I'm wanting to spend a month in France seeing Paris, Lourdes, traveling in the countryside. I would like an approximate budget for hotel with 3 stars and 2 to 3 meals per day. I will probably spend 5 hours sightseeing due to age and limitations. Louvre museum one day, Eiffel tower one day,
Any suggestions will be most appreciated
Thank you,
CarolB
Hi Carol,
A month in France sounds wonderful! Since prices for Paris vary a lot from prices in smaller cities, and the month you travel can greatly affect prices, i would suggest you calculate the general info below:
Carol. There are so many factors that can effect a budget.
When would you be traveling? What type of accommodations do you require? 3 stars in France does not equal a level of quality. How do you plan to get around outside of cities? Rental car or trains and buses? Meals-are you a baguette sandwich in the park for lunch type of person? Do you eat to live or do you live to eat?
I did some work for you. Easy. Booking.com search Paris. Seeing results, I would budget $150/nt. Lourdes is cheaper, under $100. So there you have it. Then food. OK, another search, how easy. Average food per day Paris 24-65 euros.
Louvre 22 euros.
Eiffel Tower 35.30 euros.
30 days hotels and food - more or less 200 euros a day. That is a fair budget.
Your mileage may vary.
Transport I will leave you to look up yourself and get some skin in the game.
Timing can greatly affect lodging costs. I suspect treemoss's estimate might work for a November trip, but I wouldn't count on it for May unless you will accept quite basic accommodations (which might mean no elevator, etc.). Lodging will be a large portion of your costs. You really need to do the suggested research on a website like booking.com.
Hotel costs for the best-value places tend to creep up as the arrival date approaches, so if your trip is many months in the future, be aware that the rates you see today may not be available a month of two from now.
It's easier to control food expenses by shopping in supermarkets or street-food stands for a lot of meals (if you need to pinch pennies). I like to include some protein at breakfast time, so I watch for bakeries that have little mini-quiches for sale. I don't know the going price in Paris, but I've paid less than 5 euros for a filling quiche in Lille and Arras. Crepe stands will cost you more, but they are a very good option if you don't need a sit-down meal.
On weekdays, many French restaurants have special deals on multi-course lunches, so eating your main meal at lunch rather than dinner can save quite a lot of money. That means being willing to take a break from sightseeing in the middle of the day, but it sounds as if that might work well for you.
Rick estimates about $250 a day per person traveling as a couple. He has a breakdown of those costs if you're interested in the math behind it.
I find that mixing large cities with small towns my wife and I seem to always spend less than that. We just spent 28 days in France with about 9 nights in Paris as well as Provence, Lyon and Burgundy with a mix of hotels and apartment rentals and we spent about $175/day each including car rental which is an expensive add on. Burgundy was, by far, the cheapest of those accommodations and food so if we'd stayed in more touristy places it would have likely been more.
So obviously when, where and how you travel all make a difference - I doubt there's any cheap way to spend a month in Paris but off the tourist track it is entirely possible. And if you mix city and country and restaurants with picnics and/or at home meals if can be relatively economical.
Also the recent slide of the dollar against the euro has added another 10%+ to all the prices and is something else that you need to factor in. It slide several cents while we were there and regretted everything I didn't prepay for when it was cheaper, but there's really nothing we can do about macro-economic forces.
Have a great trip,
=Tod
