kafillmore

My husband and I want to plan a trip to Europe this summer. For the first 2 weeks we want to see Portugal and Spain, and since I'm a teacher I'm going to continue on to Poland and Ukraine to visit friends for a couple more weeks. I'm not sure how to start planning. Any suggestions? I want to get a general idea as to how much this trip could end up costing. I'm not sure what sights we should start looking at first. We live in Michigan, USA. Also, would my flight be much more expensive to fly into Lisbon, and leave from Warsaw? Thanks in advance!

suze

For a general idea of budget, I'd simply list the expenses in your travel budget style:
hotels
transportation bewteen cities
local transportation
admissions
a daily food allowance
... and put $ to each category. Multiply times 2 people )except for hotel where the price covers you both) and the # of days pf your trip. That will get you a ballpark figure to work from.

"Open Jaw" meaning you fly into one city and out of a different one, sometimes is not much difference in cost as same-city RT.

Sorry I am not familiar with any of your particular destinations.

Another tip, I find getting a stack of guidebooks from the library an easier way to get started, than using the internet (which can be overwhelming) at the beginning stages of planning.

sandi_travelnut

I agree with the "guidebook" suggestion. With only a couple of weeks to see Portugal and Spain you need to begin making a list of the top 3 cities in each of those countries, so you can begin more specific research into hotel and the min sites you want to see. Rent some travel videos also to help you get the visual you might need. Come back with more questions!

tuscanlifeedit

You also might start searching here on Fodor's for trip reports on your destinations. Many report writers will list costs of rooms or meals in their trip reports.

Also suggest guidebooks and searching for airfare. There are a few threads that you can search here for travel links.

ron

The first thing I would do is go to one of airline booking sites like Expedia or Orbitz and check the prices for open jaw tickets Detroit to Lisbon, return Warsaw to Detroit. If that price does not cause a heart attack, then go to skyeurope.com to check fares from Lisbon to Warsaw or Krakow.

If you are still interested, decide what quality level of accommodations you want, (2 star, 5 star, etc.), then check a hotel site like venere.com to get an appreciation for hotel prices wherever you want to stay. If you are looking at car rentals in the countries you are visiting, go to Autoeurope.com to get an idea of prices. If it is train travel, go to the rail sites in the countries you are visiting. You then should be in a position to come back here with specific questions.

Christina

I think you start by getting an idea of about how much time you want in each place. You've already started with 2 weeks in Port/Spain, so you need to decide how much in each. You also need to figure in at this point how you intend to get between points within Europe. I usually start there, pricing out schedules and prices for air fare versus train.

Would a flight like that be more expensive than what? It should certainly be cheaper than a roundtrip Warsaw flight because Warsaw is much farther away. And it should be more expensive than a RT Lisbon flight as Lisbon is closer. It's just obvious things like that. Obviously, it will be more expensive than a RT flight to the cheaper city, but some people think that means open-jaw flights themselves are more expensive where it is almost always just because one city is going to be more expensive than the other as it will be farther away.

Nikki

I use www.kayak.com to compare all sorts of combinations of flights and dates. When searching for fares to one city and from another, on many sites you need to check "multiple destinations".

For budget flights within Europe, I check www.whichbudget.com.

A terrific resource for Spain is www.maribelsguides.com.

Portugal is one of the more inexpensive countries in Western Europe. Here is my trip report from last summer's trip to Lisbon, the Alentejo and Madrid: http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35062668.

There are many wonderful trip reports from Portugal and Spain on this forum for ideas and inspiration.