Hello,
This is my first time to Europe-my husband and I are taking a ten day trip to Italy where we will be exploring Rome, Venice and Florence (or cinque terre). Including hotel, is $150 a day reasonable? Should I budget considerably more? The plane tickets are already paid for, thank goodness.

Thank you for the help. Any other tidbits you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

I suggest that you get a guidebook such as Fodors, Frommer, Rick Steves, etc., and see what $150 per hotel per day will get you. I haven't been to Italy for almost 10 years, so I don't know what the going rates are.

Remember that the large cities, such as Rome, Venice, and Florence will be more expensive than smaller or less popular towns.

After you have found hotels that you think you might like, check on Trip Advisor for unbiased reports on the hotels.

Guidebooks such as those I mentioned will also give you information about restaurants, sights, etc.

$150 is about... right just for a hotel - assuming you don't mind shared bath, no AC, and no elevator. Even with bare bones budget hotels, you'll need to increase your budget.

When are you going? What level of dining are you thinking?

I would start here for hotel research:

http://www.eurocheapo.com/rome/
http://www.eurocheapo.com/venice/
http://www.eurocheapo.com/florence/

This might be of help:
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/planning/budget.htm

is this just for the hotel? for each of you or both? for the hotel and everything else?

if the latter, I suggest you bring a tent.

there are some threads about people who have travelled very cheaply, but you would need to stay in hostels/sofa-surf and eat in the cheapest places to get away with $150/day.

you can keep down costs by staying in a cheap apartment [so you aren't eating out all the time] and not moving around too often - it always adds to the costs to keep moving from one place to another. IMHO, the cheapest of the cities you have mentioned is Rome, the most expensive Venice.

I never allow less than $500.00 a day for 2 that includes hotel, food and transport and entry fees .I often do not spend that much but I like a buffer

$150 would be reasonable <b>for</b> the hotel. That's just over &euro;100 right now; on my recent trip we budgeted that much for hotels and were able to find nice places in Rome and Venice without too trouble. (We did spend more in Rome because we got an apartment, but that let us cook some meals and save on eating out.) A hotel budget less than that will be tougher, unless you want to look at hostels or maybe convents.

As far as other costs, it will vary quite widely depending on your travel style. If you're content with a slice of pizza or panino for both lunch and dinner, you can keep your food budget quite low; if you want a full sit-down meal with two or three courses, which is typical in Italy, you'll likely spend &euro;10 per course or so. If you stick to walking everywhere, you can save a few euro on public transportation (we did this in Rome - not on purpose, we just ended up doing it), but your ability to do that will depend on where your hotel is and where you want to go. If you want to visit museums, those admission fees add up.

For the longer train trips between cities, try to find tickets before you go on Trenitalia.com. We saved something like &euro;16 each on our tickets from Rome to Venice this way. However, there are some restrictions on those tickets, so make sure you're aware of those and can lock into a specific train.

When is your trip?

$150 for hotel and eating,seeing the sites and transportation-ah NO.
For places like Rome in high season,you will be lucky to find something for 150 EUROS a night that is decent.
Most entrees in Rome are between 9-14 euros;pizza will run you around 7 euros;house wine around 10 euros in a carafe;decent bottle of wine at least 14 euros;coffees between 1.50 to 2.50 euros,bottle water at a restaurant about 3 euros.
Bus and tram tickets in Rome(if bought at Tabac store in a 10 pack) are about 1 euro with transfers for 75 minutes.Taxi from FCO airport into the city is usually less than 50 euros.
Train travel between the three cities will cost you depending on class and time of the day.
Most of the people on my Rome flights usually budget around $75-100 a person per day for everything besides the hotel.This would include meals,museum tickets;travel;snacks;souvenirs,etc.

Some questions and I am sure you will get lots of help-

Where are you flying from?
Did you book an open jaw ticket-which allows you to fly(say) Venice and leave out of Rome (or vice versa)so you don't have to waste time back tracking?
When are you going and for how long?
How old are you and what type of interests?
Let us know and we will help you! You will LOVE being in Italy!

Thank you for the feedback! We do have friends in Rome who have offered to have us stay with them, so the cost is primarily hotels if we plan on moving around. We aren't foodies, necessarily. It sounds like if we plan on going (in March) than it may be more worth our time and money to go for less amount of days and stick to one place worth seeing. Since we know people in Rome, we could save money on housing and just enjoy the city!

Thanks for the input.

One of your biggest expenses is airfare so I wouldn't go for less days. You can save money by staying in Rome with your friends, but there are also budget places you can stay a couple of days in Florence and Venice. You should book your airfare into Rome and out of Venice (or Milan if it's cheaper).

There are cheap places you can stay in Florence and Venice (especially in March) if you want to visit them. Many convents have private rooms with private baths as do some hostels.

http://www.ostellosantafosca.it/oste...Home_Page.html

http://www.santasusanna.org/comingToRome/convents.html

http://www.bedinflorence.it/home.htm

$150 a day per person should be doable. If you mean for both of you - no - it will barely get you a decent (modest) hotel - and food, sights, transport, shopping etc will all be on top of that.

As nyt says, figure $300 a day for the two of you for everything unless you want to camp or really scrimp on food and limit sightseeing.

I just stayed in Rome for 8 days in the beautiful Trastevere area.

We payed about 100 Euros which is $140 US. I love this site sleepinitaly.com We booked through there and everything was lovely! We stayed here

https://www.sleepinitaly.com/en/show...id_appartam=23

But I also my friends stayed at this place

https://www.sleepinitaly.com/en/show...d_appartam=439

and said good things as well which seem to be a bit nicer then the place we stayed at. BUT! Our apartment was very lovely and glad we stayed there no regrets!

Also if you did not want to stay in Trastevere (which I HIGHLY recommend) You are 5 min walk from farmers markets, shopping etc...

Here is a link for all of the Rome areas

https://www.sleepinitaly.com/en/show...on=show_result

As you can see there are ALOT avail for your budget.

The budget was not $150 for lodging - it was $150 for everything - lodging, meals, sightseeing, transportation within and between cities. Doable only for students in a hostel eating picnics and walking a lot.

Well, you can deduct 20% from your usual US costs as nobody in Italy is going to expect a tip (thank god).

>Cost for a ten day trip in Italy <

It depends on the amount of your bar bill.

Ira-my kind of guy. Too funny!

Humptynumpty-if the service charge is not included on your eating bill you don't tip anything?

Nobody (sorry generally we Europeans) does in Italy just leave say e50 if the bill comes to e47. Americans probably continue to leave 25% but it isn't expected or necessary.

We always have great difficulty in budgeting when we visit The States or The Bahamas. We do a little research find a couple of restaurants we like the look of on the internet, see the advertised menus and then forget that the menus don't include the 20% or 8% local sales tax.

Sort of makes a mockery of producing a priced menu in the first place if you (as a restaurant) are going to exclude at least 28% of the actual cost off the advertised price.