Help on my itinerary! First time world traveler!
 

I am planning a one month trip to Europe between May and June next year. I have never done anything remotely close to this before but I feel as if I have a passion for travel even though I am only 21. I am in the beginning stages of planning an itinerary and frankly I am overwhelmed with where I would like to go. I am a college student travelling on a budget so I have to keep that in mind when planning. I have $4000 for one month which would have to include airfare to and from Toronto. Here is what I was thinking thus far...

London (day trips to Stonehenge, Brighton, and finally Dover)- 8 days

Paris(day trip to Versailles)- 5 days

Bruges- 2 days

Brussels- 3 days (Have to hit up the Heineken and Stella breweries)

Amsterdam- 3 days (I am a college student but not huge on nightlife so I didn't feel the need for more days)

That adds up to 3 weeks thus far with one week to spare. I have tossed around a number of ideas with what to do with my last week. First option is that I simply add more days to my existing trip and hit up some of the lesser known areas and eventually fly out of Amsterdam. Second option, Greece. I am aware it is out of the way but I have dreamed of traveling to Athens and exploring a few of the Greek islands including Santorini ever since I was a child. It has been my dream but I don't know if I can justify spending another $200 to fly from Amsterdam to Athens and then Santorini isn't exactly the best destination for a budget traveler. I would most likely fly out of Athens back to Toronto if so. Is it possible to do all of the above and Greece for under $4000 in one month? I would love to hear any suggestions anyone has! In addition, I am open to the possibility of going to Germany, Poland, or maybe even Rome for my last 7-10 days. Any and all advice is appreciated!

OK - at the moment $4K Canadian is only $3K US. And based on rates this year your transatlantic airfare will be at least $1K US - so you are trying to live for 30 days on $66 per day - or only 55 euros per day. And this doesn;t include the cost of train or bus travel from one city to another. I don;t think there is any way you can afford $400 to fly to Greece.

Based on student travel info this is about the absolute minimum to live - meaning basic hostels and eating lots of street food or take out premade sandwiches from supermarkets. Also includes lot of walking and skipping some major sights (which can easily cost 20 euros or so to enter).

I think you either need to:

Increase your budget
Reduce the length of your trip
Get used to living VERY cheaply

But most of us here do not travel at this level - nor are we 21. Suggest you look at the Let's Go Student guides and the Thorn Tree section of the Lonely Planet website - for info on how to travel on a shoestring.

For perspective my then 19 year old DD traveled with two friends a couple of summers ago for about 6 weeks and it cost her about $8K. This was not sandwiches and hostels. This was modest hotels, but with AC, simple meals in cafes, but did include trains between cities, entrances to every sight they wanted, some basic student nightlife (pubs or cafes) but not shopping. She did come home with extra cash. But in their last city they ran into two american girls who had outspent their time and had to lend them money for a hostel and food for 2 days until they could get more money from the parents of one.

I should clarify, I live near Buffalo, NY and was planning on flying out of Toronto because flights are cheaper internationally. So my budget is $4000 U.S., or €3600. So if I plan $1000 for airfare, that leaves me $100 (€87) a day on average. I am planning on staying in hostels and eating on a budget including going to markets for some meals.

Well that is somewhat more doable - but will still definitely be a budget trip.

Again - look at the student/backpack sites for the most useful info for you.

London, Paris, and other big cities are expensive. As a general rule, northern Europe is more expensive than southern Europe or Eastern Europe. Thus, one way to trim costs is spend more time in small towns and/or in S.E./E.E. than in N.E.

Lodging will be your biggest expense each day. If you can get a friend to travel with you, then you can split the cost of a room. Also look into hostels. They are super cheap but also vary wildly in quality in my experience.

Kudos for planning a trip that actually allocates a reasonable amount of time to the locations you plan to visit! You’ve obviously done your homework, and that should pay off in all sorts of ways. :-)

With one more week, and a relatively stretched budget, you might want to consider some of the less expensive areas that are near the destinations you are already considering. As just one example, have you any interest in Scotland? Or you could add just a tad to Paris (SO much to see!), Amsterdam (to take a day trip to the Zaanse Schans, Edam, Vollendam, etc.), and add a few more stops in the low country – maybe Ghent, or Antwerp,… If you do that, flying into London and out of Amsterdam (or vv) would be a great plan.

Many travelers – and many people on Fodor’s – appreciate the advantages of “base” cities. As a solo traveler, I find certain merits to relocating with greater frequency than others would prefer, and one of those advantages is that I can often stay much more affordably at a place that many would otherwise visit only by day trip. You might check to see if that would help save you money. So, for example, even though Brighton is an easy day trip from London, I would guess that the cost of lodging is lower there. Just a guess, and just something to consider. BTW, if you do that, do try to put all your time in any one city in a single block – no reason to add unnecessarily to the number of stays!

Also, in general, I think you’ll find lower costs in early May, when you are still in shoulder season, than once high season hits, usually sometime in June. So putting as much of your travel as you can in May might make sense, and as you fine-tune your plan, you might want to check whether the order makes a difference to your costs (because the difference between shoulder and high season is more pronounced in some cities than others).

I have traveled on a shoestring, and had some great experiences, but can also say with certainty that it's not nice to run into unexpected money troubles on the road. It might help to identify some back up options in advance. (Examples: Make sure you have at least 2 ATM cards and at least 2 credit cards.)

Whatever you choose, it should be a great trip!

You could easily add a few days to your stays in London & Paris and do additional day trips:

http://thesavvybackpacker.com/day-trips-paris/
http://www.10best.com/interests/trip...s-from-london/

And then maybe take the train from Amsterdam to Cologne.

My daughter & I stayed in a hostel in London a few years ago. I would recommend that as a cheap way to go - and you'll have some interesting experiences. Take a bicycle lock for your backpack.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/HotelsLis...-zfp26875.html

http://www.hostels.com/london/england

http://www.hostels.com/paris/france

Here is a possible amendment to your route:

From London, take the Eurostar tunnel train to Brussels (or fly if it's cheaper.) Stay in Brussels and do a day trip to Bruges (that was enough for me). Then train to Amsterdam and Paris. After that, I suggest heading south to Lyon and/or Avignon. From Avignon you can take day trains to Arles, maybe Aix-en-Provence, or a tour bus to Orange. Then on to Marseille by train. You could finish up in Nice and fly home from there, depending on ticket prices. (Air Transat has summer flights Toronto-Marseille.) Or, go further south, into Spain to Madrid. Or travel non-stop from Paris to Barcelona on budget airlines or the new high-speed train.

Air Canada's prices across the Atlantic the last two summers have been substantially cheaper than American carriers, even when the two dollars were close to par. Now you get a big currency break on the US dollar, which is strong against the euro too. You just have to put up with the bother and cost of commuting to Toronto which is worth it.

A couple of basic tools: www.skyscanner.com for European budget airlines, where flight prices are based on single trips rather than round-trips. Www.seat61.com is the font of all railway knowledge. Www.Bahn.com is the site of the German system which supplies pretty complete schedules through western Europe although it sells only its own tickets. Inter-city trains and budget airlines (plus the tunnel) are far cheaper when booked as far ahead as possible. Ditto for inter-city trains. You lose flexibility – but you can't afford to wing it., where unforeseen events can poke holes in your budget.

In my experience, smaller cities and towns are not necessarily cheaper. Hotels are scarcer so don't face as much competition to keep prices down. There will be fewer cheap ethnic restaurants too. I can't comment on hostels.

It will be a great trip, especially if you can relax and don't rush. Stand still long enough to soak up some atmosphere, and aim for a few really good experiences rather than trying to cover a whole city at breakneck pace.

We often get questions about itineraries like this -- Long or long-ish long trips on low or very low budgets.

My main recommendations is to cut the trip's length back to a more manageable time that allows a reasonable budget per day.

Could you make this work -- sure, but it will be <i>work</i> and you'll have to forego a lot of the major sites simply because of $$$/£££/€€€. And if you cut back the number of destinations you'll save a fortune on transportation. Don't think you need to squeeze in everything -- this won't be your only trip to Europe.

$4000 isn't a pittance -- but it is low for a month since airfares and inter-city transport will likely eat up more than a third of the total.

janisj's comment just reminded me of another shoestring-trip experience: There was a museum I wanted to visit, but I decided I simply couldn't afford the entry fee. Decades later, I still wish I hadn't skipped it! I am fully aware of the reasoning that went into my decision on that trip, and I can't fault my logic -- indeed, even without that expense, I went a bit over budget on non-negotiables and had to use credit for my last few essentials (e.g., food). So I really can't blame myself....

I doubt that I'll ever visit that area again, and I know I couldn't have used the "this will be my last time" excuse for EVERY place I visited on those first few shoestring trips, but I do wish I'd given it a bit more thought than I did at the time to how to allocate my limited resources. Maybe, if I had had a plan in mind for what I would do if I overspent....

Good luck!

Santorini doesn't have to be expensive. There are plenty of low-budget hotels and a few hostels as well. Check with Hostelworld and www.booking.com. There's a daily 7:30am ferry that will get you there from Athens in 8 hours, but if you keep a sharp eye out on the Aegean Airlines and Olympic Air websites and sign up for their email newsletters you might get lucky and score one of the cheap discount airfare specials that are offered periodically for about the same as a ferry ticket, and that flight only takes 30 minutes.

The Heineken brewery is in Amsterdam not Brussels. The Stella Brewery is in Leuven, not Brussels.

Three days is a long time in Brussels with no breweries you want to visit.

Save your money, and instead look out some of the smaller breweries in both the Netherlands and Belgium.
Take a day from Brussels and add it to Amsterdam. Even if you have no desire to visit museums or the night life there is enough to fill your time. You could do day trips to Utrecht, Rotterdam (for a different view of modern Europe), the coast. Do some research and see what appeals.

Consider janisj's excellent advice to reduce the length of the trip to increase the budget for the cities you eventually settle on.

If you check on the ThornTree forum you will see that very experienced budget travelers suggest 60 euro/day as a very bare bones minimum budget for Europe. You may decrease this a bit on Eastern/Southern Europe and increase it a bit on Western/Northern Europe. This stands for hostel dorm stays, shopping on local markets and cooking your own food, very limited local transport and very limited paid activities/admission fees and the occasional beer or glass of wine every few days. The more you move around, the more you spend, a general rule of thumb is that a day traveling between places costs double of the budget you spend within a place (or way more)... Balance between quality and quantity and what you feel comfortable with varies from person to person, but I don't think getting somewhere and not been able to see or do anything just to make the budget last more days makes much sense...

I would try to research a bit more on what is available on each destination on terms of activities and sights and see what appeals to you and how much it costs and see how far your budget can go.

As other people said, better to trim some locations and say one week and make better use of your money...

Great advice above from some of the best people on Fodors Europe.

My ten pence.

Belgium is full of some of the the most exciting breweries in the world, seriously. That it also has one of the fastest bottling plants (Heinekin) and one dull beer with great marketing (Stella) should not be my choice of a brewery. (Actually I sold Heinekin much of their equipment but really it is to techie for me). This is the most minor of website on Belgian beer but it gives you an idea of what you could go see. http://www.mybikeguide.co.uk/North_Sea_Drink.php

Stuff near Dover might interest you, but the town itself is a dump. Also take care with English names, for instance Leeds Castle should logically be in Leeds in the north of England but is instead in the Kent in the south of England (not that far from Dover) :-)

What you will discover is

Secondary cities are much cheaper than the big drawers

Germany is pretty cheap. (I've holidayed along the French German border many times and it is startling how much you save in Germany).

Vegetarians eat cheaper than meat eaters

Branded drinks, especially fizzy drinks are expensive compared to local alcohol and tap water. Fountains will say if the water is potable, take an empty water bottle from home and fill up, it's green to do so.

3 course meals at midday M-F are a great way to fill up, even so E13 may sound like a lot but after a few days of wraps you may want to get a break.

So I'd use the very efficient and cheap Dutch train system to take me to Germany for a few days. Go look at a map and see what interests you

There is an old brewery that was transformed into a museum recently in Bruxelles.
2 days in Bxl is fine, hetismij is on spot. You have microbreweries around bruxelles, I used to buy some beer from there.

did anyone say you could fly open jaw - London in and Amsterdam out or the other way round - airport taxes favour one way above the other ?

I appreciate all the feedback, honestly and genuinely. It sounds like $4000 may be a stretch for a month especially with the cities I have selected, Greece will have to wait. Being a college student I am use to roughing it and being so young I feel I can tolerate the €20 hostels in London and €25 ones in Paris. I think this will allow me to stay four weeks with my last week possibly in Germany because so many of you said it was cheaper. Maybe I am in denial of it all, I will be sure to do my research. The thorn tree forum has been a great resource already! I will look into some of the smaller breweries around Belgium and Holland. Also I may make Bruges a day trip from Brussles and add a day to Amsterdam.

Another big question I have is how far in advance should I book my flights to get the best price? I have heard 2 months and I have heard 10. Right now I am about 8 months away. I did find a flight from Toronto to London for $270US.

I think in terms of when to buy flights, it might be a good idea to set up some price trackers to see how they fluctuate for a bit before you decide since you have some time. We go to Europe usually once a year and we normally try to buy at least 6 months out since earlier generally is cheaper-but as usual, it can depend. In some sense you could just say, "when I find flights at "X" price point, I will buy". Then the trick is not to feel bad if later you find something cheaper......

Also, try fooling around with some different departure points-Toronto, and since you are near Buffalo, maybe even some of the NYC area airports if the cost of getting to that area doesn't wipe any savings. Also, be sure to look at one way flights and open-jaw alternatives since you could manage to save money that way.

Not sure how one way tickets would work - they are usually very expensive.

But, unless it is a single city trip, we always do open jaws tickets - which are no more expensive (1/2 of the RT cost to any city) and avoid wasting time and money trekking back to your arrival city.

Open jaw = multi-country on airfare websites.

Sorry, multi-CITY

I fly in/out of Toronto when travelling to Europe and definitely also recommend open jaw or multi-city flights. All of my flights have been with Air Transat which are usually direct flights to/from Europe. Right now the flights from Toronto to London (Gatwick), early May to June 2016, and return from either Rome or Athens are around $750.00 CDN. Seems reasonable to me considering the current exchange between US/CDN $ and use the savings to fly from Amsterdam to Athens.

matthew--$270 Toronto to London? Presume one way, but if it's $540 RT, I'd book it. Looks like a great fare to me.

But Gamewood's fare also looks good because you lengthen the trip by going into London and out of somewhere else. See what you can find for one going to London and out of Athens.

As some of the above have said, you'll stretch your budget by staying outside the bigger cities. So, for example, stay in London for three or four days of your eight, then stay the rest nearer Brighton or Dover. You should be able to save a lot.

Paris is Paris and I wouldn't try to dissuade you from staying in the City, but see what you can find in some of the outer Arrondissements. The Marais (11th A) is a good place to stay and not nearly as expensive as some areas of the City.

Bruges and Brussels are probably going to be expensive. See if you can spend one nite in Bruges and the rest in Ghent or somewhere else in Belgium.

People on this board have said that Haarlem is very near Amsterdam but much less expensive, so look into that.

Finally, if your dream is Greece, then go to Greece. I just ran a hotel search on Santorini with random May 2016 dates and came up with one place that was $36/nite (sold out for my dates but. . . ), but quite a few of around $125. Take the ferry from Piraeus which should not cost all that much. I think you can get a ferry that makes a circuit through some of the other islands as well.

Two meals a day will stretch your budget and make you feel better. In addition to the "menu" (three course lunch) buy picnic makings--bread, cheese, wine, etc., at stores to really cut down on food costs.

I envy you your youth, time and money. Bon Voyage.

London (day trips to Stonehenge, Brighton, and finally Dover)- 8 days>

Investigate the London Plus railpass which gives you X number of unlimited travel days out of an 8-day period and lets you hop any train anytime - can leave before 9:30 am on weekdays - prohibited by many cheaper discounted fares - hop any train anytime and you also get two airport train transfer on the Heathrow Express, Gatwick and Standated Expressed to be use anytime outside of the 8-day pass validity - with three day trips look into it - I may suggest Bath as being way more interesting to most and the pass covers travel there too - Bath one of Britain's top nice looking historic cities - Brighton is hohum IME - even for swimming.

For lots of stuff on English and European trains check these IMO superb sources: www.budgeteuropetravel.com (http://www.budgeteuropetravel.com/id11.html for current prices and things about on the London Plus Pass) www.ricksteves.com and www.seat61.com - the London Plus Railpass which must be bought before landing in Britain I believe. No equivalent on sale once there. Again the freedom to hop any train anytime is key on day trips - when ready to come back just hop the next train - full fare tickets like to Bath or Stonehenge (Salisbury) can very really high - even Dover - and you could also hit Canterbury and its cathedral at no extra cost.