Costs

[KT]

I know this has probably been asked a thousand times over but I need someone to reassure me that $130 Euro a day between my boyfriend and I will be enough to travel comfortably in Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Germany, Norway and the U.K. Can anyone tell me??
We'll have Eurail passes as well so our long distance travel and all our flights are already covered.
Thanks for your help guys, this site's been great!!
Oh we'll be there over February - April 2003

[Kim]

Yep, you will be fine. It will just go further in some places than others. Norway (gorgeous, make sure to go to Bergen and see the Fjords) and the UK will be priciest.

You will save money if you plan ahead a bit-you don't have to have a schedule but if you phone ahead (as in 3 or 4 days even) and make a reservation, you won't have that-everthing's full, you have to book a pricey place kind of experience.

Also, you don't always know when holidays are, where evertything fills up and this gives you a chance to delay a day or two if this is the case.

Try and scrimp with your money when you can as even though you have a comfortable budget, there will be times when you want to spend extra without feeling like you are blowing the budget.

For the Greek Is., no need to make reservations. Just get off the boats and there will be a million people waiting to offer you places to stay. Make sure to find out where the location is, as some can be really out of the way. Ask for pictures as well, the decent places have them to show you.

Always pack something to eat on the train rides. Stop at the store even if you don't think you will be hungry. Buying food on a train is very expensive.

Stay at places that have kitchens. Trust me, eating out gets old fast. Plus, it will save you tons.

What we did is brought these camping bowls and 3 in 1 cutlery (see my packing page) so we never had to eat out for breakfast. We had one light bag of cereal (took it out of the box) and would buy a small milk in every place and maybe some rolls.

The 3 in 1 cutlery was incredibly useful. We used it every day to make lunches (buying food from the supermarket when you can saves you cash)-we usually had a sandwich on a bagette, a yogurt and a piece of fruit.

Sheesh, I really ramble on, don't I! But after 7 months, we learned by our mistakes. I think the biggest one was not booking ahead-even just phoning ahead in the first few places. We figured March when we got there, what would be full? Yeah, right. Blew our budget the first few nights, then got smart.

I'm so excited for you!

Kim

[GG]

My hint is take a can opener as well. We found in some supermarkets, cans of tuna in mayonaise. As we bought a fresh roll each day, the can was enough for 2 of us and having the mayo instead of margarine made it not so dry. Also for a treat, we would dine in the all you can eat restaurants in around london, eg Pizza/Mexican and found them to be quite cheap and as the turnover of food was huge the food was always fresh.

Have a great trip
GG