Hello, I was wondering how much could we spend, if we travel on a budget for 3 weeks. We want to go to the Amalfi coast, Florence, Paris, London and Budapest.
My question is to know what do you think is the less we can spend? We are on a budget, and I want to get a rough idea.
Thank you
High season is more expensive, London and Paris are rather expensive any time. Some like to rent an apartment and cook some meals, but for two, it might not save that much. Are you traveling with your son?
Look for hotels/B&Bs that include breakfast. I would figure €200/day for the two of you, excluding transportation among different countries (look for cheap flights and buy in advance).
Hi there,
When we plan our budget, we take different factors into consideration.
1) hotel vs renting an apartment
Hotel- are meals included?
Apartment - cooking your own meals or most of them.
You would hopefully know your accommodations prior to departure.
Lunch- our family has picnics no matter where we are staying.
Now, we do go out for a nice dinner here and there. We budget about 20-30 euros per person for dinner. We try to find places that have early bird meals or even places that are cheaper, for example, in Paris our family might have crepes or gyros.
Then you can pre-budget your activities prior to departing. Many sites you need to make a reservation or you wont get in. Or you can at least see what the entrance fees are.
Are your renting a car or using public transportation? You can figure out online what metro, bus, train, etc cost.
Hope this helped a little.
Have an awesome adventure!
-Olga
You are planning on staying in some of the most expensive places in Europe, with the exception of Budapest, so difficult to do on a tight budget. Three weeks sounds a long time, but London and Paris are rushed with only 5 full days in each place - a week in each is better.
When are you travelling? This will impact on travel prices and some hotel locations. The collapse of the GB £ will help with your London costs.
The best deals on airfares around Europe with the value airlines such as Easyjet are best booked as soon as the seats are released, typically 8 months before travel. Use the Eurostar between Paris and London and book this 6 months out. Prices for both options only head one way as the date of travel approaches.
Fly open jaw rather than trying to complete a loop.
Book accommodation well in advance on sites such as booking.com or Airbnb. I assume that you don't want to stay in hostels, which are cheaper?
Budget £100-£150 per night minimum in London for accommodation. If you are booking months ahead, look at Premier Inn or Travelodge, which will be cheaper than this. Allow £10 pp per day for travel around London. Many of the museums and galleries have free entry. Food depends on what you want to do - a supermarket takeaway sandwich and drink will cost c £4 pp. A sit down meal in a cheap eatery such as Wagamamas will cost c £12 pp for a main course and a soft drink. Alcohol is far more expensive in London than on the continent. C £5 for a glass of wine and £4.50 for a pint of beer. Total London budget minimum £100 pp per day assuming 2 are travelling.
The food prices in Paris and Italy are higher in the supermarkets than in London. You have to pay to enter the museums and galleries, so this can add significantly to the cost. Paris and Italy budget €125 pp per day with Budapest c€85 pp per day. Plus travel between locations.
I would suggest a different approach. If you have limited funds, figure how much you have to spend and fit the vacation into that money. You can do this by looking at airfare for the time of year you'd like to travel and see how it changes for a few months. Check out hotels.com, Airbnb, and booking.com to see what you get for what you think you want to spend per night. Check out the major sights you want to see for their entry fees. Adjust your trip to your budget, not vice versa, because if it didn't matter you wouldn't have asked this question. The fewer places you visit, the less transportation will cost. Only you can decide what level luxury you need; no one else can do that for you. Because...you can spend as much or as little as you want. Most of us are older on this forum so we have added more comforts, generally, than when we were 21. I rely a great deal on the internet and Lonely Planet books, except for Lonely Planet Italy...as I don't know what happened to them in Italy, it sucks.
Thank you all very much for your suggestions. Very helpful
Our family spent three weeks in Europe earlier this year. We were also budget conscious. Early in my planning I realized accomodations were the biggest variable expense. I set an average nightly budget and stuck to my budget. We also frequented grocery stores, picnicked and cooked some meals in our apartments. And while we paid for some attractions, my favorite moments were free - hiking, people watching in the squares, walking thru the markets.
Have fun!
If you are willing to aggressively keep down flight and train fares and lodging costs, walk and take public transportation, eat out of supermarkets and bakeries, and avoid tours, taxis, and anything fancy, Europe can be done fairly cheaply.
I also subscribe to the theory that if you have budgetary constraints you set how much you can afford to spend and then you plan your trip around that. Prioritize what is important to you on a vacation. Maybe you are a foodie and having that special meal every few days is very important. Maybe you are happy with picnics from the grocery store, but you like to stay in a little more central location or a more upscale hotel instead. Maybe you can spend a day simply walking around a community and have a great time, or perhaps you are the traveler who wants to experience some unique activity for the area that costs money. Maybe it is more important to you to spend your time doing your top interests then spending an entire 3 weeks. Only you can decide what your travel interests and priorities are.
My point is to recognize what you have to spend and what your vacation priorities are. Spend where you need to spend and save where it doesn't matter as much to you. Enjoy your vacation, but enjoy it to the extent you can afford and don't try to overdo your budget if the money just isn't there.
Personally, I would wait another year to enable me to have the money to travel to these wonderful places and not have to worry every minute about your budget. Having strict budget constraints would spoil the whole experience for me. In all probability I will never get back to these places again.
I put together a spreadsheet containing detailed costs for lodging and long-distance transportation for each day of the planned trip, plus food-and-touring-and-transit estimates at €100 per day for the two of us (plus extra known costs like doggie sitter) -- add up the costs and see if the total is something we can handle. If it's a scary number, maybe we need to scale back, or save more. If the total is something doable, we go ahead with the plan. And since we're OK with the total, we don't obsess over each expense during the trip.
We have traveled extensively in Europe and it goes without saying that your travel costs will vary, depending on the city and country.
For example, Florence is less expensive by far than Venice. The cities are in the same country, but the nice 4 star hotel we had in Florence in 2010 cost less than half the three star Venice hotel where we stayed.
We visited Portugal a couple of months ago and had wonderful accommodations in a top five star in Lisbon for 200 Euros, then a fantastic Bed and Breakfast in Porto for 95 Euros. Then a recent trip to Denmark we found everything more expensive. Hotels, taxis, meals, and tours were all expensive. A beer in Norway was $10 while one in Portugal may be 1 or 2 Euros.
Budapest is not an expensive city. Paris and London are more expensive, but you can find modest accommodations. Check out Rick's books or Kayak.
We are planning a drive tour of Britain next year and I have been researching B&Bs or small hotels near the city centers of several towns and cities we are going to visit and I have found accommodations from 50-120 GBPs per night. For Britain, I would plan on minimum of 100 GBP per night. Meals are expensive in Britain, but if you are in a B&B that covers one meal and you can skip lunch or have a snack and then only have the cost of one meal per day. Plan on $100 per day for food, which would include a beer or two. Tours are another matter. If you study your sights, you can DIY, but sometimes you need to pay for admission to some sights as well as a tour. Suggest adding another $25-50 per day. Transport is a factor. Taking the METRO in Paris or the Tube in London is pretty reasonable and easy. Just watch for pickpockets.
If you avoid the expensive hotels, I would plan on $300 per day, with more for expensive tours.
There are travel guides geared toward budget travelers. I don't know if RS has any, but Lonely Planet has 'Europe on a Shoestring'. There are student guides like 'Let's Go'. There are also web sites focusing on super budget travel. It depends on your desired level of comfort and safety. You could cut much of your costs by couch surfing. Hostels are usually pretty cheap. Some universities rent out student rooms in the summer, London for sure. Almost free air trips are possible by using air mile bonuses on credit cards.
In addition to, or instead of, the budget amount, think about the value of money spent. Reducing the number of locations would cut down the transportation cost, transit time and hassle. Staying longer at each location can enhance your experience. Your time and money would be spent on sight seeing, etc.
Unfortunately, you are traveling to some of the most expensive places in Europe - London and Paris being the most expensive. Budapest, on the other hand, is a very inexpensive city by comparison. Therefore, it is a bit difficult to give a blanket budget as expenses will differ greatly between these cities.
In general, in a more expensive city, I'd recommend staying in a hostel or a shared room/apartment on Airbnb. If you're traveling with children or want a quieter place to stay, go for the Airbnb or Hosteling International (HI) hostels which are much quieter and friendlier to children. Without kids or aversion to noise, cheapest way to go is shared dorm in a hostel. For meals in expensive cities, I'd stick to grocery stores and street food (like farmers' markets or food trucks). For drinks, if you're so inclined, cheapest is probably hostel bars (e.g. in Reykjavik, we spent $14 per beer at a microbrew bar before finding a nearby hostel bar with excellent beer for $5 a pop). One great exception for London is that most of its major museums are free. Otherwise, inexpensive entertainment includes self-guided walking tours (see guidebooks or online sources) or group walking tours with a guide who usually works for tips.
You can "splurge" more for the same budget in cities like Budapest. Look at getting a private room in a hostel if you'd like to still save some money -- my favorite option. Meals in bars, cafes and counter-service restaurants are super cheap. Great beer is inexpensive and the nightlife is great. For entertainment, there is a ton of sightseeing to be done just by walking around. The waterfront by the Parliament houses is gorgeous, and St. Stephen's Basilica is beautiful and free to enter. Szechenyi Baths are still inexpensive by major European city standards, and so fun and relaxing. Basically, if you want to not feel like you're on a budget, Budapest is the place to do that out of all the cities you're visiting.
Hello JessiSaun. Do you want suggestions for your total expense for your trip to Europe, including the price you should pay for the airline tickets for flights to and from Europe ? If yes, what country will you fly from ? If you are at the United States of America, what state will you fly from, to Europe. ? Deciding what amount of money you will spend at Europe, you decide what is the total amount of money that you are willing to spend. Be aware that many people spend more money in Europe, than they thought they would spend. For an example, in some of my trips to Europe, I intended to ride in a city bus for going from a hotel to a museum. But I was a passenger in a Taxi car going to the museum. The amount of money that I spent for riding in a Taxi car was much more than the amouint of money that I would have spent for riding in a city bus.
When you estimate what your expenses in Europe will be, some things in Europe might cost more money than the amount of money that you spent for that kind of thing in the country in which you are a resident. For an example, eating food in a restaurant in a city in Europe might cost much more money than you ever spent for a meal in a restaurant in the country in which you are a resident. That is Okay. I recommend that you plan for your total expenses in Europe to not exceed the total amount of money that you wish to spend. I try to minimize my expenses in Europe by not spending much money for my travel to places within Europe. For your trip, you intend to go to Italy and France and England and Hungary. You might be able to afford to do all of that, if you can get airline tickets, at low prices, for flying to or from Budapest. Budapest is located a long distance from all of your other destinations in Europe that you mentioned.
Q: How much can we spend ?
A: If it's on me, as much as you can !!
