wliwl

One of the things I wondered about when I was planning our trip was how much would it cost? Of course everybody spends money differently, but I thought it might be interesting to others how much we spent.

Our trip was one week in Paris and one week in Rome. It was myself, my husband, and our two teenagers. We are not extravagant eaters (our most expensive meal was $180 euros), but we didn't particularly skimp either. We stayed in apartments - which I think was about half the cost of two hotel rooms. We bought no souvenirs to speak of. I recorded almost every penny we spent so I think it is fairly accurate. The only things I can think of that I did NOT include were the price of passports, any new clothes or luggage, and tour books. It includes EVERYTHING else - even the millions of bottles of water we bought in Paris, daily gelato, museums, transportation, etc. It even includes lousy airport food. All prices have been converted to US dollars and are for the four of us.

Flights:
Jet Blue (Rochester, NY to NYC and back) $467.60
Delta (NYC to Paris and Rome to NYC) $842.40
Ryan Air (Paris to Rome) $236.08
Total flights $1546.08

Apartments:
Paris $1708.00
Rome $1531.68

Trip Insurance $237.00

Tours:
Segway (Paris) $380.00
Context Rome (Rome - two tours) $614.40

All other total daily expenses (excludes all the above stuff): $3565.05

Interestingly, Paris averaged $268.39/ day and Rome averaged $227.23/day (excludes accommodations/airfare/airport transfers)

TOTAL TRIP $9582.21


Now all we have to do is figure out how to pay for college this fall...

Maybe this will be helpful to some other family trying to figure out how much it might cost to go to Europe.

MichaelsMom

Very interesting. Thanks for the info.

claude315

I cant tell you how much I wish someone had posted this before I travelled recently. When one hasnt been to Europe since the introduction of the euro, it is terribly difficult to know what it will cost.

I am sure many people will benefit from this. Thanks.

fun4all4

Hi!
Thanks for the useful info. How did you get such good deals on the flights? Was that $1500 each for flights or for all 4 of you?

LoveItaly

Hi wliwl, I am confused - nothing new there, LOL. But when you showed your Delta flight at $842.40 that had to be per person, not for all four of you, correct? Thanks.

twoflower

I too am confused. $9582 total for all 4 people? Or $9582 total per person? Hard for me to compare because, coming from a different part of the world with different $ value, the airfares and exchange rates differ. Also (because of cost-averaging) my compatriots would never go that far for only 2 weeks - a more likely scenario is 2 months.

My last trip can be briefly summarised as $1700 return airfares per person, with the rest (accomm, tours, hire car, gas, meals, drinks etc) averaging $200 per day per person.

The meal costing 180 euros - that was the total for all 4 of you, I presume?

Vicky

I generally go to Europe in March - not freezing but not high season. It costs me about $1500-1800 which includes nice accommodations, theatre/museum/transport and quite a bit of shopping (not high end tho). I'm not a foodie and if going by myself, I usually just grab something so that budget tends to be low. Of course that is for around 4-5 days - I take shorter trips.

Patrick

Add me to the confused list, but it seems that the airfares ARE for ALL four people. That sure is a deal if so on the Delta ones -- $210 each round trip JFK to Paris? But I'd sure hate to think you paid $467 each from Rochester to New York. Maybe one or two of the Delta tickets were frequent flyer freebies?

When I do my average costs per day, I always take out the airfare completely. Of course, 9 times out of 10 that was on FF free tickets anyway. And the average for the two of us in cities in Europe, including hotels, food, transportion, and all indicentals tends to be about $300 a day (or $150 per person). We feel we don't scrimp -- we especially eat and sleep well, although to stay at that rate admittedly last year we seemed to watch our expenses a lot more closely thanks to the lousy exchange rate.

Adding in the apartment costs, but leaving out the airfare, I see this family came out to about $486 per day. That's pretty good for four people, but presumably they were living a little more extravagantly than we do. And of course, if need be one can certainly keep expenses a lot lower than that. But thanks for taking the time to provide this guide.

isabel

Well I want to thank wliwl for sharing the info since I really think this kind of thing is helpful to people. But I wish she'd come back and clarify things. She said the cost was for all four people but as others have pointed out, there is no way you can fly delta NYC to Paris and Rome back for $210. On the other hand some of those figures do look like they are totals for all four. It's probably just a type when she stuck the airfare in without multiplying it by four. But I hope she comes back and straightens it out. This kind of info can be very useful, especially to first time travelers.

wliwl

OH MY GOSH - please forgive me! You are right about the Delta Flight. It was $842.40 PER PERSON. All other flights and expenses are total for the four of us. I am no math whiz, and apparently this project overwhelmed me! Sorry.

So here are the revised figures:
Delta Flight: $3369.60
TOTAL trip for all four of us: $12,109.41

Hopefully, that clears it up.

wliwl

Patrick - Your figures are interesting too. If I take out our flights completely (but keep everything else in, even the expesive tours) we spent $574 for the four of us per day, or $144 per person. Pretty close to your $150. Interesting. (Of course does anybody trust my math at this point?!)

fun4all4

Thanks for the clarification. Your math is fine, just a simple oversight. I am relieved because I was feeling like maybe I missed something in finding flights . Also, that budget sounds reassuring as well. I have budgeted closer to 15,000 for our two week trip. We are moving around a bit more so have slightly higher transporation costs and booked hotels instead of apartments. Other than that, it sounds like my estimates are fairly on target. Next time I am going to research and consider apartments more thoroughly.
Very useful info...thanks.

tomboy

Compare our $5,225 inclusive of air and car rental for 21 days for two people. 3 nights Vienna, 1 Sopron, 3 Budapes, 1 Eger, 1 Bardejov, 4 Krakow, 4 Cz Rep, 4 Austria.
It cost more than the 18 days in France last September ($2,600 + free air), but both give us priceless memories.
Despair not about the Euro, oh ye of little cash; economical trips can be made without deprivation.

Jocelyn_P

Thank you for posting this, wliwl. One thing I'd like to note (because I always bring this up when DH laments how much a trip costs, lol) is that if you're at home instead of on your trip, you're still spending some money, on food, entertainment, gas for your car, energy and water usage, etc. It obviously doesn't add up to the $12,000+ over two weeks, but you can count on shaving a little off that figure, just subtracting what you would be spending going about your lives at home.

wliwl

Jocelyn, We were just laughing about that yesterday. We filled up our cars (ouch) and commented on how it had been so long since we had done so. Then I told my husband - think of all the money we saved!

rex

I assume that the $3565 includes all meal, all "other" intra-Europe transportation (did you day trip? ever? ever have a car? I'm guessing not, so maybe thisis not much more than airport transfers, taxis/metros) and "atractions" - - plus "personal" purchases (both minor, out-of-pocket items, and "true shopping"? or do you exclusind "shopping"?)

Breaking this down may help in the apples-to-oranges comparison exercise for some.

Best wishes,

Rex

wliwl

Hi Rex. It includes everything - including intra-Europe transportation (such as it was). We did not ever rent a car. It includes subways, taxis, buses. The only side trips we did were Versailles and Ostia Antica. We really did no shopping (other than food, laundry detergent, etc.).

ms_go

wliwl - thanks for taking the time to calculate and post this. You motivated me to do the same for our just-completed trip to Italy.

Ours came in right about where yours did -- just under $150 per person, per day, for accommodations, food, all non-airline transportation, activities, minor shopping, etc.

We weren't as diligent in recording every expenditure, but it was fairly easy to add it all up by consolidating credit card charges and cash withdrawals.