The cost-of-living survey quoted in last month's Economist is from an extraordinarily complex survey its sister company, the Economist Intelligence Unit, does all the time.

It's not a cost of being a tourist index, or a cost of buying houses index, but a cost of living index. Or, to be precise, a cost of living an expatriate's life index.

High house prices are almost irrelevant to that - especially if you're living in a socialist state like New York where the city goverment interferes with rental prices, so that rents paid rarely have any relsationship to current sale prices.

Well, flanner, I live in NYC -- I wouldn't say that there's a lot of rent control/rent stabilization, but I'd be hard-pressed to give you an exact percentage. But in any case, sale and rental prices have something to do with each other, even in NYC. Granted, I'm not an expert in this area. If I were, I'd be vacationing right now some place warm rather than posting random things on Fodor's. :-)

Wow.... how many repsonses. I dont have the magazine at hand but it was probably in the edition of the last week of august. Look at the last page where they always put the numbers/markts/percentages and so on.

It is getting expensive...very expensive. When I arrived to PAris (almost two yeasr ago) the euro and the dollar were even... So probably the strong euro is the reason.

On the other hand, in Paris you can find very good bargains. The good think is that as a tourist you can have a crepe or a sandwich for lunch for 5 or 6 euros including coke - thats pretty good!
There are algo great sales.... But then again with an strong euro, things are different.

I think The Economist can make MANY mistakes (they have already made a few), but I am sure that a magazine that is a British Institution will never put London below Paris if the information is not accurate! I am sure they were the first ones to be surprised.

Anyway! Expensive or not Paris is worth every cent.

By the way, I went to London two months ago and yes for me it was more expensive that PARIS!

Diana

Back to the usual poster: if you are in Paris on Oct 2, don't miss the "Nuit Blanche", a whole night devote to art performances, with metro running all night! More information on paris.fr.

Opps...thanks...I just went back to read the followups to this post and saw the one about Nuit Blanche...and I just made a whole post about it...

This sounds just great! I just need to be a little more organized, but with having had only 10 days to plan a trip inbetween life, its a bit jammed. I have not had time to plan the Budapest part, but at least have a hotel there.

I'll be raising a glass of wine at dinner in Paris to you all for being of such great help. Taylor

A great thing about Paris is that it has bargains in one area (like housing: if you decide to rent an apartment, as we did, saving on a per-nite hotel rate, or if you are staying in a place with a kitchenette and shop at bargain supermarkets like Leader Price or Franprix) this allows you to splurge on other areas like a must-try restaurant or gift shopping. We were in London too and couldn't find this sort of mix. EVERYWHERE seemed expensive, even supermarkets! Also, does anyone know The Economist's political views? I've noticed that ever since France declined to support our pre-emptive war in Iraq certain newspapers and magazines have tried to discourage anything that will aid the French economy, like tourism, some more overtly than others. Just a thought.