? You may get away with 18%, provided it's not Bring Your Guns To Work Day. In which case you will have picked the wrong day to tip badly, punk.

Don't forget the bellboy block. Those guys are fast and if you don't tip them, they'll ensure that you never get a cab again. Best to leap out of the taxi and onto your bags as soon as you stop outside the hotel. Don't worry if your bags are still in the trunk, just dive in and cover the bags. You only have seconds.

[Mr Larrington]

Don't forget the bellboy block. Those guys are fast and if you don't tip them, they'll ensure that you never get a cab again. Best to leap out of the taxi and onto your bags as soon as you stop outside the hotel. Don't worry if your bags are still in the trunk, just dive in and cover the bags. You only have seconds.

Another advantage of staying in cheapass motels

[rafletcher]

Add another $10 a day for tips, minimum. EVERYONE expects one, and they're usually around 15%.

15%! Why don't you set fire to an American flag and stuff it in your waitperson's eyes, because that's what a measly 15% is to your server. It's saying YOU DON'T CARE about your waitperson. What kind of sick monster are you? You may get away with 18%, provided it's not Bring Your Guns To Work Day. In which case you will have picked the wrong day to tip badly, punk.

Don't forget the bellboy block. Those guys are fast and if you don't tip them, they'll ensure that you never get a cab again. Best to leap out of the taxi and onto your bags as soon as you stop outside the hotel. Don't worry if your bags are still in the trunk, just dive in and cover the bags. You only have seconds.

Mea Culpa - it was afew years ago I last went.  And yes bell boys - last time I was there at was a tip plu $1 a bag. No doubt inflation has hit that too! 

[tatanab]

Tipping - here is an article from the Seattle Times only a couple of days ago.  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2016900346_tipping04.html

Many of the things that they show tipping rates for I would not think about.  I lived there for about 4 years, Seattle and near LA.  As a visitor I did not use hotels likely to have bellhops (tightfisted, both me and the companies I worked for) so the only regular one for me was in restaurants.  15% was regarded as the normal with more being added for better service.  With tax being shown on the bill it was easy in Seattle because you just doubled the tax and rounded up as an acceptable tip.

[mark]

Are you flying into San Francisco or Oakland airport? Oakland is a lot closer to Berkeley than SFO, and I remember the traffic being easier to deal with. When I lived there (early '80s) BART stopped well short of SFO, and bypassed Oakland. BART was referred to as the only transit system in the world that managed to bypass two major airports. I recall a shuttle bus from Oakland airport to the BART station. With the amount of stuff you seem to plan on bringing, a taxi from Oakland Airport to Berkeley might be justifiable.

I recall the van shuttle from the UC Berkeley main campus to Space Sciences Lab having a bike rack on the front. If buses in SF have bike racks than the buses in Berkeley/Oakland probably will too, as it's the same (crappy) bus company. It's also possible to take bicycles on BART, although when I lived there this required a somewhat cumbersome registration process. If you've got the time or inclination, the Berkeley and Oakland hills are a great place to have a road bike, even if you have to rent or borrow one. I recall Missing Link being an excellent bike shop, although this was long before they (or anybody) had a web site.

Tipping rant:US Federal law allows employers to pay tipped employees quite a bit less than the federal minimum wage (which is already crap), in the expectation that tips will make up the difference. California has it's own (somewhat higher) minimum wage and may have other provisions for tipped employees, but I still would not expect a waiter or bellboy to be paid more than the legal minimum wage. I agree that the entire tipping culture is offensive as hell (and honestly, rather degrading for the workers), but try to see it from the worker's viewpoint. If the tipping thing offends you, try not to use the services of tipped workers. [/rant over].