How Do YOU Budget Food?

My advice on London is to plan ahead for the Tea time experience. I went to Fortnum and Mason for their afternoon tea and did a tea flight and I think it was 50 pounds. It was worth it I think besides a light breakfast I only ate that that day. I would look at pubs also there are markets that have ready made food that I went to most mornings (my hotel didn't have a free breakfast but if yours does take advantage!) called Pret Manger. The food was good and with a coffee I spent about 8 pounds for breakfast. Lunch was always a light affair and then a dinner at a pub nearby. I think most days I spent about 30 pounds to eat but I was careful about ordering water and not the most expensive thing on the menu.

For Paris similar advice find a bakery near your hotel get breakfast there it will normally be pretty well priced and good. I would stay away from the Champs Elyse and near other tourist attractions to eat. I can't for the life of me remember the name of it but I had a wonderful lunch at a place kinda like a cafeteria or convenience store. It was cheap and simple. Also the crepes off the beaten path are good and inexpensive.

Most restaurants in Europe have their menus outside the door to look at. Look at the prices and see what you are comfortable with.

TL;DR eat like you would at home. Plan to spend about 40ish per day to include breakfast more if you are a big eater.

If breakfast is included with your accommodation, stuff yourself. Ingest food from grocery stores and from street vendors, supplemented with meals at modest restaurants/pubs. Splurge if you wish for a special afternoon tea. Save money now to avoid shortchanging yourself on your trip....do you really need that daily Frappuccino?

I budget about 100 GBP/Euro/Dollars per day for two people. Often we have apartments and cook about half of our dinners. That helps us be able to splurge on other dinners. However, we have managed on 100 monetary units (50 per person per day) even when in hotels if we get a good breakfast.

Lunch is light: a sandwich or salad OR we might make lunch our big meal and have a really light dinner, even an in-room picnic. Use pubs in the U.K. to find value meals. Splurge on one tea during your stay in London. You won't need dinner that night! Keep alcohol to a minimum and watch how much you spend on fancy coffee drinks. Those lattes are spendy in London.

I don't know anybody who has a big tea for lunch every day! Once during a trip, perhaps. Our food budget is similar to that of any other trip we take. Somewhere around $50-75/pp/pd.

We typically stay in hotels that include breakfast. If not, we hit the closest bakery. In London in Oct, there was a Pret a Manger on the same block as our hotel that was cheap and easy.

We take our daily sightseeing seriously, and don't want to take a lot of time over lunch. So we'll grab a sandwich (or equivalent) somewhere close by. Or we might stop at a market and/or bakery for fixings for a picnic lunch on a park bench.

Dinner is usually at a pub/bistro/trattoria, and would include wine. Our most expensive meal last month was a 5 course meal that cost €75 for the 2 of us.

Make sure you budget for the odd snack in the afternoon. A cup of tea and a piece of cake. A crepe from a sidewalk stand. Gelato.
And if you want that alcoholic drink (s) in the evening- it can add up quickly.

I think everyone has some intuitive sense of how much they're comfortable spending on lunch or dinner based on their income, lifestyle, etc. So I don't see much difference between spending on meals at home and while traveling (I live in an expensive city already), except when traveling you 1) probably will eat out more consistently, 2) you really need to know the exchange rate and cost in $USD and 3) you want to allow yourself opportunities to splurge on something special as your budget allows. I doubt you'll have to worry about spending huge amounts on every meal because your instinct will kick in, and you'll realize that you'll have to offset expensive meals with more affordable ones so that you don't come back with huge credit card bills from your trip. If you have to keep track of your meal spending on your trip, then go ahead and do it. Compare it to what you spend on lunches and dinners out at home over the same time period (I assume you have a sense of that already...if not, then it helps to start by having a home budget first and knowing how much you typically spend). If there is a large cost of living differential between where you live and where you're traveling to, then expect to pay X% more.

I really don't think you'll be wanting to eat afternoon tea every day, it's more of a one off experience certainly not something done regularly. Us Brits don't indulge in afternoon tea unless it's for a specific occasion and then it's mostly groups of women. I have never had afternoon tea in all my 41 years of living in England.

Pret a Manger regularly crops up as a good, reasonably priced outlet to grab a light lunch or breakfast on the move. There are many of them throughout the country, particularly London, and it's a good safe bet for good quality food at reasonable prices. I also like Itsu and Wagamamma (both Japanese inspired restaurants) with Itsu offering a good range of takeaway items. Of course London is full of exceptional, independent restaurants, cafes and street food however there are equal amounts of less than exceptional places and it can often be overwhelming trying to find somewhere to eat which is where decent chain places come into their own.

Places around major tourist sights are typically overpriced and offer mediocre food so I always steer clear of them but often I find that choosing a place to eat based on intuition and how I feel about the menu is typically my best bet. I rarely go on advice from strangers as I find that personal tastes and expectations are too subjective and what one person believes is great food doesn't always mean the same to another.

As for Disneyland Paris, is it a 'must see'? Are you travelling with children? In my opinion it is a real let down. Very run down, poorly maintained, dirty, overcrowded, overpriced and with appalling food choices. You don't say what time of year you're going but during the prime summer periods the park will be horrendously packed and the rest of the year the weather is likely to be quite miserable. It really is somewhere I would overlook particularly if you consider that you might not return to Europe.

Thank you all for the replies... Just out of curiosity if you were going to pick one of these places to do tea, what would you choose?

Palace at Holyrood House
Pump Room in Bath
Somewhere in London like Harrod's
They also do tea at the Delft factory as well

JC -- Disney fan here... so I'm going :) I usually try to go to the park in California once a year but I'm skipping it this Christmas to add it to my Europe trip.

I have heard the food is horrible so I don't have high hopes. But I hear they've put a lot into the parks considering this is the 25th anniversary.

I'll be there in April. I'm expecting to be quite cold, but I hope to manage.

For breakfast I either stay in hotels that have included breakfasts or I buy the basics at a grocery and make my own breakfast if I am in an apartment. Either way I don't count this in a budget because I buy groceries at home, too, so the cost is the same.

Then I figure one "decent" meal a day at a sit-down restaurant, and look at local menus to get an idea of the cost for this. I will include wine and sometimes dessert in this estimate. Your meal could be the 26 euro tea.

Then one cheaper meal, street food or cooked myself or picnic from market items or local style fast-food. Again, I'll look at menus to see the cost of this.

Then snacks/coffee stops usually add a bit, but if I'm on a tighter budget I can buy fruit or granola bars from a market or grocery at the beginning of my stay and bring some with me for my snack.

So some days will have a nice lunch and a picnic dinner, others will have a street food lunch and a nice dinner. Lunch could be cheaper than dinner at restaurants, so if there is a pricey place I want to try I can see if their lunch is a better option than dinner. If I figure my restaurant meal will cost 25 euros a day, I can splurge one day and spend 40 and then a few other days go cheaper to make it average out.

if you were going to pick one of these places to do tea, what would you choose?

Speaking as a local - with a wife who loves a tea from time to time, just a cup (or 3) of good leaf tea and slice of cake not the multi level rack,

• none of the above.

We tend to find small proper tea rooms rather than the over the top tourist oriented hotel or other exceedingly pricey set teas many here are attracted to.

Harriet's in Cambridge, Betty's in York and Harrogate, almost all National Trust properties - they make it a specialty -, Woburn Abbey, almost all properties in Margaret Thornby's Guide to Tea Rooms in Britain, many non-chain garden centres.....

But if you want to posh it up for a special occasion on your special holiday by all means go for it. Be sure to get out the posh frock if you go posh.

ps. oh, and one special place far off the beaten path nearish to Heathrow which run by and for folks with various spectrum learning difficulties - it is a wonderful place and fab home-made tea - just don't expect posh. There are a few others sprinkled around the country.

We just did a 28 day drive tour covering S.Wales, the Cotswolds, Yorkshire, Durham, Hadrian's Wall, The Lake District, Winchester ending in Southampton. We stayed out of London, which is more expensive.

We spent an average of 100 pounds on our B&B or Hotel and about 60 pounds a day on food (including alcohol with evening meal). Most of our B&Bs included a free breakfast, which we usually ate well, then skipped lunch. Our one meal ranged from a high of 90 pounds to 25 pounds. When we dined at pubs, our meals were from 25-45 pounds. This is for two persons.

For York, I recommend the York Minster Hotel, walkable from the train station and to the downtown areas.

Bath and Oxford on the same day trip from London? That doesn't sound right.

You asked "how do YOU budget food" - we don't anymore. Like Agnes and emma said, we eat like we do at home - some days we splurge, some days we skimp. You can find food at any budget level. If what you're looking for is how to have great memorable food experiences throughout your trip, then it will cost you pretty much what it costs here when you're traveling on vacation.

Patisserie Valerie offers afternoon tea, £25 for two. Many locations in London.

Pret a Manger is my go-to for a cheap lunch or dinner.

The restaurant/cafe at the British Museum has a nice light lunch as well.

Can someone tell me how to do the quote thing on this forum?

@stan literally the only thing my husband wants to do in Oxford is go to The Eagle and Child :)

@Nigel I was also thinking of possibly having tea at Castle Howard outside of York. I think that is a National Trust property?

Can someone tell me how to do the quote thing on this forum?

Do you mean like this? Highlight the text you want to quote, copy it, then click on the " mark above next to the globe (which is for inserting a hyperlink). A > will appear in the reply field and you simply paste the txt you have copied.

Do you mean like this?

testing... :)

@ Laurel Thank you so much! Now I can be one of the cool kids too :)

It sounds as if just about all the answers come down to having one real meal a day (unless your hotel provides a full breakfast) and choosing simpler, less expensive options the rest of the time. There are three reasons for doing that:

• Cost
• Time
• Calories/Hunger

There's simply no way I could eat two full restaurant meals in one day, even though I walk a great deal while traveling. And full restaurant meals take time--in my experience, a minimum of about 90 minutes and often closer to two hours. This is something I'm very aware of as a solo traveler, because I'd rather have my meal and return to my hotel room to relax (or get on with my sightseeing), rather than staring at the walls. On a very short trip, two restaurant meals per day would take a large bite out of your already limited sightseeing time.

Keep in mind that rail fares in the UK can be painfully expensive if you don't buy the tickets well in advance. (It's an issue in France, too, but not to quite as extreme a degree.) It's bad enough when you're on a leisurely trip and you're heading somewhere for several days. I don't want to think about the cost of your one-day London-Oxford-Bath-London jaunt if you buy the tickets at the last minute. The London-Bath leg alone can cost £95 per person, one way. Take a look at the fares on the National Rail website for dates both current and well into the future. For shorter trips (not to Bath), a bus can be a much less expensive option for spur-of-the-moment trips.

I second the suggestion for crepes in France. And what about fish and chips in England? Very traditional and usually inexpensive.

I don't want to think about the cost of your one-day London-Oxford-Bath-London jaunt if you buy the tickets at the last minute. The London-Bath leg alone can cost £95 per person, one way.

Thank you acraven! I know my husband is on this already :) I'm not sure if he's booked these legs yet but we have a lot booked already (I know Edinburgh to York and the Eurostar). Our trip is in April.

Trying to do Bath and Oxford in one day from London is a really bad idea. It will be hideously rushed and you won't get the benefit of visiting either place.

Thanks so much Emma! We aren't so much "doing" Oxford as just going to the Eagle and Child so my Tolkien fan of a husband can take a look at it. I know it's a silly plan... but he indulges me so much :)

I'll just make a comment about The Pump Room. Are you a fan of Regency Romances or Jane Austen like I am? Although I've never been to tea or a meal there (I'm vegan and there are not a lot of menu choices there), I would be all over the Pump Room just because it figures in every historical novel set in Bath!

However, seeing you are trying to do Bath (and Oxford?? same day?) on a day trip, I would probably skip a formal tea just because it will take so long out of your day. There is a lot to see and you'll not have much time.

If you just want to see the it, you can walk thru the edge of the Pump Room and a waiter will give you a drink of the water from a station on the far side of the room from the entry door. I think it works best to go to the bathroom which is located between the Roman Baths and the Pump Room, then continue along the side of the Pump room to exit near the gift shop.

I'll do about the 10th vote for meals from Pret and M&S and other ready meals. On your day trips you might pick up a sandwich or salad and eat it on the train coming back to London.

Paul's does good and budget-friendly sandwiches and pastries in a number of locations across Paris including the cafeteria area in the Louvre basement.

We find the typical UK pub and Pizza Express pizza to be too much for one but not quite big enough for two active adults. So we'll end up doing something like he gets 2/3 or 3/4 of the pizza, and I get the rest plus a side salad.

I actually generally like British food but find the squishy cellophane-wrapped sandwich to be pretty inedible. Spending the extra pound for the panini or baugette version of a sandwich makes all the difference in the world, IMO.

As long as you avoid the squishy sandwiches, museum cafes (or similar) in the UK often do a nice fresh & local lunch option for somewhere between 6-12 pounds. (Add a little more for beverage) . If you're like us and walking a lot, we tend to add a 3:00pm tea and cake/pastry break into the day to get off out feet for a bit and recharge the batteries. I think I might have paid about 4 euros for a nutella crepe from a food cart in the shadows of Notre Dame in Paris.

We are apartment dwellers and I find that 25 Euros a day is more than sufficient per person for cook at "home" days. We have eggs with local cheese and sausage for breakfast. We continue to explore new cheeses for packed sandwich lunches or eat salads in. Dinners often involve meats that cost less in Europe than at home such as duck and lamb. We spoil ourselves with good ingredients. We find our grocery shopping to be quality cultural experiences.

About once a week we have dinner out, and we have lunch out about twice a week. How much we spend depends on where we are but I try to eat out in small towns where the prices are lower. In England we eat ethnic and there is very good inexpensive Indian food in England. Eating Italian there is a pretty good deal too.

We also have coffee, ice cream, and wine out here and there. That tends to be less than 5 Euros a day.

So for us a total of 30 Euros per day most days plus 75 Euros or so per week in dining out. This is enough to make us feel spoiled. I admit that it requires me to spend an hour or more per day cooking and takes us an hour or so every two days shopping.

I travel solo and usually try to get a hotel that includes breakfast and eat enough to get me through to mid-day, with perhaps cake or pastry and coffee in mid-afternoon and then I eat dinner at a nice restaurant. If breakfast is not included I start the day with coffee and pastry, then depending on my activity level might opt for lunch in a nice restaurant (by nice I mean table service and quality food) and a snack-type meal for dinner, or reverse that and eat from a cart for lunch. So, basically, I have one sit-down meal per day at a restaurant. It's hard to put a cost to that, but it's not hard to eat well on a budget, you'll find plenty of options in the big cities you'll be in. I had many excellent meals in pubs in London. In Amsterdam I often had a meal in my room from the Albert Heijn supermarket, great selection of tasty sandwiches and salads.

natalie, FYI I believe the Eagle and Child opens at 1100 most days, so assuming you go in, have lunch or whatever, that means you won't get to Bath until after 2PM or so (dont forget time it takes to get to and from rail stations), leaving you very little time to see a relatively large city with many attractions. Then you have the 2+ hours to get back to London. Just saying.

We don't budget for food--or anything else. We are not into expensive restaurants and don't necessarily eat local foods that don't interest us. We are not behind eating Chinese food in Germany, for example.

And as many travelers do, we eat a big (free) breakfast and snack or picnic mid afternoon. then we eat a normal dinner. That is getting by reasonably and not having to budget.

I've just remembered walking past a Marks & Spencer in Bath, on the way from the train station to the historic area (the Roman Baths, etc.) One thing I liked in Marks & Spencer is that if you look carefully in the food section, you'll probably find some small (30g or 50g) packages of cheese--at least I did in Brighton. It's nice to be able to try several different kinds of cheese. There are several kinds of crackers, too.

Since Oxford is an absolute requirement, why not forget about Bath and spend the day in Oxford? There's plenty to keep you busy there. (That's if your efficient husband hasn't already bought the train tickets!)

natalie, FYI I believe the Eagle and Child opens at 1100 most days, so assuming you go in, have lunch or whatever, that means you won't get to Bath until after 2PM or so (dont forget time it takes to get to and from rail stations), leaving you very little time to see a relatively large city with many attractions. Then you have the 2+ hours to get back to London. Just saying.

I think the plan was to do Bath first and catch dinner in the pub but it sounds like I do have some considering to do! I am an Austen fan & a fan of Roman ruins and that was the point of Bath.

Since Oxford is an absolute requirement, why not forget about Bath and spend the day in Oxford? There's plenty to keep you busy there. (That's if your efficient husband hasn't already bought the train tickets!)

He said he couldn’t book them more than 3 months ahead so we have some time to think.

We usually try and get accommodations that include breakfast. We then have a big breakfast and do something small/quick for lunch (street food, sandwich from a deli or supermarket) and then eat a bigger sit down meal for dinner.
Pub food in London is not cheap by the way.

Paul has locations in London, too.

Food and meals are part of the UK cultural experience. As others have suggested, bookings at UK B&B hotels generally include a Full Scottish or English Breakfast as appropriate. Unless you proprietor is a vegetarian, the Full Breakfast can sustain you through most of the day with just a light mid-day meal. And if the mid-day meal is a take away English Pork Pie or Cornish Pasty or the like, you will not go hungry even if you do a lot of walking. Evening pub meals can also be "affordable" depending on the number of pints you consume. The bottom line is a Full Breakfast bein including with your lodging, a take away meat pie and a pub dinner will leave room in a travel meal budget for an occasional treat yourself meal in the UK.

The french thing is different in that breakfast is "continental" and has me looking for food by late morning. And dinner meal prices can be intimidating if you don't check the menu board before picking a restaurant. You'll be able to lose the body weight gained in the UK.

I"ll speak only for the UK as that is where I"m most familiar. I think you'll find it easy to budget when there. Jet lag for the first couple of days can cause you to be hungry or not at odd times of the day, so eat when you're hungry, just be careful on Sunday as you'll find a lot of places closing early.

One thing I have noticed about the UK is that the restaurants don't tend to have to constant upselling and the specials are listed on a chalkboard with prices, not recited by a waiter who omits the pricing. In peak tourists areas, the service charges have begun to creep up, but you're not going to get to the 'standard' 20% like is now common in big USA cities.

Chains are fine, especially for the lighter meal of the day. There certainly are some wonderful independent places, but there are also a lot of independent places that aren't. While I do research, I far too often find that I'm far away from the local place I'd read about and just want to satisfy my hunger and get back on with the sightseeing or shopping.

I"m not gong to comment on the itinerary, you already know it's very agressive. There just isn't time for many leisurely restaurant meals if you stick to it assuming you're doing some sightseeing in each of the places you're visiting.

I am super grateful for all the replies and feedback. It's really helped me crystallize my thoughts around why I wanted to visit Bath and how much of this trip is for me and how much for my husband.

Considering how many of the items on my list I'm already dragging my husband to (including Disneyland Paris, which is he is NOT a fan of and he shares the popular opinion on this forum that it is a waste of time), I have decided to look into doing the whole side trip in Oxford and look into booking a CS Lewis/Tolkien themed tour. Maybe some day we will get back to England and I can do Bath and Brighton then.

Furthermore, I really like the idea of snacking or eating light at lunch. I really appreciate the names of places to go! I will also pick one or two places to have tea :)

For afternoon tea in London - you could pay "big bucks" or should I say "big pounds"
I've been to the Ritz and it was very expensive and has a strict dresscode.
OR

You could try this place - it is across the street from the British Museum and it has rave reviews and much better prices.
Tea & Tattle Tea Room
it is also a small book store - really lovely - need reservation to ensure you can get in at the time you want.....

Another chain that may prove useful is Le Pain Quotidien. It was founded in Belgium but has quite a number of locations in London as well as some in the US. LPQ may also have outposts elsewhere in England. Although it does salads, sandwiches and soups (with a booming business at lunchtime), there are some hot entrees on the menu as well, though ordering those would probably not be as fast as grabbing a sandwich.

I just wanted to applaud you for thinning down the list and assuming that you could come back some day. That will help you truly enjoy what you do see.

We did a 3 week trip to Europe to France, Italy and Germany on our own, and not part of a tour.
We picked Hotels and B&Bs that included breakfast.
We generally ate street food for lunch and a nice dinner at a restaurant. Average dinner was 15-20 euro each
For two adults we spent a average of 50-60 euro a day for total of about 1200 for 22 days.
The key for us was not eating in tourist areas ,but eat were locals eat and save.
Our most expensive dinner was in Florence Italy for a Steak dinner that was almost 4lb and was 66 Euro for two including sides, bottle of wine, and dessert.
We ate at 3 or 4 star restaurants and the quality was great, no disappointments