Help with working out a budget

how much the funicular and bus there will cost
how much the bus/train from Salerno to Pompei will cost,
what will the entrance fee be,
how much will it cost to get to Salerno from the Rome train station,
how much will it cost to get from the Rome airport to the train station,
how much for the bus to Sorrento , Amalfi and Ravello
how much for the rapid train from Salerno/Naples to Bolzano or Merano
how much would it cost to rent an automatic car for 6 days in Bolzano and leave it in Munich?
how much would food cost if we do our own breakfast and dinners and only eat lunch out in restaurants while we are out.
how much would the Archiological Museum in Naples cost for a person over 65

Caryn: You're asking for a bunch of information that would take quite sometime to research. I suggest you Google these tourist sights, as anyone can find the information online. On the rental car, see AutoEurope.com.
When I go on a major trip, I've found it just about impossible to micromanage and budget for every little thing. I just deal with the credit card bills when I return home.

If your budget is so tight you will only eat out for lunch and must worry about the cost of the funicular, etc., you better forget about renting an automatic transmission car and driving it yo Munich. Drop frees for taking a car into another country can be huge. You are better off returning the car to Bolzano or other depot within Italy along the train line, and taking the train to Munich. Book those tickets 2 or more months in advance to get a good price on the train.

Also note most rental agencies will not guarantee to have an automatic car available for pick-up even if you reserve one.

Also the only time you need to pay for bottled water in Italy is in a restaurant. The tap water is Italy is perfectly fine, especially in the north (Bolzano). we just carry a bottle and refill it with tap water when needed.

I don't know the answers to most of your questions - Mr Google is an amazing source - but for lunches, depending on where you go, you should be able to get a nice lunch for 8-15 euros. Most restaurants have a menu posted outside somewhere - window or some other place - and you can stroll till you find something you like. Museums will have a range of prices - say 8-15E, so you could average the number of museums you plan to see and get a ballpark $. As other posters have stated - don't micromanage too much in your planning stages. Ball park numbers will give you an idea of scale. Somethings will be less, others more.

Concentrate on the "big" cost items - lodging, airfare, and car rental - and just estimate the others (e.g. cost of eating at home maybe bumped up by 20% or whatever). Museums and public transport should be marginal compared to things like an expensive car rental with a steep drop-off fee. Or just use very broad numbers like $300 per day (or whatever figure reflects your travel style) times number of days equals total spent. Add items you can pay for in advance to your spreadsheet and build out the spreadsheet as more costs are known or can be estimated. You have a lot of time before 2017 to do this.

To cut the budget down, don't buy any food or drink inside a train station, get it from grocery stores outside or across the street. The price difference is sometimes 50%. Getting a rental car with an automatic is an extra charge...you pay for that convenience. On the train be sure to go to the WC before you get off since each time you go to the public WC, (at a restaurant or station), there will be a 50 cent to one Euro charge. Bathroom expenses add up.

The price of a bottle of water can vary from .40€ at a grocery store, to 1-2.50€ at a bar or a fancier cafe/restaurant.

For transportation info, start with rome2rio.com to see transportation choices and schedules. If a train will get you there, look at Trenitalia.com for schedules and prices. To get to Paestum, you can take a train. Super-economy fares can be bought up to 120 days ahead but they are non-changeable. Expconomy tickets cost more but allow some changes. Base fares are the most expensive but can be changed and refunded. Regionale trains are less expensive generally but are only sold seven days in advance, check prices by looking for a date within the week. Roma Termini to Napoli Centrale can cost as little as €19, the Circumvesuviana from Napoli to Sorrento is less than €5, the bus from Sorrento to Amalfi is less than €10, the bus to Ravello is a couple of euro.

I sometimes have a very tight budget, so I think I understand what you are trying to do. Keep in mind that things happen, though, and you might need to spring for a taxi or private transfer (I had non-refundable reservations at Matera, needed to change trains and buses six times, the first train was late which sent the dominoes into free fall, and I ended up hiring a driver for the last leg of that trip). Also, planning on cooking means buying things you may not use up completely, a tavola calda or salumeria can give you a prepared meal for just a few euro. Have an emergency stash of euro or an ATM card, credit cards don't always work out when you have to move quickly.

Just to follow up on the one-way car rental issue, I ran a query on AutoEurope for a one-week rental, picking up at the Bolzano airport ( the only location AFAIK) and dropping in Munich at the train station ( airport would likely be higher). You said 6 days but that generally means a weekly rate.

First off, booking an automatic transmission puts you into a larger-size car---no automatics were offered in the economy size, only mid-size, like a VW Passat. So that is more expensive right from the beginning.

The base piece for a one-week rental came up at $898 ( yes they quote in dollars). That was for a car from Europe Car, the only company offered.

A warning about one-way rentals appeared, saying the drop fee would be figured separately and would be paid locally.

Proceeded to the next page and saw the drop fee----$1150.

So the one-week rental came in over $2000. Of course it will be different with other companies, and different dates ( I chose a random week this coming August). But that gives you an idea of the magnitude of the drop fee involved if you drive the car from Italy into Germany.

Here is the page, but it may ot come through:

https://www.autoeurope.com/car.cfm

Are you sure you need a car at all? Where do you plan to go around Bolzano? There is a good bus system that we have used on two previous trips to the Dolomites. On our most recent trip we did rent a car to get around, and found we could only pick it up at the airport. So we had to take a taxi from the train station to the airport, for around €15 if I remember correctly. There may be a bus but the timing was not good for our purposes.

You have your work cut out for you on all the research you will need to do (trip planning is the best!). I found the best way to organize all the information I find is to use an excel spreadsheet. I have a tab for each location with dates, addresses, names and cost, and then you can transfer just the cost to another tab with all expenses to get a tally, just whatever works best for your brain and organizational style. I used Rick's "Average per day/per person" figure and that really helped as a starting point to set a budget for us. Some days we were under the expected amount and some days over, it all averaged out in the end. We are also budget travelers but we do not forfeit experience/memories for cost and we never allow ourselves to get too hungry, that is a fight waiting to happen! I also had a Souvenir/gift budget. Good luck, you have already received some great advice and resources. I used to RometoRio website for train travel planning in Italy and France, even printing out instructions or important information I thought I would use.

A guidebook also covers most of these numbers and is portable and easy to highlight or annotate. Rick has long said (with some variation in the digits) that, "Guidebooks are $25 tools for $4,000 experiences."

What David said. It's tedious, but if you want precision you have to work for it. You have plenty of time to research your list for ballpark prices.

Maybe I missed it, but you didn't say when in 2017 you plan to go. That could make a bit of a difference in costs and maybe in whether you can get to some of the places you want to go or do some of the things you want to do. You also don't say how many "we" are. If there are only 2 of you it's much easier to do the planning than it is for any number beyond that.

My husband and I did an Alps driving trip the last 2 weeks of June 2011. With the help of gemut.com we rented a car outside Stuttgart, drove a clockwise route through Bavaria, Austria, Italy (including an overnight in Merano), Switzerland and France before returning the car just across the border from Basel in Lorach, Germany.

We flew from Florence to Stuttgart to pick up the car. We did the trip that way because renting a car in Germany is typically cheaper than anywhere else and to avoid those horrendous drop off fees.

Remember that you will both need IDPS (in case something happens that prevents the primary driver from driving) to rent a car in Italy and that special insurance is required. Be sure to research all the seemingly little but potentially very costly mistakes you can make when driving in Italy. Just a few tickets for those mistakes could destroy your carefully planned budget.

Also be aware that the primary driver must be the person whose credit card pays for the car. We got charged an extra fee related to that in France one time. But you can learn all about that from the rental information at gemut.com and from talking to Andy there. They are actually in Oregon.

Our trips, including that one, usually cost an average of $150 - $180 per person per day. That's including everything (even boarding the dog) except airfare. You could use that as a ballpark and take out your prepaid lodgings. And once you get the other big chunk of change, the car rental, nailed down, you can remove it as well.

One other thing, we've found that the entrance fees for tourist sights/sites are the smallest piece of our overall trip costs. Lodging and food run about the same and are the biggest portions of our overall costs. They swap the #1 or #2 slots depending on the trip. Local transportation, which includes car rental, is #3. We have never paid the kind of money already posted here, but we rent standard shift cars and always return them in the same country where we rent them.

We did end up with an automatic once because it was all they had. Neither of us liked it. It was bigger as someone already mentioned. That made it harder to drive in little towns and much harder to park. It didn't cost us extra, but that was because the smaller stick shift we'd requested and paid for in advance was not available.

Letizia offers sage advice.

I've used an Excel spreadsheet with multiple tabs for virtually everything, and then uploaded it to my iPhone before we traveled, or laptop or tablet if you bring one. Don't hesitate to list mere possibilities of restaurants or attractions you might visit, complete with links, so you can access it on the fly and not have to re-invent the wheel from your research. Time is money when you're overseas!

Yes, air is a constant. So is lodging. So are advance train tickets, advance museum tickets, pre-arranged transports, day tours. Do your homework and ascertain the costs, then plug it all in to the spreadsheet to give you a pretty fair idea of your upfront costs, preferably doing all this before you reserve.

If you are truly budget-minded, you will do your due diligence in advance as to costs of restaurants and gauge that with what you are willing to spend. Depending on where you are in Italy, there is so much cheap (and good!) food (mostly take-out or 'take-away' as they call it), in some respects costing less than the same thing in the U.S. An espresso & roll for breakfast, and then a panini, chips and water for lunch--unless you get rammed in a very touristy area--shouldn't cost you more than 15 Euro (right now 1.11 to the US dollar) total. If you're staying in a apartment, you can shop at the grocery, make your own lunches and probably do it for less than that. I do like having a nice dinner out most of the time--it's why we come to Italy! But again, this isn't Paris or London. Before the cost of wine, at a reasonably-priced restaurant pastas should run 10-15 Euro, appetizers a little less, and meat or fish courses a little more. Sometimes pizza is dirt cheap--at Pizzeria Trianon in Salerno a killer Margherita pizza was 4 Euro. Incredible value.

If you really are hell-bent on knowing the cost of everything upfront--such as the Salerno/Pompei train--it can be found out online, but public transport (meaning intracity, not large city-to-large city) is not going to cost much--private transports are exponentially more. You'll be surprised at how reasonable overall costs are, and it's cheaper as you travel farther south, with the exception being in Sorrento, but it's still not that bad there.

Enjoy your planning. Let your keyboard fingers do your walking for your knowledge and peace of mind!

I spent about two months in Italy last summer, eating one meal a day in a restaurant--two courses selected from antipasto/pasta/meat-or-fish/vegetable side. Always bottled water to drink. Bread is usually included and unavoidable even if you don't want it (bread and cover charge is usually 1 to 2 euros per person). Almost all my restaurant meals cost between 20 and 30 euros. Traveling with a second person will slightly lower the cost because you can split one antipasto selection or side vegetable. Two courses meant more food than I wanted, but it was usually impossible to get a reasonably balanced meal by ordering just one course. I did see some other people occasionally ordering just pasta; that will be tasty but often not provide much in the way of protein or vegetables. Soft drinks and coffee will add to the cost; I don't know about table wine. Don't even consider having a dessert in a restaurant. It will be much cheaper at a gelato stand or pastry shop.

I care about food, but I don't care about atmosphere. I eliminate fast-food places and touristy-looking spots, plus places with really dull menus. The latter cuts out some of the cheapest places, but I don't travel to Europe--especially to Italy--to eat bad or boring food. If anything hot will do, you'll be able to eat in most cities for under 20 euros at lunch time, though I have my doubts about places like Capri.

The best inexpensive, hot option for folks on a budget is pizza. Two individual pizzas (often the only size available) would probably come in under 30 euros in most places. When you're in danger of being bored by the outstanding Italian pizzas, go for some high-quality carry-out items from deli-style places, as suggested above. You'll see things like main-course salads and single-serving quiches displayed in windows. Even going to expensive-looking places will be a lot cheaper than a restaurant meal, as long as you don't buy more food than you need. Supplementing deli carry-out with fresh fruit ands vegetables from a greengrocer will really bring down the cost of the meal. I tend to feel a bit deprived if I don't get one hot meal a day, but if you don't have that issue, you will eat very well by visiting Italian delis, A lot of food stores (mini-supermarkets) also have a selection of prepared foods, but I've never tried that; it just doesn't look as appetizing as the options at the higher-priced joints. It would be even cheaper, though.

One thing I do not recommend is the pre-baked pizza by the slice that is widely available. It's not much, if any, better than the similar stuff in the US. Freshly-made Italian pizzas are so good; I think it's a real shame to eat that other stuff.

Edited to add: I meant to mention that my Italian destinations were, on average, lower-cost cities than you plan to visit.

Caryn---can you provide some feedback on the advice you have received so far? It will help others who want to jump in and maybe offer helpful advice.

Caryn,

That's a lot of information to research! You can find all the train details and costs on the Trenitalia website. If you're on a tight budget, you can save money with advance purchase tickets on the fast trains, but you MUST be willing to commit to a specific train, date and departure time. The fast trains have compulsory seat reservations, so you can't buy tickets and then board any train.

In terms of costs for the Funicular, Bus, meals, etc., the easiest solution is just to work out an appropriate amount for "incidentals per day" and budget for that. Some days you might be a bit over the limit, and other days you'll be under the limit so it will all balance out.

If you're staying in small hotels such as those listed in the guidebook, breakfast will often be provided in the cost of the room, so you'll only have to deal with lunch and supper. You can buy a couple of Paninis and a beverage for a few Euro so lunch shouldn't be a huge expense. Have you travelled to Italy before? Restaurant meals are arranged in courses, and if you order the "full meal deal", costs can add up quickly. If you both order one item (ie: a Primi dish / Pasta) and then share it, that should keep costs down. Many places charge a Coperto (service charge) and there's no way of avoiding that.

Renting a car is probably not the most cost effective idea. Note that for driving in Italy, each driver listed on the rental form must have the compulsory International Driver's Permit, which is used in conjunction with your home D.L. These are valid for one year, and easily obtained at any CAA/AAA office (two Passport-sized photos required, which may be provided by the issuing office). Failure to produce an IDP if requested can result in fines on the spot!

You may also want to have a look at some of the other posts here concerning the dreaded Zona Traffico Limitato areas that are becoming increasingly prevalent in many Italian towns & cities especially Florence, which is almost saturated with automated ZTL cameras. EACH PASS through one of the automated Cameras will result in a €100+ ticket, which you won't know about until several months after you return home! There's also the issue of parking tickets, high fuel costs, tolls and automated speed cameras including the devious Traffic Tutor system which measures not only instantaneous speed but also average between two points. Violate either or both parameter and expensive tickets will follow.

I agree that you cannot micromanage every penny. You want to have a good time, after all! I found that I spent far less than what I anticipated. Ferry trips, entrance fees, and food were all less than I thought. Entrance to the Vatican and Colosseum were paid online in advance and smaller museums were not expensive. Train tickets to major stops on our itinerary were also purchased ahead of time, and the small trips in between were not expensive. We stayed at B&B most of the time and either shared lunch or skipped lunch quite a bit. On days when we were on the train from one major location to another, I made sandwiches to go from the breakfast provided by the B&B. This helped a lot, too, because food, when available on the train, is high-priced. We did everything we wanted and came in nearly $1,500 under the $9,500 budget I had originally set for the trip. The trip was 21 days, including Rome, Cinqueterre, Venice, Abbruzzo Region, Amalfi Coast (including Pompeii and Capri) and back to Rome. All travel by train.

I wonder if Caryn hasn't returned to comment or ask more questions because she is disappointed with the advice received. She asked for the exact costs of a long list of things and not one provided that. Understandably, as it is burdensome for the helpful people here. She would be way better off to learn to use the guidebook and websites to find the costs for herself---and the tricks for getting the lowest prices. And then ask specific questions where she needs more guidance.

Meals are not that expensive.
I am very often in Italy and I have never paid 15 euros for a homemade wooden oven pizza (more between 4-9)
Many restaurants or trattorie (less expensive) offer good quality and varried but simple food for 10 euros including water (sometimes a glass of wine), coffee. No desert though. They often offer what they call a tri which is on the same plate (pasta, veg and meat or fish).
Meals in the evening are generally more expensive.
Also buy your food on the markets and have a pocket knife and a fork with you while traveling (buy one upon arrival, not accepted on airplane).
Travel with regionale trains as much as you can they are much cheaper. Never take Italo or freccia trains when going to nearby cities, for instance between Florence and Bologna, you will only gain 15 min but will pay a lot.
Freccia trains are only interesting for long distance or if it avoids you changing trains too much.

Thank you all for the wonderful advice. Right now don't know if we would be three or five travelers. I will definitely do the excel spread sheet. The idea of E150-180 sounds right to me.I just wanted to give one of our party an idea of what he would need to budget for the trip as I am providing lodging and someone else is providing transportation. I guess we won't be renting a car but using public transportation instead. Reading your tips will be a real help in figuring out what we want to spend, where we will go and how we will get there and what we will see.