Originally, we were going to do this part of our trip as another mini-trip from our place in Serbia, but for various reasons chose to leave Belgrade a month earlier than planned and just travel straight through to France. We sped through four of the must-see cities in this part of Europe just so that we could be sure we would get to them and still leave time for Italy and southern France before meeting up with Jeff’s parents in Paris in the middle of September. Though it was a hectic schedule (especially considering the leisurely pace at which we’d been traveling around before this), it ended up working out in our favor because of this thing called the Schengen Zone, but more on that in a later post. For now, here’s the low-down on how much our “If it’s Tuesday, it must be Budapest” travel style cost us.
Note: Most of our purchases were on the credit card, but some were made in cash. To get an accurate approximation of how much in USD we spent, I used the exchange rate that our cards gave us on the day on or nearest to the date that our cash purchase was made.
Szia-Halo-Ahoj-Guten Tag, BudaKraPraVienna!
US$1696.18 / 15 days ≈ US$113.08 / day
Transportation: US$574.01
Accommodation: US$350
Food: US$542.47
Adventure/sightseeing: US$107.08
Miscellaneous: US$122.63
Budapest, Krakow, Prague, and Vienna are beautiful cities with so much to offer that (like we keep saying for everywhere we’ve been so far) we’re just going to have to go back. In Budapest we learned about the real Dracula, and we had THE world’s best hot chocolate; in fact, it was so good that Jeff and I are convinced that we had actually never really HAD hot chocolate before that. In Krakow, I got to connect with some of my roots since my great-grandmother is from Poland; we also paid our respects to the victims of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, a harrowing experience that nonetheless I believe is necessary and will probably elaborate on in a later post. In Prague we drank the most delicious dark beers (my favorite was one called Merlin, and it makes me sad that Jeff did not appreciate how funny it is when I exclaimed “Merlin’s beer!”) and got to see the Prague Pride Parade purely thanks to great timing. And finally, in Vienna, we followed as best we could in the footsteps of one of our favorite fictional couples: Jesse and Celine from Before Sunrise.
Couchsurfing in Budapest and for the first two nights of our stay in Krakow helped us keep costs down, not to mention we got to meet two really awesome couples in the process (and three of the cutest kitties EVER!). Food was also surprisingly not that much more expensive than it was in Serbia, though we did end up eating out a majority of our time since we were moving around so quickly. We also ended up splurging on a private sleeper compartment on the train from Budapest to Krakow, which is why our transportation costs are kinda up there, but since that train was nearly 12 hours long, it was absolutely worth it.
Grand Total So far: US$7,820.69 (New Zealand) + US$3,547.80 (Australia) + US$6,153.16 (Japan) + US$3261.79 + (SERBIA, Croatia, and Greece) + US$1696.18 (BudaKraPraVienna) = US$22,479.62
Divide that by 280 days of travel and that leaves us with an average of US$80.28 for both of us, or about US$40.14 per person per day. That’s not the sharp upward spike in our average I was expecting, but then again this leg of our journey was only two weeks. The two weeks after this are Italy, and then after that is our trip to France, which include Paris and a quick dip into Switzerland with Jeff’s parents, so I’m certain we’ll see our daily average creep up even faster once those tallies get totalled.
Want to see more pictures from our travels? Like us on Facebook or follow us on Instagram!