Please guide on per day expenses in western europe trip
 

Hi All,

We are a family of 3 and will be travelling to Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam in the third week of Jul for 9 days. Itinerary is 3 days in Paris, 2 days in Brussels and 3 days in Amsterdam. Hotels and flights are all booked. However, other expenses such as food, travelling in the city, tourist passes, intercity transfers have not been accounted yet.

Could someone please guide me on what amount of forex (preferably in euro) should i be carrying with me? what will be ideal one day expense per person per day? we are targeting at a modest stay. Also, is Paris pass worth the hype, cause i find it a bit expensive?

You don't need to be carrying anything with you. You just take a credit card for big expenses, if you have any, and withdraw cash from ATM machines with your debit card for small daily expenses.

"A modest stay" is incredibly vague. If your hotels and flights are all paid for, it seems your major expenses will be train fares (did you not already buy train tickets? You're way late for the cheap fares if you didn't), food (and we have no idea what your dining preferences are), and museum and other entrance fees (but again, we have no idea what your plans are for visiting each city).

No, the Paris Pass is a complete tourist rip-off. Buy a carnet of t+ tickets to use the métro and bus (supplement it as you need to). If you are planning on visiting a number of Paris museums, the Paris Museum Pass can be well worth it.

Third week of July = next week?

What you are asking are mostly usage model based question. What you use drives the cost. Type of food you eat: ranging from take outs to sit down meals, number and types of places you visit, where you are going in each city modulate the expenses tremendously from person to person.

Also, if your trip is indeed next week, waiting until now to make intercity transfer arrangements is counterproductive. For example if you take a train, a last minutes Paris-Brussels is about 99€ on a fast train. If you acted early and bought an advance discount ticket, it would have been about 29€.

Amount of Euro you need to carry depends on what you are doing: cash only places vs. places that take CC, what you need them for, etc.

You can eat sandwiches for 3-3,5 euros.
Crêpes for about 10.
Kebabs for 5-6.
Restaurants for 15, 20,30,40, 100....

my rule of thumb is that your daily expenses are going to equal roughly what your hotel expenses are. that generally seems to work for me.

But I agree - no need to take large amounts of money with you - credit cards and ATM cards are what you need. [and don't forget to tell your bank/s before you go].

You can live at almost any budget - it depends on how you want to travel and dine.

As for trains - if you are going in a couple of weeks - yes you will be paying very high fares since the discounted ones were gone months ago. Have you looked into the sights you want to see - to find out which are much easier to see if you have advance tickets: Eiffel tower, Anne Frank house, Van Gogh museum,etc. Ot you could waste hours just standing on lines.

Between 400 and 500 Euros cash is plenty for a week.

Mark

I would be concerned at carrying that much cash on me, but each to their own.

About trains, if needed, check Voyages-SNCF or, easier to navigate, captaintrain.com. You might still find fares cheaper than walk-up even this late.

You can eat quite cheaply in Paris, lots of inexpensive street food or picnic basics from a grocery or street market and upward from there. All restaurants have posted menus and many offer 2 or 3 course meals at noon hour in the 12-15€ range.

Are transfers to and from airports paid for?

Cash : today I'm extremely rich, I've got 65 € in my wallet.
I usually have 20 €.
And pay 98% of my expenses with a creditcard.
France and Belgium.

(I'm not often in NL. Why should I, we kicked them out of Belgium in er... 1830.)

Mansi, if you're coming from India, you might want to take your passport to your bank (Axis / HDFC / ICICI have really good Forex cards). Transfer money into the Forex card at today's rate. Use it to swipe it as a credit / debit card. You could also withdraw cash from any ATM at a small 1/2$ charge. This, in case your debit or credit card charges heavy foreign transaction fees, which most Indian cards do in upwards of 3%. Unused amount in the Forex card can be refunded immediately in the bank account upon return. And the card is valid for 4-5 years. So it will be useful for future trips.