Eating on a Budget

Those cities aren't going to be too terrible on your budget. Here are a few points to remember about eating cheap in just about any European city (so you may apply these to each of one of the cities you listed):

• you're best avoiding places around touristy areas or ones that invitingly advertise that they have an English menu.

• sitting down at a restaurant often costs more than taking away from a stand/window. You'll find enumerable small places to eat dotting the city.

• grocery stores are a budget miracle. Not only are bottles of water cheap (around 50-60c per liter in Paris for example) but you can buy food in the same manner that the locals do. My last trip, I stayed in a hostel with a kitchen, so my cousin and I bought some noodles, meat sauce, sausage and a bottle a nice bottle of Bordeaux wine. We cooked a very nice meal for under 10e TOTAL!

Finally, to get your bearings on how much you should or should not be paying for a budget meal, my absolute favorite thing to do is to stop by the nearest McD's and look at the "Big Mac Index" (see the Economist). I note how much a big mac value meal costs and use that as a baseline for comparison. It demonstrates the purchasing power you'll have in the city.

One simple tip that should help is to eat your largest/hot meal in the middle of the day when restaurants charge a lunch price instead of a dinner price. Having a good selection of veggies that don't need cooking, fruit, yoghurt, and sandwich fixings can do very well for dinner.

My daughter and I always found that something light in the evening was better to sleep on than a large meal. Also, it is quite an educational experience for the kids to shop for dinner.

Have fun!

I agree about using grocery stores. Ask your hotel where a nearby store is.

I don't cook when I'm traveling, so the meals are more like visiting a deli. In the meat section, it's very common to have them slice 100 grams of meat and 100 grams of cheese (100 grams of each will more than fill up two people), buy some rolls (sold individually) to make sandwiches. I add mustard, sold in toothpaste type squeeze tubes.

I also shop around for olives, chocolate or other easy picnic foods.

Beverages can be bottled water, pop, beer or wine.

Put it all in a daypack and head to a park. I carry a swiss army knife and a plastic fork for picnic gear and use an open newspaper for a table cloth. If the weather is horrible, you can always head back to your hotel.

Brad is spot on about ordering 100 grams. Thats an important (and easy) amount to understand as that is approximately equivalent to 1/4lb.

I've observed (and Rick has humorously admitted guilt himself in his essay regarding his first trip w/ Gene) that quite a few people are unable to convert to metric and are unable to order in any amount other than one kilogram.

If you can do it, try eating only two meals per day, instead of three. Try a breakfast and mid-afternoon (1500-1700) meal, or a bunch and dinner, depending on your schedule. Pack some granola bars or trail mix to ward off any hunger in between times. This should save on your budget and time.

Bob,

Those cities are very expensive, Salzburg might be the most expensive of those 3 you mentioned.
The best way to eat on the budget is to buy your food from the super markets. They are very affordable.
If you really want to eat in a restaurant, look for those that have the menu and prices listed outside.

As an aid to grocery store meals, I take a small picnic kit inside a quart size zipper loc bag: 2 small disposable though rigid plastic plates (which wipe clean after use), plastic fork, knife and spoon (you can snag the ones from the airplane), roll of 10-15 sandwich size ziploc bags rubber banded together for leftovers, wet-wipes and a bandana (can be used as table cloth). No more swiss army knife since I carry on. We found in Britain and Switzerland that several department stores have groceries in the basement. Also there seemed to be a lot of places the grab individually packaged food, i.e. several Boots in England had food displays near the entrances. As Jo said, we stuck with restaurant meals for lunch and had a picnic dinner or stopped at small cafes just before closing to get a sandwich.