Europe trip... how to plan?

[Deleted]

Last time we went to Europe was about 3 years ago for my wife and 5 for me and we feel next year would be the time to take another trip.

We definitely want to stop in France (my best friend and some friends from high school lives there) and London (my wife's best friend lives there). To save money for this trip next year we are taking some low key trips this year, nothing overseas (Washington DC, Maine, Montreal). Basically anything/anywhere we can drive to.

Anyway, anyone has been to Europe recently? How much should we expect to spend? And when would be the best time to travel to get some good deals? Any suggestions?

We are thinking about 10-14 days and so far we are thinking 5K should cover it but we might be wrong.

[bobosensei]

You should go to the Rick Steve's website to get tips. Also check out Ryan Air as a cheap way to get around in Europe.

[zibazinski]

Aren't you moving to save money?

[Deleted]

Shoulder season (Spring or Fall) is generally better e.g. cheaper and less crowded.

Along with Ryan air there are several low cost carriers. With Ryan remember you have to pay for Everything; bags, food, extra taxes and they often don't fly into the main airports so make sure you understand the rules before you book. Limit your baggage to one smaller type bag and plan on doing a wash once a week.

I like the high speed trains like the TGV in France. But again luggage space is limited and Europe isn't very ADA friendly. You'll be schlepping your bags up and down stairs quite a bit.

With the Euro-dollar exchange you will be less temped to buy a lot of souvenirs... ;D

[Deleted]

Mar 22, 2011 5:17:30 GMT -5 zibazinski said:

Aren't you moving to save money?

Yes, for a trip to Europe ;D

No joking, we always planned to go to Europe. I am moving so we could:
a) pay down debt quicker
b) save money
c) have more disposable income to do exactly that : travel

[Deleted]

Thanks for the other great tips, will check it out today.

[pinkbow832]

Ok, I had to register (and officially de-lurk) to answer this because I love to travel and have become the "go-to" travel agent for most of my friends/family.

If you're planning to travel between Paris and London, taking the Eurostar is much, much easier (and ultimately cheaper and faster) than flying. Why? Because if you book tickets a month or so in advance, they tend to be less than $100 (one-way), the trip is about 3 hours from central Paris to central London, and it's so much less stressful than an airport. You still go through security and passport control, but it only takes about 10 minutes for the train.

One thing to consider with discount airlines, like Ryanair, is the distance to some of the airports they fly into. Example- I used to live in Brussels and fly out of Ryanair's advertised "Brussels airport". The airport was actually in Charleroi, which involved a metro, 2 trains, and a bus to reach. The trip to the airport was about 2 hours, plus then the time to check in and go through security, and then the same thing when arriving at the destination. Also, you must check in with Ryanair at least 40 minutes before the flight is scheduled to leave or you will not be allowed to check in, no exceptions. If this involves going to the second window to pay for/check a bag, you can probably forget getting on the flight if you're being rushed.

Also, make sure if you're traveling during the shoulder season, which is cheaper, that you're not planning on being in a big city during one of the holiday weeks. In Europe, most people get the week of Easter off and some schools give the week before or after also. Additionally, there is a week off at the end of October for Toussaints, which is a big holiday time as well.

Try hotwire or airbnb.com for good places to stay. Usually if you google "Hotwire hotels in xx city", you can find a list of hotels they use and it brings the surprise factor down quite a bit. Airbnb.com has listings of private rooms/apartments/studios/etc.

I definitely second the recommendation for Rick Steves, and Lonely Planet is good too- they tell you what's good and what's a tourist trap.

Happy planning!!!

[Deleted]

Mar 22, 2011 8:07:04 GMT -5 pinkbow832 said:

Ok, I had to register (and officially de-lurk) to answer this because I love to travel and have become the "go-to" travel agent for most of my friends/family.

If you're planning to travel between Paris and London, taking the Eurostar is much, much easier (and ultimately cheaper and faster) than flying. Why? Because if you book tickets a month or so in advance, they tend to be less than $100 (one-way), the trip is about 3 hours from central Paris to central London, and it's so much less stressful than an airport. You still go through security and passport control, but it only takes about 10 minutes for the train.

One thing to consider with discount airlines, like Ryanair, is the distance to some of the airports they fly into. Example- I used to live in Brussels and fly out of Ryanair's advertised "Brussels airport". The airport was actually in Charleroi, which involved a metro, 2 trains, and a bus to reach. The trip to the airport was about 2 hours, plus then the time to check in and go through security, and then the same thing when arriving at the destination. Also, you must check in with Ryanair at least 40 minutes before the flight is scheduled to leave or you will not be allowed to check in, no exceptions. If this involves going to the second window to pay for/check a bag, you can probably forget getting on the flight if you're being rushed.

Also, make sure if you're traveling during the shoulder season, which is cheaper, that you're not planning on being in a big city during one of the holiday weeks. In Europe, most people get the week of Easter off and some schools give the week before or after also. Additionally, there is a week off at the end of October for Toussaints, which is a big holiday time as well.

Try hotwire or airbnb.com for good places to stay. Usually if you google "Hotwire hotels in xx city", you can find a list of hotels they use and it brings the surprise factor down quite a bit. Airbnb.com has listings of private rooms/apartments/studios/etc.

I definitely second the recommendation for Rick Steves, and Lonely Planet is good too- they tell you what's good and what's a tourist trap.

Happy planning!!!

Thank you, thank you!

[lynnerself]

$5000 seems to be on the low side to me.
We just went to Scandinavia for 16 days and spent closer to $9000 and we were definitely in budget hotels. Rick Steves stuff all the way.
Of course, we went to 5 countries so transportation costs were high.
Won't air tickets alone these days be close to $2000?
Ok, maybe less for you. I am west coast.

[Wisconsin Beth]

Carl, my bff likes to travel. She likes to have different travel guides because some have different info than others. On her first trip to Spain, she only had 2 books and she and her friends blew though their itinerary for 1 city in half a day. They spent the rest of the time (another day and a half) just wandering around, shopping and trying little restaurants, which isn't a bad plan but wasn't what they intended.

And it was a while ago so they didn't have laptops/internet on their cell phones. So do your homework, either in book or online, and figure out a list for the stuff you have to see; the stuff you want to see; and the stuff you'd like to see if time/money permits. And how to get to them all!

[lynnerself]

An interesting thing seemed to happen between our trip in 2006 and the one in 2010. We used to see people carrying guide books around.
This last trip, it didn't matter what nationality the tourists were, they were all carrying around sheafs or folders of Internet print outs

[Deleted]

Mar 22, 2011 10:12:44 GMT -5 lynnerself said:

$5000 seems to be on the low side to me..

It is just an estimate for now and it was base line: like we know we will spend at least 5K.

Would you suggest to visit one place in Europe (like London) to keep costs lower or should we go ahead and try to visit 2-3 different countries.

[Deleted]

Mar 22, 2011 10:23:35 GMT -5 Wisconsin Beth said:

Carl, my bff likes to travel. She likes to have different travel guides because some have different info than others. On her first trip to Spain, she only had 2 books and she and her friends blew though their itinerary for 1 city in half a day. They spent the rest of the time (another day and a half) just wandering around, shopping and trying little restaurants, which isn't a bad plan but wasn't what they intended.

And it was a while ago so they didn't have laptops/internet on their cell phones. So do your homework, either in book or online, and figure out a list for the stuff you have to see; the stuff you want to see; and the stuff you'd like to see if time/money permits. And how to get to them all!

Thank you and that is why we are starting to plan now because we know it is crucial.

Another thing we were considering was what one of my wife friends is doing: you pay a tour guide company and they plan out the whole trip for you, where you are staying, how long, which place you are visiting, etc.

It is going to costs her like 3K or so I believe; not sure. My wife was checking out their website the other day. But it doesn't include your tickets to get to Europe.

[lynnerself]

In our case, since airfare just to get there is such a large % of our cost (20% or more) we tend to go for as long as possible and see as much as possible in one trip.

[runewell]

I second Rick Steves.

[msgumby]

We recently got back from Italy. We spent 11 nights and visited 4 cities. For 2 people combined we spent about 1000 for airline tickets, 750 for train tickets, 700 for hotels, 800 for food, and 500 for activities (museums, etc). We only stayed at hotels with good reviews/ratings (at least 3 stars and reviews of at least 8/10). But we are big deal shoppers and found some really good deals. The airline tickets were first class from sfo to jfk and coach from jfk to milan - and I would be amazed if you were able to replicate those prices. A few things I recommend, we were able to get a really good deal on a lot of things by going in "off-season" times - which meant it was cold and rainy. But it was fine with us because it meant things were a lot cheaper than they could have been. We also based our travel dates on when we could find deals, not necessarily the ideal time to go.

For food, on most days we specifically picked hotels that had a free breakfast, filled up in the morning, then only ate 1 big meal a day in the mid-afternoon. This meant we could eat at nicer restaurants occassionally, but not have to spend a ton of money every day on food. We went to bakeries or other things on the days we couldn't get free breakfast. But we typically had 1 meal/day that we would pay for, and the other meals were cheap or free.

For hotels, we booked a lot of them from hotels.com, but I also recommend looking into getting a Hyatt Visa card. It has a $75 annual fee, but you get 2 free hotel nights at ANY hyatt when you sign up for it. We used it at the Park Hyatt in Milan, which runs 600 Euros/night. It also has no international transaction fees, so you can use it for a lot of your purchases while in Europe without paying a premium. We didn't want to carry around too much cash with us, and only needed about 500 US dollars cash because we could put a lot on that card. We are planning on canceling it before the second annual fee would kick in. If you and your wife both sign up, you could potentially get 4 free nights at a hotel (we didn't do this because we didn't want to stay in Milan very long and that was the only Hyatt near where we were traveling).

We were able to use public transportation the whole time, and it was quite easy - however the costs add up to more than we thought. I hadn't quite realized how much we would be spending on trains, etc... We would also have some days where we would need to get on 3-4 different trains to get where we needed to go, which was relatively easy, but the costs add up quickly. We also did a lot of walking (up to about 15 miles/day in Rome). I had no desire to try to drive around Europe or to pay for a rental car and gas - so trains worked well for us. We needed good maps of the areas, and found our guide book (frommers) had relatively poor maps.

For activities, a lot of the things we did were just exploring cities and walking around, so were quite cheap. We visited a lot of cathedrals and castles and things like that. We did spend money on a number of museums, entrances fees, and similar things. We didn't want to limit ourselves here, so we really did everything we wanted to, we just don't have expensive demands.

Our budget for souvineers and shopping was about 20 bucks - we needed to get a shirt for my SIL and a few refridgerator magnets. Niether my husband or I had any interest in buying anything else, but you may need to budget more in this area than we did.

[tskeeter]

How much should we expect to spend? That depends on what time of the year and how long you plan to spend.

For a quick, rough estimate, pick a well know tour company and price a trip to your destination during the time period you want and for the length of time you are planning. Can't I save money be planning my own trip? In my experience, not really. Tour operators get quantity discounts that aren't available to someone planning a trip for two or for a small group. The real advantage of planning a trip yourself is that you are in control of the itinerary. You can spend more time on sites and activities your are really interested in and skip what you don't want to see. Planning your own trip also changes how involved you get with the people and area you came to see. With tours, you tend to be a spectator, observing through a bus window, catered to by a group of people who are between you and the day to day culture. Obviously, I'm a plan it yourself advocate.

I've found that it usually costs us about $2K per person for a two week trip, including airfare from the west coast. Given the increase in airfares, I'd probably plan for a bit more these days, and more still, if you must go in prime season.

So how do you control the cost? While working on plans for a trip to France, we learned that if your departure date was before May 15th, airfares were several hundred dollars per ticket cheaper. If your itinerary allows, fly in and out of a less popular airport. I'm told that Amsterdam is significantly less expensive than the Paris airports. If you're planning to rent a car, learn to drive a manual transmission. I've found that the rate for a car with an automatic transmission is nearly double the cost for a standard transmission. If you will be in a larger city for a few days, plan your trip so you pick up a rental car as you leave the city or as you return to the city. No point in paying for a spot in a parking garage for your rental car while you explore the city on foot. (Been there, done that.) Use tours from you hotel to see nearby sites that are beyond walking distance. Some cities have hop- on, hop-off bus tours. These are a great way to get an overview of where major sites are. Since the tickets are usually an all day ticket (and fairly economical), and the busses run on a frequent schedule, I've used the hop-on, hop-off as my shuttle, to get around town.

As another poster suggested, check out Rick Steves web site and his travel guides. You're investing thousands of dollars in this trip, don't cheap out and try to save $30 bucks by skipping the travel guide. Rick has many location specific tips that help you spend you time actually seeing sites rather than waiting in line to see those sites. The graffiti wall portion of Rick's web site also has a wide variety of travel tips and suggestions for how to reduce your travel cost that have been posted by travelers. Everything from the friendliest B&B's to what shoes to wear for many days on your feet seeing the sights.

[msgumby]

I disagree with stkeeter. We normally price trips with a tour company (my uncle owns one). He often "gives us his best price" - which means he doesn't make as much money as he normally would on that trip. We have always been able to beat the price (by a lot), and never feel like we are skimping on quality. We don't stay at 5 star hotels, but we stay at nice places and generally do everything we want o. We always have been able to find much better deals by shopping around and planning ourselves than my uncle is able to offer. However, like I said above, we are big deal shoppers and willing to put in the effort and have some flexibility in our plans in order to save money. We did 11 days to Europe from the west coast for under 2k/person (total cost) and wouldn't change a thing if we had to do it over (except getting a guide book with more accurate maps).

By looking around in advance, we are able to find sale prices much better than the travel agent discounts run - and are able to use some tricks or price mistakes to make it even better.

[TrixAre4Kids]

Mar 22, 2011 10:41:16 GMT -5 TheHaitian said:

Mar 22, 2011 10:12:44 GMT -5 lynnerself said:

$5000 seems to be on the low side to me..

It is just an estimate for now and it was base line: like we know we will spend at least 5K.

Would you suggest to visit one place in Europe (like London) to keep costs lower or should we go ahead and try to visit 2-3 different countries.

London is always extremely expensive and the 2012 Olympics (London) run July 27-Aug 12. Prices will be outrageous.

[steph08]

Mar 22, 2011 10:41:16 GMT -5 TheHaitian said:

Mar 22, 2011 10:12:44 GMT -5 lynnerself said:

$5000 seems to be on the low side to me..

It is just an estimate for now and it was base line: like we know we will spend at least 5K.

Would you suggest to visit one place in Europe (like London) to keep costs lower or should we go ahead and try to visit 2-3 different countries.

If it were me, I would do a couple of cities/countries since the airfare is costly, and if you are already in Europe, it is easy to get to multiple places. I would do London/Paris because Eurostar is easily to take to Paris and then another city of your choosing, if you wanted.

I studied abroad in London for three months and while I didn't pay for any hotels, I did pay for airfare from the east cost, all my meals, my tube pass for three months, and trips to Rome, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales for under 3k. I think if you do it right, you can do it for 5k for two people.

trixare4kids made a good point about the Olympics being in London next year! Definitely black out those dates.

[lynnerself]

Although msgumby and tskeeter disagree on cost, they both are suggesting that you plan it yourself. And I agree. But be prepared for hours of research on the internet looking for the best deals, hotel reviews, dates that attractions are open, how to travel from city to city etc.
If you are the kind of person that likes these things, it can be a lot of fun. But be aware that it is very time consuming.

One additional suggestion that hasn't been made. If you doing a lot of site-seeing in a short time, many cities have "City Passes" that will get you in to multiple attractions for one price. You can save money and skip some lines. They usually include a bus pass also.

[pinkbow832]

Thank you, thank you!
[/quote]

thanks!

I'm currently in the early stages of planning a trip to London (and maybe Scotland), and one thing I've noticed is that if you play around with Expedia's (or Travelocity, Orbitz, etc.) "flight+hotel" options, you can save a TON of money- like $500+/person. It lets you select your departure date, arrival city (i.e. London), then if you want to add a second city (in my case, Edinburg), and then the departure date, it will give you flights into the first city, hotels in city 1, hotels in city 2, then flight home out of city 2. Using the "multi-city" option saves a lot so there's no backtracking to fly home from the first city, and you can also choose from the list of hotels that comes up in the search results.

Another thing to think of is opportunity cost- if you only have 3 days in London, you want to spend them sightseeing and visiting friends, not taking the tube from your Heathrow airport hotel. It's worth it in the end to spend $30 more/night on a place in a good location that's near everything you want to see.

Oh, and don't take a cab from Heathrow into central London. I did that on my last trip with my family, and it was about $200. I think it's the closest my father has ever come to wanting to kill me. Take the Heathrow express train instead (if you're going in/out of Heathrow). I think all of the stations are connected by train/bus, so the ridiculous black cab ride shouldn't be your only way to get to the city.

[msgumby]

Another thing I forgot to mention - part of the reasons we spent so much on trains was that we took the fast trains, which were significantly more expensive than the slow trains. If we were willing to take the slower trains, our train budget would have been about 250 dollars. We thought the price was worth it to spend more time seeing stuff and walking around and less time sitting on trains. We had significantly under-budgeted for train expenses because looking around in guide books and online, most places reported the price for the slow/medium trains and not the fastest ones.

[msgumby]

This message has been deleted.

[Deleted]

Mar 22, 2011 12:47:24 GMT -5 pinkbow832 said:

Oh, and don't take a cab from Heathrow into central London. I did that on my last trip with my family, and it was about $200. I think it's the closest my father has ever come to wanting to kill me. Take the Heathrow express train instead (if you're going in/out of Heathrow). I think all of the stations are connected by train/bus, so the ridiculous black cab ride shouldn't be your only way to get to the city.

Wow- I've taken cabs occasionally but it was never that much- you must have hit heavy traffic. If I'm not in a rush, I take the Tube- slow but cheap, and you do have to change trains so it's cumbersome if you have a lot of bags. Next best is the Heathrow Express but it's more expensive and goes only into Paddington Station. From there you're stuck with the Tube or expensive taxis again. On the few occasions I do take a black cab, I just sit back and enjoy it and think of it as a massive splurge.

Hotels: I love tripadvisor,com for reviews and have almost 100 reviews on there myself, most with pictures. Throw out the high reviews with the vague superlatives (fabulous service, gorgeous room, etc.) and the ones by people who expected Hilton ambience at a bed and breakfast and the reviews in the middle are usually reliable.

DH and I have never used a tour company. We love flexibility. If it's raining and they scheduled an outing to the park, you go to the park. If they have a half-hour "photo opp" scheduled at a cathedral and you want to go in and wander around, no time for that. If the Deluxe Motorcoach leaves for the next city at 6:30 AM, you better be on it.

My El Cheapo tactic with guidebooks is to get a bunch from the library. One series has gorgeous pictures. Lonely Planet does a good job of explaining the culture and telling you the cheapest way to do everything. The books give you a good idea of what interests you and your wife and what you might want to bypass. I also have a computer with me when we travel and it's great for local info. After some research, we went to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland on our own using the bus company with its office near our hotel, for example, rather than booking an expensive group tour.

DH and I, in addition to grabbing free breakfasts where we could, bought a lot in grocery stores- sandwiches, wraps, etc. In London, Pret-a-Manger, E.A.T. and Marks and Spencer's "Simply Food" are good places for takeout (or takeaway, as they call it).

I agree on traveling in the "shoulder" season- but of a gamble with the weather, but much cheaper and less crowded.

[Wisconsin Beth]

Plus, if you're going to visit/stay with friends - ask them for the corny tourist stuff and the great stuff that most tourists don't see/do. And be willing to talk to people when you're there.

My first trip to Europe was a bus tour of England, Wales and Scotland. We came back to London via Cambridge. My friend and I were tired of each other's company and split up at Cambridge for a few hours. She got a first hand/private tour of Cambridge (which was closed for exams at the time) by one of the students when she asked him a question and they started talking. So talk to people - you never know what you'll learn.

[Wisconsin Beth]

Oh, the last time I was in London, one of the BEST resources we had was a cab driver we had taking us to a play. He was a fountain of info on London and made a lasting impression on me. And the people at the theater sent us to a fabulous Chinese restaurant we'd have never known about otherwise.

[tskeeter]

msgumby, you've obviously got your trip planning dialed in! How about sharing some tips? Airfare is a really big part of the cost of a European trip. How do you get the best fares? What are your secrets for finding quality, great value lodging?

[msgumby]

tskeeter - I spend a lot of time looking over deal sites and plan trips around when I find deals. The trip to milan - we got round trip tickets from jfk to milan for 250/person because of a price mistake. That was one of the better deals we found. We use tricks to get free hotel nights and other things like that for signing up for credit card offers (the Hyatt Visa for example). I do a lot of research online to figure out a list of places we are willing to stay and which ones have good enough reviews and amenities and buy at the right time. We will track prices for a while and then find a coupon code to get 20% or 50% off and buy then. I use a number of different sites to research quality and price (hotels.com, priceline, travelocity, expedia, etc) and then wait for a good sale. I browse deal forums (slickdeals, fatwallet, groupon, etc) to find deals. You can also find discounted gift cards online and those generally stack with other promotions.

We travel during the off-season so generally there isn't much demand and we can wait until we find a deal to buy. Another Hyatt deal that we have used frequently in the past is they often have promotions where you stay 2 nights and get points for free night. If you stay 2 nights at a cheap hyatt (using discounts and other promotions) for about 75 bucks for 2 nights, you can then cash in those points for a free night at a more expensive hotel. My dad and brother do this frequently - and travel so much that they always get free breakfast and afternoon snacks when they stay at a hyatt.

It takes a lot of research and price-watching, but I really enjoy shopping around for this stuff. I love to travel, and the more we can do it cheaply, the better. Our most recent trip to hawaii was 10 nights and cost 650/person for air fares (from california), hotel (at a nice hotel), and a car rental. That way we can splurge on activities and things like that.

There are also a lot of good travel deals these days because of the economy. If I wasn't running out of vacation days, I would be traveling a lot right now. My dad recently retired and is constantly jetting off somewhere because of a travel deal (it must be genetic).

[8 Bit WWBG]

...:::"To save money for this trip next year we are taking some low key trips this year, nothing overseas...":::...

For some reason I am hearing "The more you spend, the more you save!!!!!!!!!" flash through my head.

OK seriously... I know how tough it is to balance saving/paying off debt with enjoying life. I wrestle with that issue every day. There are some home renovations I want to get done, but I know that will just eat up money that should go to debt payoff.

Best of luck with your balance and getting your financial house in order.