Priceline Hotel: Bidding advice in Oakland/East Bay, please?

[TarHawk]

Hello, everybody:

I'm a grad student arranging travel to research my dissertation. I am on a tight budget, so cost-cutting is a real priority. This means not renting a car and (I hope) not taking taxis.

My next destination is UC-Berkeley, and I plan to fly from here (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) to Oakland rather than San Francisco since it's closer to Berkeley.

Could anybody give me some advice on bidding in Oakland that will get me within a half-mile of a BART station?

Thanks for your help!

TarHawk

[Colfax]

What hotel dates do you need, TarHawk?

Do you want to be physically near the Berkeley campus? If so I think you want a hotel in Berkeley area, not Oakland. You can get from OAK airport to Berkeley on BART.

If you find much cheaper airfares into SFO than OAK you can take BART from SFO to Berkeley too.

Have you bought your plane ticket yet? If not maybe you'll want to consider a HOTWIRE Air + Hotel package. The package savings can be similar to what you'd save using PRICELINE but with the advantage of being able to choose your exact hotel. You could pick a hotel that's either near campus or has campus shuttle service.

With PRICELINE bidding you might save a little more but you can't specifically target the UC-Berkeley campus area and you could win a hotel in Emeryville, which is doable but wouldn't be as convenient.

I may not get back to this thread for a day or two but if you'll post your dates and your general price range others will be able to chime in with their ideas.

Please use these PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links for your purchases.