It's two days before our month-long expedition in Europe begins and we wanted to blog everything we've been doing the past 2 months in preparation for those who may be interested in making a similar trip.
Click on "Read More" for the details!
In July 2010, our goal was to do a sort of "seven wonders of the world" tour and circumvent the globe, hitting all the major continents and sites. However, we soon realized that just the airfare, even with the multi-destination flight sites like http://www.airtreks.com/, was nearly as much as the entire budget for a trip to Europe. They have a handy flight-planner page which was cool to explore (http://tripplanner.airtreks.com/Flash/Index). In addition, my visa status (I'm still waiting for a green card in the United States) would have required a sort of nightmare for all of the travel documentation we would need. Effectively, because of the financial and time limitations as well as overall feasibility, we decided to backpack through Europe only, a far more budget friendly option.
Deciding our budget was difficult and required a lot of research. Luckily, traveling in pairs is ideal for saving money. There were three main components to our grand budget:
- Airfare to Europe
- Transportation within Europe
- Daily spending
Airfare to Europe - $800/person
There wasn’t much room for variability in airfare. We began by looking into the cheapest options for flights from Houston to any city in Europe, comparing prices from all the various travel sites like Priceline, Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak, etc etc. We found that the cheapest flights for our dates (April 19 – May 18) were round trips to Madrid, around $100 than the next best option (Paris).Quick note about purchasing airfare: by using Priceline’s Name Your Own Price (NYOP), we saved ourselves around $24 per person...not close to the 40% they advertise. It could have been a combination of trying too early and picking dates in high demand. However, from our experiences, it’s more likely that Priceline doesn’t offer much bargaining leeway on plane tickets purchased well in advance. They make up for that with their awesome discounts on hotels though.
Our advice: buy your tickets AT LEAST 2 months in advance! You will save an average of $150-$100 per ticket. Also, be a bit flexible with your arrival and departure dates (+/- 3 days) and try to fly between Monday and Thursday both ways. You’re bound to find good deals this way. Once you’ve found the cheapest price, you can hit up NYOP, bid low, and keep bidding up until there’s not much of a discount to be had. We saved $24 per person this way, which was worth the risk of getting a really crappy itinerary, since NYOP only lets you select dates and the price. It will try to find you the best seats available at that price on those dates, but will not guarantee convenient timing. Since we’re the kind of people who want to save every dollar and had the flexibility to have inconvenient times on our desired dates of travel, it was worth the risk.
Transportation within Europe - $800/person
After airfare, out next big expense was local transportation. The natural option was to use the extensive rail system that Europe has. We found that our best option was going to be the Eurail Global Pass. We opted for the 1 month, unlimited pass, since we wanted the flexibility of hopping onto a train whenever we wanted during the 29 days we were there (this turns out to be only partially feasible, as we’ll point out soon).Since we’re both under 26 years old, we had the option of trading in the luxury of first class for a more budget-friendly 2nd class Youth Pass, saving ourselves about 25% in the process over even the Saver Pass (the 1st class Adult Pass for 2+ travelers going together). Unfortunately, if you’re 26 or older, you have to choose the 1st class option. The differences between 1st and 2nd class are minimal. The main difference is more room and quieter cabins and, in some cases, free newspapers or wi-fi. There are other options in terms of permitted travel dates on the Eurail. For some, the other options may make more financial sense, depending on the duration of your trip (especially the 15 days over 2 months pass for longer trips).
After we bought the passes, we soon realized that our ideal situation of showing up at a train station and simply flashing our Eurail Pass and hopping onto the train to our next destination was not quite how it was going to work. Turns out, most of the long distance trains require reservations in order to get on. These reservation fees range anywhere from 3€ - 30€. We were pretty bummed, and soon realized we hadn't budgeted for this.
Fortunately, we were able to find a way to minimize the reservation fees paid: purchase the European Rail Timetable, a comprehensive listing of all the intercity trains you’d be interested in. (A shortened version accompanies the Eurail Pass when you purchase that, but it leaves out a lot of other timetables that may lower overall rail costs.) A comprehensive European Rail Timetable shows you the trains that require reservations and those that don’t. If you don’t want to purchase the book, there are also two useful websites that can show you times of trains and whether they require a reservation or not (http://www.eurail.com/planning and http://www.raileurope.com/us/rail/point_to_point/passholderrequest.htm ). All of these resources allowed us to find creative ways to save money with local, lower speed trains to avoid some of the reservation fees. By no means will you be able to eliminate them altogether, since you definitely do not want your Madrid-Paris trip to take over 36 hours just to save $15 on fees.
After coming up with a budget, our next decision was to decide where and how to spend our one month in Europe. With our transportation options, duration of trip, and daily spending budget in mind, we decided to hit the major highlights in five countries: Spain, France, Belgium, Italy, and Greece. We used various travel sites to pick the sites we wanted to visit in each city, with most of our advice coming from the always-useful TripAdvisor.com and their "Things To Do" section for each of our cities.
Fortunately, we were able to find a way to minimize the reservation fees paid: purchase the European Rail Timetable, a comprehensive listing of all the intercity trains you’d be interested in. (A shortened version accompanies the Eurail Pass when you purchase that, but it leaves out a lot of other timetables that may lower overall rail costs.) A comprehensive European Rail Timetable shows you the trains that require reservations and those that don’t. If you don’t want to purchase the book, there are also two useful websites that can show you times of trains and whether they require a reservation or not (http://www.eura
Daily Spending - $125/day/person
We decided that $125 per day per person was a reasonable estimate of our costs. We estimated $40 for accommodation, $45 for food, and $40 for touring attractions. We're hoping that this budget won't limit us too much in terms of what we can see and do.After coming up with a budget, our next decision was to decide where and how to spend our one month in Europe. With our transportation options, duration of trip, and daily spending budget in mind, we decided to hit the major highlights in five countries: Spain, France, Belgium, Italy, and Greece. We used various travel sites to pick the sites we wanted to visit in each city, with most of our advice coming from the always-useful TripAdvisor.com and their "Things To Do" section for each of our cities.
Essentially, we made a spreadsheet charting out the major sites and things we wanted to do on each day of our trip. We wanted to make sure that we could afford to visit the sites, feed ourselves, and pay for that night's accommodation within our budget. So at this point, we have an agenda of what to do on each day of our trip. We felt it was really important to have at least an idea of what to do and how much to spend on each day so that we have some level of structure when things get hectic. However, we fully expect that this agenda will change drastically over the course of the trip, which will be part of the entire experience. We'll leave the nitty gritty details for the individual updates once we actually get to all of the cities on our itinerary!
Tomorrow we'll be tackling the daunting task of packing. I am a terrible packer myself, so Sahna will probably be the primary author for that one.
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