How did you budget

Where are you going to be? It makes some difference.

We are traveling around Ireland by car. Seeing as much as we can.

We were in Ireland in August, and think that Sept is still fairly high season, but getting close to shoulder season. Our B&B's ranged from 32.50-40.00 Euros per person per night (double). Guiness was about 4.00-4.50/pint. Our lunch was just cheese, crackers, a shared sandwich, fruit or cookies available in many Petro stations and grocery stores. These types of items were slightly more expensive than here in the States. (Didn't need a big lunch after a full Irish breakfast!) Our evening meals ranged from 10 to 15 Euros/person (not including beverages) for Pub grub. We were well satisfied, and noticed that restaurant evening meals were about double that amount. We bought the heritage pass, and that was well worth it, as we would have spent more by buying tickets at each Heritage sight. Some sights are not covered by the Heritage pass, and prices ranged from 5-12 Euros. Gifts and souvenirs could be a little or a lot depending on what you buy, and how many items. Rental cars can range from 45-60 euros/day. Lattes were 2.50 euros each. We spent about 120 euros on car cas for a 4 door economy car, manual transmission, driving about 1700 K. That pretty well covers what we experienced. The best way to buy is with a credit card, or get Euros with a Debit card, although we did change some American dollars to Euros at Irish banks, and it was not too bad... much better rates at banks than exchange booths at the airport! Dan

I think the most effective way is to plan out what sites you want to see and budget according to their costs. If you give yourself around 25 GBP per person per day for food, you should be okay, unless you eat fancy all the time. If you want to plan for fancy meals, take that into account. But budget according to what you want to see and then add a few pounds per person for souvenirs, price changes, and spontaneous adventure.

We used to try budgeting our European trips by how much we wanted to spend each day. We found that we had a hard time enjoying the trip worrying all the time about going over budget.

So we started to plan out the trip thoroughly before going, booking hotels, getting rail passes and museum passes ahead of time, and being reasonable eating out, which turned out to be by far the biggest expense when there. Set up a "hard" itinerary and kept to it.

All of this pre-planning has resulted in us having the most enjoyable vacations to Europe. With pre-paying much of our travel costs, including flights, we often found that much of the vacation was paid for long before we took the trip.

Thank you everyone your information has been great.
Mary

Ireland can be expensive but they are experiencing a bad recession now. If you stay in B&B's and stay multiple night' s you can prob get a better per night rate otherwise who knows. Safe bet would be around $150 per night p/p. gasoline will be high so plan for it and get a small vehicle.

I would say 175 to 200 a day to really cover lodging food and most snacks, drinks - no major purchases- just got back! have fun!