Ciao da Oregon, USA,

We are planning a trip to Rome, Venice, Florence and Sorrento in Sept/Oct 2010. I'm trying to work on our budget. I've read in a few places that a *BUDGET* meal in Venice will cost 40 euros!!!! Is that right? If so, we are going to be eating soup in our apartment, lol. Or bread, cheese, meat and vino. Which is fine.

If true about Venice, how do Rome, Florence and Sorrento rate against that? Should we also expect meals to be that expensive?

I don't think we care that it is the most wonderful, full-course meal....just trying to get a grip on what a typical *budget* meal might cost overall. We'll throw in a few high-end dinners as treats, but need to go as inexpensively as possible for the majority of our meals. Breakfast is provided at our accommodations.

On a similar note...and I'm sorry if this sounds ignorant... when we do go into a regular restaurant, do we have the option of only ordering the appetizer, etc.? Or do you have to order the entire full-course meal? Is it rude for two people to split a meal? I don't want to come across as one of THOSE *tourists* and offend anyone.

Thanks so much; this board has been extremely helpful. I'm actually creating booklets for each of my trips' parties containing the tips and info that I've gained from all of you!

Leslie

No restaurant is going to be happy with you splitting a meal, but certainly you can order just what you want and don't have to go through some full panoply of courses. I rarely order dessert in Italian restaurants, if something sweet is required, good gelato is usually available not far away.

Venice is more expensive than Rome or Florence for food, but even there, there are some budget options (40 euro is not budget) and pizza is always a pleasant possibility. Do some reading of old posts on this forum. A fun and cheap lunch place in Venice is Ala Palanca on Giudecca, where you eat on the edge of the canal with your feet on a wooden block if the water level is high.

Another thing to remember is that Italian portions will be much smaller than US portions typically are. We were there in 2008 and to be honest I can't remember exactly how much our meals cost but we were unexpectedly on a very tight budget at the time (our son announced his engagement 2 weeks before we left with a 4 month engagement!!). We didn't feel any pressure to order an entire 3-4 course meal if we didn't feel like it. And we did buy a pizza once and have that in our room when we were tired and just didn't feel like going out. Totally agree with Tarquin re gelato to finish a meal

A good way to budget a vacation is to figure about $100 per day per person for meals, activites etc. That might seem a bit high, but if you figure the following:

Breakfast as part of your hotel (free)
A mid morning snack or water/drink/cappaccino $5
Lunch out $20
Gelato - $5
Dinner - $30 - $50 (this will include wine and drinks)
Gelato - $5
Right there alone on the high side, your looking $85 - and you haven't bought any souveniers or entrances to anywhere. Sure some days you wont spend as much as you might just do a slice of pizza or something, but remember this is a budget. A budget is something you should strive to hit, or be under. So caution on the high side. You dont want to budget low, and then find out you are going way over and then start crimping on things or excluding things you really want to do or see. And as you said, nobody wants to be in Italy eating food you picked up from the market for dinner every night.

Admittedly I am a very budget eater but I don't spend anything close to that. Even in Venice there are places to get sandwiches and slices of pizza (sold by weight) - some where you can eat in, others where you can get take away and sit on a bench in a piazza. In Venice there are at least a couple of "cafeteria" style restaurants where you go down a line and choose the food you want - salads, pasta dishes, meat dishes,desserts, etc. They have tables and the food is quite good and inexpensive. One is right near the Rialto Bridge, the other on the main street leading away from the train station. Can't recall the name but it's an Italian chain found in other cities as well.

In most restaurants you can order just the first main course, pasta, or the second, which is meat, or both. I've never ordered just an appetizer (called a starter) but often just get the pasta course. No one frowns on that, especially if you go on the early side ( 7 or 8 pm) and don't stay at your table for 3 or 4 hours. In Europe they never rush you to leave once you are through eating but especially if you don't order much it might be polite not to hog the table all evening.

The water, coffees and gelatos throughout the day do add up.

We were in Italy several years ago and many restaurants routinely brought a basket of bread without asking.

If you want it expect to pay several Euros for it. Otherwise, tell the waiter you're not interested and don't want the bread. They will remove the basket. Make sure you're not charged for it.

Use the Fodors restaurant search to start with - http://www.fodors.com/world/europe/i...t-reviews.html

This enables you to search using prices starting with cheap then budget .... etc

Regardless of where you are, you can find little, out-of-the-way places that serve very tasty and filling meals for next to nothing. The place will not be fancy, but it give you more of a local flavor.

As an example, directly across the street from San Clemente in Rome are a couple of pizza places. The one on the corner has nice outside seating and is a bit pricey. Ah, but the little one, two doors down that is run by this wonderful Egyptian man and his wife - Pizza Rustica (which is not really the name, but is what is on the sign) is fantastic. He makes this giant lamb kabob, with his own homemade sauces that tastes fantastic and is HUGE. Cost- about $5 euros. Places like these are all over, you just have to look for them and don't be taken aback by the basic look.

Don't buy things from the street vendors working out of their trucks. These are giant rip-offs. A coke will cost you $4 euros, a stale panini 8.

dave

There's no reason to spend $20 for lunch in Venice, unless you have to have two big meals a day at lunchtime and dinnertime--in which case you'd better be walking a lot if you want to fit into the airplane when you return homw.

Venice is somewhat more expensive than many other cities, but like any other city, you aren't required to have a multiple-course sitdown meal with drinks and wine every night for dinner (and certainly not for lunch).

We heard the same thing about Tokyo before our trip there last year, and we ended up spending anywhere between $12 to $80 per person for dinners, just depending on how hungry we were and what we felt like doing that evening. Same in any other city.

Hi Scarlett - Ciao from Portland!www.parlafood.com has a great piece on cheap places to eat in Rome. She was our guide for the Vatican and Pantheon when we were there is September and I would trust her recommendations completely. Also keep in mind that there are free drinking fountains all over Rome, so you can fill up your water bottle for free every day and all day! You might also take a look on Chowhound for more discussions of the topic.

We lived on pizza and pasta while there and we were fine. We only ordered dessert once but had gelato as much as possible. We, too, were on a tight budget and found we could eat on the cheap side many times..fill up as much on the breakfast, have a snack and enjoy a nice dinner. Have fun! (Wine can be cheaper then a coke!)

We've found that we've been able to eat well for very reasonable amounts of money almost everywhere in Italy. Venice was probably the most expensive, but that's because it's so hard to get things delivered there.

Eat where the locals eat. Don't eat at places that offer a 'tourist menu'. You don't have to eat an antipasto, and a primo and a secondi course. We DO share, no one seems to mind - we might or might not get an antipasto, and we might get one pasta dish and one non-pasta dish and share. The house wine is always good and cheap as dirt.

In Venice, you can get a GREAT cheap meal at a Cichetti Bar. Very small glasses of wine (so you can try a bunch), and tons of small plates, none of them very expensive. They have a bar and stools scattered around and you just hang out and keep eating until you're full - and it's not expensive at all.

Alice

Been to Italy a couple of times and always on a budget. I am one of those type of people that I have created a template where I attempt to account for everything. The only fluctuation in my numbers is of course the exchange rate. I start with how many USD I have to spend, subtract for airfare and lodging, then determine how much I have left. From that I break that down to euros per day. I allow for food, shopping, travel, and sights. I do my research before I go and know how much I am spending on entrance fees and metro passes. For food, I always have a few places picked out for nice dinners. I try to get at least 3 great meals in per trip (12 days). For other meals, take away/pizza/sandwiches work well. Italy can get costly if you are not prepared. Venice was a bit more and I think we only sat down once. If you sit in an area with a "premium" view, expect to pay a premium for that view. Piazza San Marco will cost you JUST TO SIT DOWN. I would go with a late lunch w/ breakfast provided by the hotel or in your apartment. Then gelato for the late night snack. Or Breakfast in the apt/hotel, gelato for a snack, and then dinner. If you can find markets, which are everywhere, take fruit/cheese/crackers with you for a picnic. Food at markets I did not find to be more expensive, just eating out.

If you are going to Rome and want to have a WONDERFUL meal, Hostaria Costanzas is the place. OMG! Va Bene!!! Buon appetito! With a nice bottle of wine, starter, bread, soup, and filets was approximately 150 euros for 2. http://www.hostariacostanza.com/
Check it out.

If you plan well, use online resources, you should be fine.

If you go to a real restaurant you cnnot split a meal. (There wouldn;t be enough food for 2 people anyway - portions are much smaler than in the US.) You also can;t just go in and order an appetizer.

If you don;t want a full meal, go to a cafe, a pizzeria or a tavola calda - rather than an actual restaurant. Prices will be cheper and you can have just a snack if you want. There are also sandwich shops (usually great - but not overstuffed like in the US), gelaterias etc.

So you don;t have to pay 40 euros for a snack. But, if you want a full dinner with wine and water in a pleasant restaurnt I wouldn't consider that a lot.

What you have to watch out for are soft ringks - usually come in tiny cans and are very expensive - either buy water or drink wine.

I have not been to any of those large cities, but on my trip, dinner was often the biggest part of the budget--but that is because it is one of my priorities. It does not have to be that way, but do treat yourself and splurge a couple of times. You said you are renting an apartment, so that will help for breakfast and some other meals--sourced from the amazing markets. Simple lunch fare like sandwiches was always fantastic and inexpensive. And of course, pizza!

At restaurants: Do not order all four courses! I did not find the portions to be small at all--even the antipasti could have filled me up in some cases! (I love to eat, I just physically can't always large portions.) Pick a primi or a secondi for your main meal. (I would do that rather than split anything, though sharing an appetizer occasionally works.) No one looked askance at me if I only ordered a primi, or skipped a primi, etc. A four course meal was quite difficult to finish--though I did on at least one occasion voraciously consume just about every bite (and Americans are supposed to be the super-sizers, ha!).

Finally, do continue researching for specific restaurants. There are lots of tourist joints, and the ones I researched were usually the best.

nytraveler, this may be a dumb question, but will it be obvious when a place is a restaurant versus, say, a cafe? Where I live, the terms are synonymous. And I'm totally unfamiliar with the term "tavola calda."

NYT is right -- soft drinks in restaurants in Italy or Spain are tremendously overpriced and come in either small cans or small bottles (20 cl -- less than 7 ounces).

Secondi piatti are usually just the meat, so ordering a pasta type plate (primi piatti) is best and it is enough -- I'm bigger than the average native Italian and a primo size dish would fit the bill back when I was 26 and could actually eat a decent amount.

But going to a restaurant to split 3+ apps for dinner in Italy isn't done.

Tavola calda means "hot table" (literally "table hot" -- romance languages reverse the adjective and noun) and is an informal restaurant that serves an array of staple dishes, not haute cuisine.

Ultimately, you shouldn't stress too much. My old man has been all over Europe, never looks for Michelin stars and his favorite refrain about European cuisines is "I've never had a bad meal in Italy."

Let me explain what I meant by splitting - one of us orders a pasta and one of us orders maybe another pasta or maybe a meat or fish dish. And we might swap plates halfway through the meal (if I like mine too much, I don't swap). We don't ask them to split for us.

Oh, and I agree, NEVER buy soft drinks in a restaurant. Get water and wine or beer.

On our recent trip, most of the time we had very nice dinners for about 40 euros for the two of us. We splurged one night and spent 85 euros for two. I generally budget 100 euros a day for eating and doing (museum entry fees etc.). Breakfast is free at the hotel, we eat a light lunch, have a gelato or pastry break at some point, maybe a coffee somewhere, and dinner. (One day we ate pastry and coffee for lunch - I highly recommend this decadent behavior).

Alice

That sounds more like sharing than splitting

hi Scarlett,

yes Venice is expensive, but it needn't be ruinous - else we couldn't have afforded to go there with our kids for a week. as well as all the excellent suggestions above, if you are intending to rent an apartment, you can buy your morning cornetti [aka croissants] from the baker [and your take away coffee too if you like] tramezzini sandwiches from a bar for lunch, and "made up" dishes from delis and supermarkets for supper. there is also at least one "hole in the wall" type take away pizza shop which will sell you enough pizza for two for very little - much less than a restaurant. if you do a trip to the islands, take a packed lunch to eat on the boat - bread filled with salami/prosciutto plus some tomatoes and fruit will be pretty cheap.

For drinks, do what alice says - in restaurants drink tap water and wine or beer. if you must have coke, buy it in the supermarket in big bottles and then decant it into small ones to take round with you. wine to drink in the apartment you can buy from a number of places from vats which they decant into plastic bottles for you - very cheap.

have a great trip,

regards, ann