Food budget

i can't speak to normandy or bacharach, as i've never been, but i can share our experiences in paris and london... london is expensive. there's no getting around it. a meal in a pub for the two of us (no children) was typically around 30 GBP, so $45. that would be for lunch. we did frequent more local places; nothing fancy (we ate a lot of indian food) we spent around $150 USD per day to eat in london for the two of us. we would have spent the same amount in paris, but i got tired of paying insane amounts of money for crappy food (and subsisted on gazpacho for the last week of our trip...fortunately i really like gazpacho!) i'm sure you can eat well in paris...you just need to know where to go (we didn't!) i'd suggest asking around on here for specific suggestions of places to dine that are reasonably priced.

additionally, the best meals we had in paris were the ones i cooked in our apartment. the food in the markets is amazing (i hated paris, but i loved the produce...oh the strawberries...!) i don't know the time frame of your trip, but you can save (A LOT) on lodging and food if you do apartment rentals (ours was $1200 for TWO WEEKS next door to the pompidou in paris! and it had a washer.) my final advice is this: it is difficult to 'budget' for food, and it scares me when i see people trying. we are not well off by any means (we are both public school teachers) but the reality is this: if you are hungry, you will buy food no matter how much it costs (this goes double with children along). if you are cold, you will buy a coat. if you are tired, you will spring for a cab. the best way to budget for a trip, at least in my opinion, is save as much money as you can before you go...and take a credit card for emergencies. either way, have a great trip. you are giving your children the gift of an amazing experience

That question is so difficult to answer because of the variables -- how and what they eat, level of restaurants, etc. My suggestion is take the cost you incur when you eat out in the US and change it to Euro. If a meal for five costs you a $100 in the US, then treat that as a 100E in Europe.

Grin.. well, we eat out 2 or 3 times a month. It typically costs us 30-50 dollars depending on where we go. We only eat out at lunch. Once you pay adult prices and can't eat off the child's menu, you must only drink water. I don't know that we can compare. I mean I only pay 80 to 100 dollars for the 5 of us to stay in a room here ( trip to Baylor for my oldest to look at college is costing us 97 dollars a night for two queen beds and a sofa bed.) I haven't been able to find anything anywhere near that in Europe. Most places have been 145 to 200 Euros a night with the exception of the gite. I got that one for 291 euros for 4 nights!! It is still killing me to be paying over 200 dollars a night to stay places, but this may be our only family trip over there. Back to the topic. We will probably eat one big meal and then snack the rest of the time since breakfast is provided most places. That is what we generally do here on Saturdays. I make a big breakfast on Saturday morning which we eat at 7 or 8 since people sleep in. ( We're generally up and moving at 5 or 6 normally.) Then if we are out and about doing sports or errands, we'll eat a big lunch out at 2 or 3. For dinner the kids will eat fruit, cereal or the boys may eat a sandwhich since they are teenagers. dh and I don't eat. Christine Christine

Christine, I live in Georgia and when I travel in the NE U.S. I'm always in total shock about the price of food in the grocery stores, especially fruit and veggies (often more than twice or more as expensive). It is approximately comparable to grocery store food in France and Germany. First of all you have to consider that you have to eat at home, too. So that budget item is part of your total cost. Then you can stock up on fruit (beautiful fruit over there, depending on time of year it may be coming from Southern Spain or other warmer areas), bread, cheese, etc. You can eat very healthy. In France, the bakeries often sell slices of pizza, grilled sandwiches, etc. They have crepe stands. In Germany, too, you can get very tasty and decent food relatively inexpensively. London may be more expensive but an English breakfast is usually very filling. I missed milk the most but they do have shelf milk in the grocery stores that doesn't need refrigerating. With three kids, you may want to keep that in mind.

The problem you are encountering with rooms is that in the US we rent the room and the room may come with a couple of beds and maybe a roll away. And no one is concerned about how many people in the room. Space is not a premium so most rooms have a couple of double bed. In Europe it is customary to rent the room per person. Two are twice as much as one, etc. Some places offer family rooms that might be more reasonable with kids but at 16 and 14 they are consider big people and expected to pay. As I stated earlier, use dollars to Euro as rough guideline. If you spend 80 dollars for lunch plan on spending 80E or about $110. And it is easy to spend more because most of their meals are al a carte . And tell you kids not to eat pizza with their fingers. Pizza is not a finger food in Italy.

I think Anna nailed itif you want an idea, google "Manhattan Italian restaurants" and that will give you an idea of costs in London and Paris.
I eat on the street for lunch, and have dinner at a local spotin London, the Chinese, Thai, and Indian places are pretty reasonable and usually have a special non-ethnic choice for the finicky diner. In Paris, bistros, creperies(east bank, back alleys north of San Michel). If you do stumble into a market in the city, the citrus is cheap and the truck sandwiches and cheeses are really reasonablemost teens graze rather than eat, and a backpack full of clementines, apples, assorted fruit and a bagget will keep them reasonably contented. In Normandy, ask when and where the markets are and you and they will be happy!

Ok..so 30 euros per person so approximately 150 Euros a day for food?? I'm just trying to figure out how to take this much money with us or how much to withdraw each day without reaching a limit since we are paying there for so many things like the D-Day and the Bacharach bed and breakfast that require cash to pay when we get there. I realize it may be more, but what should I allow for??? Christine

In regards to money and where and when to take out cash, you should check with your bank to see if they have any partners in Europe where you can use their ATMs with no fees. You can probably also check ahead of time to see exactly which sites only accept cash... by and large a credit card should work though. Have a great trip!

christine...
we had the same issue when traveling...figuring out how to take out enough money but not too much, avoiding excessive fees etc. we ended up only paying with cash when we had to (very infrequently) and using a credit card the rest of the time. we got a card with a 0% interest rate for 6 months to avoid finance charges. we then took our savings and paid it off as soon as we got home (ok...most of it as soon as we got home. all of it within 6 months, which was last month...when we started planning and saving for our next trip!) if forced to, i could travel with only my iPhone and Visa card. just be sure to inform your credit card company of your travel dates and locations before leaving, lest they shut down your account due to 'suspicious activity'. i even had an issue with this when buying train tickets online before we left! though i'd rather have a credit card company that errs on the side of caution, so i was not annoyed. happy planning (and try not to stress too much!)

The castle in Bacharach serves rather inexpensive meals and both times I have been there (2006&2010) I thought it was a super value. I can't imagine kids of that age not enjoying it. Its a bit of a hike up there but the views etc are stunning.

Christine ( and Tracy) I just got back from Germany. In Munich I discovered eating in Department stores. The meals were very tasty and resonable. A schnitzel dinner at Karstadt's with a large Coca Cola was about 9E. There were at least a dozen entrees to from, a soup bar, a salad bar, another bar where you served yourself buffet style with salads, casseroles, sausages and you paid a set price per 100g. A grill for fresh cooked Asian foods, pizza, desserts, desserts, desserts, ice cream. VERY reasonable. There was a similar set up at the Galleria
Kaufhof. Department store restaurants are my new favourite eating place when I'm looking for a reasonable meal. These stores are cooking for the locals - their target audience is not tourists. I' m sure every large city in Europe has a few department stores. And, Tracy, I know you'll be in Munich this summer, Karstadt had a huge grocery store. on the lowest level - prices didn't look that bad. A litre of Diet Coke was less an 2E there - I had been paying 3 and 4 Euros for a half litre or smaller bottle in restaurants and takeaways. Their wine ion was huge - I know you and hubby are into wine. Me - I just need Diet Coke.

Everything in London and Paris is expensive. 1.5 - 2x more than in the US on average, don't order a coke in a Paris restaurant or it will cost 7 euros. In the UK Fish and Chips and Indian food always seem a best buy. Paris can be expensive too I never quite found the formula there. I would either look for books on europe with kids or search trip advisor for budget appropriate restaurants in the areas you will be in. I don't know about Normandy, and Bacharach but assume similar.

Christine, If you want to get an idea of food prices, take a look at menus of some of the restaurants. You can try looking up some of the places in the RS guide. Many restaurants post their menus online. For example, in London, you might check the online menus for some of the chain restaurants like Ask, Pizza Express, Wagamamas, and Masala Zone. Ask and Pizza Express are both Italian ... similar to Macaroni Grill. Wagamamas is a noodle place. Masala Zone is Indian. I'm not necessarily suggesting that you go to these places, but this will give you an idea on middle-of-the-road food prices and you can compare their prices to U.S. chain restaurants. Keep in mind that London also has quite a few shops where you can buy ready-made and good quality sandwichs and salads (e.g. Pret a Manger, EAT, etc.) These places are roughly equivalent to a Panera. Finally, Marks and Spencer Simply Food has lots of prepared food.

Germany is going to be your cheapest place. We seldom pay more than 10 euro p.p. for a meal in any of the restaurants we eat in. In places like Paris or Rome, they get away with outrageous prices for items like drinks, when you are near tourist attractions, but this is not the case in Germany. You might pay a bit more, like 3 euro instead of 2 euro, but not 8 euro for a soda. Eating ice cream at a table instead of taking it to go will also cost more. Galleria Kaufhof and Karstadt both have restaurants on top, but I wouldn't call it budget food, and not very good food at that, compared to what you get in a regular restaurant. There are tons of local restaurants everywhere you go in Germany that will taste far better and be cheaper than eating in a dept. store. A good way to save money is by making lunch your main meal of the day as lunch specials abound. Great lunches will be priced from 5-8 euro. Those grocery stores in the basements of the dept. stores are also pricier than the regular grocery stores. If you can find an Aldi, a Lidl, or a Penny Markt, or even a Rewe, your groceries will cost half of what the dept. store charges. Lots of farmers markets in Germany too, so try and visit those for a bratwurst and fresh fruit.

Ok, although I appreciate the how to save money answers, that isn't exactly what I wanted. At the gite we will definitely cook some. I just wanted an idea of a realistic budget... Any suggestions for a realistic budget for the five of us...not how to save money, but just what do you think I should budget??? 150 dollars a day? Christine

I can't even begin to give you a reasonable estimate, but I can offer a few more cheapo options in Germany. "Imbiss" often translates to "Snack bar" or something similar, but to me, the portions you get are usually large enough to be a meal. You can expect pretty basic fare- bratwurst, currywurst, fries, schnitzel sandwiches, etc. But with one item and a drink, you rarely pay more than €5 per person, and usually much less. Kebab shops are much the same- cheap prices, huge portions. Finally, if you want some pretty good but inexpensive seafood, look for the German fast food chain Nordsee. If you're thinking Captain D's or Long John Silver's, think again. It's nothing like either of those grease pits. Yeah, I've eaten at Karstadt. Afterwards, I could only ask myself: "Why did I do that?"

Every teenage boy I ever met has been an eating machine, best guess is 1.5-2x what it would cost to feed them at restaurants in the states.

In all of RS books he gives guidelines for how much to spend on each meal per person for different countries. Of course, that does depend on what type of place you go to. I have used his guidelines and they have been very accurate for us. That is what I use to budget, then I keep track to see if we are under budget or over budget and then I can add a nicer meal or cut back to keep it about what I expected.

Your question is will a hundred and fifty bucks a day do it? The answer is yes. Figure you can eat pretty well for twenty bucks a head for supper (London is the only place that may be on the tight side, but it will average out okay). That leaves fifty for lunch and some breakfasts (you imply that some breakfast are self-cooked or rolled into the room price). Not a problem. Traveling solo, I eat damn well for way less than fifty bucks a day and seldom have an included breakfast. Traveling with my wife with the same pattern, we've never averaged (except for Scandanavia and Switzerland) fifty dollars per person per day for food.

Here is what we spent per day on a 9 day trip to England in June 2007: 70 GBP (this was the height of the exchange rate @ 1.98 USD to 1 GBP). We were 2 adult women, an 11 1/2 yo boy and 4 1/2 yo boy. Some days we had money left over and some we did not. We ate breakfast at our hotel, lunch was either US fast food (Subway, McDonalds, etc) or the cafeteria at whatever musuem or attraction we were visiting and dinner was typically Chinese takeaway, Pizza Express or burgers from a place a few blocks from our hotel. I am currently planning for a 2 week trip to France with the same 2 women, a now 15 1/2 yo boy, 8 1/2 yo boy and the addition of my 7 yo niece. In order to afford this trip we are cooking our breakfast and dinner daily. We will shop at the local markets and supplement at the grocery store. We have budgeted 650 E for the 2 weeks. I took our usual 2 week grocery bill and more than doubled it. Our lunches will be crepes, sandwiches and anything we can grab from a shop and eat picnic style. I currently have budgeted 65 E per day for this plus a sweet treat every so often like ice cream cones or macarons. I may be way off but I will be bringing the emergency credit card just in case food is more expensive than we realize. I hope this helps a bit.

Hi Christine, I can't comment about London. Would like to go there one day. In Germany I've found the cheapest way to eat is in the good ol' bakery. The prices are reasonable and there shouldn't be anything too exotic for the kids. Plus you will probably end up walking off the extra carbs and calories. In Paris try the supermarché like G20, Champion, Ed, Franprix, Leader Price, and Monoprix. Just bring your own bags and a coin for the cart (usually one Euro). If my memory is correct G20 stocks pre-made baguette sandwiches that run about 2 Euros a piece. Here is a link: the navigation is a little awkward but you can see the prices. This should help you stay within budget. http://www.supermarchesg20.com/pdf/catalogue/appli.htm

Ooops! My bad. Click on "Page Suivante" on the right to thumb through the flyer. Also the website is for the location on: 15 rue du Grenier St Lazare. I can't guarantee the prices will be the same at other locations. Good luck!