Traveling to Europe, First Time, Need Help!

What is your age range and what do you like to do? You will get different answers if you are in your "mid-50's, don't drink and love museums" versus "early 20's and love to go to the club". If you get accommodations that provide breakfast, that will help with your food budget. For lunches (in every city you list), you can eat cheaply or make it your big meal of the day. You can also go to the stores and put together a nice picnic for less than 10 euros. You can also buy wine and beer in stores for cheap - and it's not bad wine! Dinner can be reasonable to very expensive. I suggest getting Rick's book "Europe Through the Back Door". It will cover every aspect of traveling to Europe and provide budget ideas for all of it.

I'd have felt 1000€ wasn't really a safe estimate even if you hadn't mentioned alcohol, at least not if you're going to want to sit down in a restaurant once a day. I'm not saying you cannot keep your daily cost to an average of 33€, just that I wouldn't feel comfortable with that estimate. With the exception of Berlin, you're stringing together a bunch of high-cost cities.

Others might be able to provide helpful information if you can be more specific about what sort of alcoholic beverages you might consume, and where.

Couple of questions: 1. are the figures you mention in US$ or €? 2. are those figures for both of you or per person?

$30 per day. Is that per person or the two of you combined?

Even $30 per day person will not permit much alcohol and only a basic food as fuel diet. Lots of shopping at local stores for picnic type lunches. Hopefully the lodgings you are looking at provide breakfast. If your budget is 1k TOTAL, then I suggest you start searching for 'food bank' in all the cities on your itinerary

Food costs will vary from city to city, so you will just have to look at each. If you do not have any tour books that include some info about restaurants, I would get some or just start doing searches of "food cost in xxx"

However, with the number of places you are planning, you won't have a lot of time for eating, so you may have enough budgeted. Not intended to be mean, but you have a very ambitious/aggressive travel plan. Some might see it as a "I've been there" list, rather than a "I have seen/toured ( London, Paris..etc)"

Its your trip so you get to choose what you do.

Can you live for a month at home for 1k, eating out all the time? I suspect with the short term you will be staying in any one place, your lodging is unlikely to have cooking facilities.

Happy travels!

They are in Euros, per person.
3.4k per person and I was saying 1k per person.

Not with drinks, too. You also have way too many cities on your list. You're going to burn up half of your month moving between cities.
Pick four or five and plan for 3-4 days in each, or you won't even have time to get settled and figure out what you want to do before you have to leave for the next place. London is very, very expensive, probably the worst one on your list. Plan more time than you think you need for Amsterdam and Berlin; you'll probably fall in love with both of them and want to stay longer. So much to do there.

You should check out the Let's Go travel guides. They are written by college students for young travelers on a budget:

http://www.letsgo.com/

I think their guide books are available on Amazon.

One way to make your eating funds go as far as possible is to really eat well at breakfast. At many hotels and B & Bs it's included so no expenditure at all. Or just a coffee, juice and pastry at a small shop. Then eat well at lunch (less expensive than dinner) and eat lightly at dinner. Might not fit into your plans everyday, but on many days it will work and stretch your funds.

London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Venice, Rome, and Barcelona.

This is a very expensive trip in terms of transportation costs. I think you need to rein it in. Drop the outliers of London (expensive!!!!) and Barcelona. It will give you more quality time in the places you are staying and save you some €€€ on trains and planes. Put the saving toward eating and fees for museums, tours, sites.

Think 5 nights each in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Venice and Rome. That's 30 nights. You might be OK with 4 nights in some places but they are ALL fabulous and worth some time. If you shave a couple of nights off here and there -- say one each from Vienna, Berlin, and Venice -- take 3 nights to stop in Florence which is on a direct route from Venice to Rome..

Hopefully, you will fly open jaw: into your first stop and out of the last, so not backtracking.

Have u looked at lodging costs carefully or the cities u list?? And the transportation costs?? Might be gd to review your estimates again and
reduce the cities u plan to visit.

Look for Happy Hour in cafes and bars.
You have to drink the discounted specials, but will save about .75 to 1 EU instead of spending 15 to 25 EU for a cocktail.

I suggest dropping Barcelona and Amsterdam.

Keep the rest, work out the itinerary. You qualify for the Youth Pass, take the night train from Berlin to Vienna, stay in hostels. Good that you're going to Berlin. I was 21 also my first time there.on my first trip over.

She won't want to drop Amsterdam. Weed jokes aside, it's a great, lively city for young people, walkable, and so very beautiful. There wasn't a minute of my time there that I wasn't marveling at everything in sight. She should drop Vienna before Amsterdam--and London should be the first to go!

If I were 21 and traveling for the first time I'd go to Amsterdam, Berlin, and Budapest, for 5 days each.

When I was 21 the first time in Europe, I did go to Amsterdam only because I had to since the return charter flight departed from there to Oakland. On the capitals I focused that first time on London, Berlin and Vienna. Paris had to wait for the second trip.

I tend to travel on a budget. I typically spend about 5 euros for breakfast (from a bakery or market), maybe ten on lunch (something like a sandwich and drink), and 25 for dinner including one or two drinks (wine or beer) with dinner. Drinks are cheaper in Europe than here, especially if you stick with what the locals drink. If you're going out for a lot of nightlife, it's still not bad. Except for the expensive clubs, Switzerland or Scandinavia, I'd figure it rarely gets over $5 a drink. If you pay attention to what you order, you'll pay even less. In Spain, I never spent more than two euros on a beer, often half that, and never more than about 2,60 on even the best wine. In a Burgundy restaurant, I had the best glass of wine I'd ever tasted for 3 euro.

Bear in mind, it's easy to spend double or triple this. Many people do because that's how they prefer to travel.

As someone who likes to have fun when I travel, am younger than most of the posters here (but not as young as you), and tries to eat/drink/stay on a budget, I'm going to give you my advice both for a radically different itinerary and budget tips for the cities you have chosen.

Keep Amsterdam, Berlin, but then head to Poland - I enjoyed Posnan as an overnight stop from Berlin but everyone I know who has been to Krakov LOVED it and it's cheap as dirt with fantastic cheap food. Prague is probably the most beautiful city I've been to in Germany and is cheaper than pretty much every city on your list as well. Keep Vienna, I always think of it as "affordable Paris" and feel it's underrated. Budapest has this amazing "crumbling glory" feel to it and again, is very cheap. Munich is a city that visitors love and all of Germany is surprisingly affordable. I don't want to tell you to cut Venice because it is astounding, perhaps make that your "splurge destination" but be aware of the crowds if you're going in high season. Then perhaps fly out of Rome. It would still be a pretty frantic trip and you could easily cut a couple destinations but you've got energy. Just don't forget how much transiting between places kills your travel days. Definitely look into budget airlines, if you're visiting places more than 6 hour train ride away it will almost always be cheaper and faster to fly rather than train.

I love London and Paris - they're two of my favorite cities - but for budget reasons I think you should cut them. London is just incredibly expensive, and Paris is for lodging.

Budget drinks and dining tips:
-London: Happy hours and pubs often offer specials for a "pint and a pie" - pub food in general. Food markets - like food trucks but with booths - are extremely trendy and offer amazing food for a good price. Borough Market is the famous one but there's small ones throughout the city.

-Paris: Bakeries! They often have savory fare such as sandwiches and quiches that are delicious and very affordable. They also sell soft drinks, so it's easy to carry your lunch to a nearby park. Or make lunch your main meal of the day and eat at a bistro with a set menu. Asian restaurants (ditto for London) can provide cheap, delicious food but check ratings on Yelp or Google because bad European-Asian food is pretty direly awful.

-Amsterdam: A lot of bars have a menu of things meant to be eaten while drinking, basically finger food. They're cheap and delicious, especially "bitterballen" (little croquettes served with mustard).

-Berlin and Vienna - A "butterbrezel" is a great snack/lunch at one of the uqitious bakeries, as are bakery sandwiches. Currywurst and Donerkepab and wurst stands in general will give you filling meals for under 6 euros. Berlin is the cheapest city on your current itinerary for drinking and eating, so if you wanna go on a crazy pub crawl, Berlin is a great city to do it in.

Venice - tiny bars called "bacari" (plural, "bacaro" singular) serve small, cheap glasses of wine and small bar snacks, usually sandwiches with cured meats or cheese and various deep fried things. Delicious and fun to hop from place to place and try a few. Sit down restaurants in Venice are generally pricey and not as good as other places in Italy, so don't bother.

Barcelona - Although tapas aren't native to Barcelona, there are tapas stands everywhere. Madrid is a better budget option because the tapas bars literally give you a lot of food for free when you buy a drink.

Keep in mind that while bars serving mixed drinks will be relatively expensive in most of these places, public alcohol consumption is allowed in most (check to be sure before you go). So buying a bottle of wine or a few beers from the store and say, sitting on the banks of the Seine at sunset is a budget experience that's hard to beat.

Adding: Poland and Spain are the most budget friendly places I've been to in Europe lately. Austria used to be a bargain until the Euro, now it's average.

You better save up more if you want a good time. Berlin is the best deal on your list, like going out in NYC but cheap.