Blog du Wren

Financial Breakdown of Turkey-Greece-ExYu-Paris Trip

If frank talk of money feels a bit taboo to you, you might want to skip this post. In it, I break down the costs of my most recent trip to Turkey, Greece, the Western Balkans, and Paris. The reasons for this are two-fold:

Using a similar format/criteria as my last financial breakdown post, I am able to quantitative compare travel costs
For perspective travelers to these areas, I thought it could be helpful to have some real-life numbers to help in your planning (keeping in mind that I'm a budget travel so your numbers might differ.)

Overall, I'm really pleased with the way the numbers turned out. I was shooting for $50/day not including plane tickets, and came out at $55/day with plane tickets. In fact, interesting to note, on a cost/day basis, a trip to the much more expensive Europe* was cheaper per day than my trip to Mexico/Belize/Guatemala last year. I attribute this to duration of stay, having a few friends to stay with along the way, and finding a food-and-lodging-included volunteer opportunity.

Like it or not, money is a big part of travel. And while I try not to think about it too much while on the road in order to not take myself away from being in the moment or enjoying once in a lifetime experiences, I think it is important to check in with the numbers. And with numbers like these that could conceivably be similar to what it costs to live here in the U.S., it is nice to know that at least financially, my next epic trip doesn't need to be that far away.

All costs excluding international travel
Place	# of days	Money spent	Cost/day	Notes
Turkey	24	$840	$35	Just right! Cost per day helped by staying with a friend in Istanbul for 4 days.
Greece	12	$650	$55	Cost per day somewhat elevated due to costly ferry trips. If # of days per island was increased, overall cost per day would go down.
Albania	2	$110	$55	Prime example of short stay in a country leading to really high cost per day. Albania is actually really cheap and had I could have probably stayed double the time for only another $20 or so.
Montenegro	3	$150	$50	Actually slightly more costly than Albania generally.
Bosnia	16	$300	$19	These costs aren't representative of regular budget travel in Bosnia. I spent no money* for 8 days while volunteering at Most Mira Festival. Then for a few days before and after, I stayed with a buddy in Banja Luka who was an excellent host. Cost of regular budget travel in Bosnia would be similar to other ex-Yu countries, maybe $40-$50 a day
Croatia	7	$406	$58	Perhaps the most expensive of the ex-yu countries I visited, but not by much. Costs were also upped a little due to not traveling solo (therefore not eating PB&J 3 times a day.) But traveling non-solo is worth the slight up-bump in cost.
Paris	6	$545	$90	I'm pretty proud of these figures for my time in Paris. Having been warned it is crazy expensive, I was able to have an amazing time and still keep costs under double my daily average. Lodging accounted for half of per day cost.
London	2	$105	$52	London is a truly expensive city. I got away so cheaply because I was so generously offered a place to crash at a friend's house. Most of the budget went to either the tube or food. (I skipped all attractions that cost (Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, etc.)
New York City	6	$200	$33	Due to having a wealth of awesome friends there, my time in NYC is always not only wonderful but also relatively cheap, having to pay for only food and the subway, more or less.

International travel
Leaving	Arriving	Cost	Notes
Seattle, US	Istanbul, Turkey	$485	Includes a 2 day layover in NYC which not only saved cost but allowed me to visit friends there(!)
Marmaris, Turkey	Rhodes, Greece	$66	Inordinately expensive ferry trip. Less than 2 hours compared to 12 hour ride for half that on Rhodes to Crete.
Athens, Greece	Tirana, Albania	$36	Not the most direct bus, but the cheapest I found
Banja Luka, Bosnia	Paris, France	$100	Train to Zagreb, EasyJet to Paris
Paris, France	London, England	$57	8 hour bus/ferry ride. Other option was $125 2 hour train ride via the chunnel.
London, England	Seattle, US	$531	Again a layover in NYC (via Boston to NYC by Chinatown bus)

Overall
Total cost	# of days	Total cost/day
$4581	83	$55

Wednesday June 15 2011

File under: travel

Toggle Comments (4)

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on Wed 15th Jun, 2011 07:40 pm PDT Andrew said:
Jack Reacher did the same trip and only spent $13 a day. Check it out in the book: "Death Blow"
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on Thu 16th Jun, 2011 12:20 am PDT Horge said:
I think you could manage even budget-ier. Couchsurfin' and hitch-hikin' would considerably drop your costs. Though I hear it's kinda hard to hitch-hike to/from Crete...
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on Thu 07th Jul, 2011 10:38 am PDT ~~Generic Cialis~~Funny man said:
No way! Paris is to expensive for me! thanks for the advice!
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on Sat 07th Jan, 2012 03:07 am PST istanbul tours said:
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