I was thinking about taking a backpacking tour through some part of Europe; maybe France, maybe Italy. Anyone out there with experience in doing this? How much money should one have in reserve to make it through, say, two weeks? Any other advice?
There’s a good book from Rough Guide called “First Time Europe” that you should check out. It gives innumerable useful planning tips. You should be able to get it at most libraries – the advice doesn’t change much from year to year.
Just so you know, France and Italy aren’t cheap.
Let’s see…
Accommodation: about 10-15 euro a night for a hostel, maybe up to 50 euro a night for a double room in a cheap hotel.
Breakfast: maybe 2 euro for coffee and a pastry, cheap places often don’t include it in the price of your accommodation.
Lunch: about 4 euro for a drink and a sandwich
Dinner: anywhere between 5 euro and 25 euro, depending on whether you want cheap fast food or 3 courses and wine.
Sightseeing: it depends on location. The average entry fee in Venice is 10 euro, but it’s more like 2 or 3 euro in other places. Big attractions (the Vatican, the Eiffel tower, the Louvre) are going to be more expensive than small ones. Budget about 10 euro a day.
Transport: Are you entitled to a student or retired person discount? Are you planning to go by train or bus? Do you want to travel quickly or slowly? Overnight or not? Will you have a Eurail pass, or buy your tickets as and when you need them? How much you spend will depend on your answers to those questions. Budget about 10 euro a day, which should cover longish trips, or metro, taxis and buses around cities, but not travelling quickly, and not in first class.
Then you want to give yourself enough leeway if there’s an emergency, or you want a special treat (a night at the opera, a fancy meal, a night in a nice hotel, a shopping spree, a nightclub or concert etc).
In short, budget about 50-70 euro a day, it sounds a lot, but it’ll go very quickly.
These are just guidelines, based on my experiences and obviously if you sleep in a dorm bed, skip breakfast and lunch, walk everywhere and only go to exhibits with free entry, you’ll spend much less. But who wants to do that?
The most important piece of advice I can offer is to take a credit card. You don’t want to carry large amounts of cash on you, and if it does get stolen you can call and cancel it and have them wire you money so you’re not stuck. Travellers cheques are good, but fussy to cash if you need money in a small town, and you’ll get a pretty lousy exchange on them.
I lived in Italy the past couple of years and backpacked through most of Europe. You can do it pretty cheaply, here’s the jist of it.
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I notice your in Minnesota; you’re on your own for plane tickets there
Milan is typically the cheapest airport to fly into -
Don’t do that whole EurailPass gig. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a deal where you fork out something like 800 bucks and can ride any train anywhere in western europe. Except most of the good ones. It’s not worth it.
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Use RyanAir or EasyJet, and plan at least a month in advance. I kid you not, I flew from Milan to London for 15 bucks, and London to Dublin for 2.99, and Dublin to Paris for 1.99. The caveat being, they don’t fly into or out of main airports. Usually like an hour away, but they are decent about it and put you on a bus to downtown. It’s a good deal if money is the issue and not time. (bucks == euros: beware exchange rate)
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Food: this gets really expensive. I suggest you leave with the mindset that you are going to eat by packing your own lunches. Put aside a little dough for a special local meal now and then, but if you want to go cheaply plan on buying your own breadstuffs and making your food. Otherwise you will get sucked into the tourism vortex. It can be difficult to find a supermercato in italy (grocery store), so plan ahead.
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use the internett!! you’re off to a good start; everything you need to do can be accomplished via the Internet
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guide books. I have an entire book shelf full of guide books from around the world. there is only 1, i repeat 1, good guidebook: EyeWitness Travel Guides. they’ll run 20-30 bucks but they are worth it!
get one for each country you go to. -
where to stay? hostels.com is a good site — MAKE SURE they have laundry facilities. this allows you to pack lighter (i usually travel for two weeks out of a regular backpack)
i’d be happy to answer any other questions you have
Can you talk more about the rail system? Is there a good, inexpensive way, to get around Europe on rail? Personally, I’d much rather go by rail than aircraft, all things being equal. That’s coming from what is probably a slightly romantic view of rail transport (and a growing revulsion, not to mention maintainence concerns, for air travel) and may be as wet as a sea lion in a rainstorm.
Also, what do you do (vocation) that gives you time to backpack around?
Stranger
sure. i spent my last two years in the navy as a journalist stationed in naples, italy. i had plenty of free time (making up for my for my time spent before that in the boiling sand pit)
riding around europe on the train can sometimes be romantic, yes. it is also really expensive compared to the cheap flights they have there.
but if you are hooked, i’ve ridden up and down and around italy on train and also a bit around germany. i’ll just talk about italy since that’s what i know best. there are a few classes of train. the two you’ll likely bump into are InterCity, which is the worst and stops at every little village along the way, and the EuroStar which is usually point to point with stops in major cities. the EurailPass (sp) isn’t valid on the EuroStar train in Italy.
from rome to milan you are talking an eight hour train rode on the eurostar and a 10-12 hour train ride on the intercity. and you will be packed like a sardine on the latter. it’s not a romantic experience 
either that or it might be (eek!) rome to naples, < 2 hours eurostar < 3 hours intercity. price tags…let me see… i believe 15-20 euroes for that intercity train and 30-40 for the eurostar. prices are typically 50% that of amtrak. most of the ticket checkers on the the EuroStar speak english so that’s a bonus…throwing yourself on the intercity for 12 hours is a sure way to literally be immersed and lost in the culture
i made extensive use of http://www.trainitalia.it … beware italians are not on time and neither are their trains.
Trains in Germany and Britain can be very expensive, but also can be good value if you book ahead. Definitely follow alterego’s advice - there’s a full list of cheap airlines [urk=http://www.whichbudget.com/]here. Italian trains are much cheaper - as AFAIK are the Spanish and Swiss, and all other things being equal, train travel is often far more enjoyable. If you head into central and eastern Europe (which is highly recommended), everything gets much cheaper. There’s a Europe-wide train timetable here, which (I think) also gives you prices for German services.
Surely that’s London to Milan?!
So much for the Fascists.
Thanks for the response. You’ve just increased my knowledge of Europeans trains by about 1000%.
Stranger
hehehe. well, that would be even longer, but i probably meant naples to venice =) i’ve gone on some crazy journies on those intercity trains that i’d sooner forget than remember
*journey’s
ps if my length of trip times seem a couple hours lengthy (albeit me messing up the start and end points) they aren’t. a “six hour” train ride is in all reality an 8-10 hour voyage
I did the Inter-rail (Eurail is for non EU citizens and is more expensive) for a month through eastern Europe, Greece and Italy in 2001, and for a month through Morocco, Spain, France and the Netherlands in 2003.
For me, the £200 (300 euro) we paid each time was more than worth it, especially the first trip as we were able to travel overnight and save on accommodation. You pay a supplement of maybe 5 or 10 euro for the fastest trains, or if you want a berth overnight (mostly we slept in our seats) but not for majority of them. You see a lot of the countryside and it’s quite a nice way to travel. Flying is great to get from A to B, but trains let you see more of the country. Also, if you miss one, you can get the next one. Ryanair flights have to be booked in advance, and you lose your money if you miss the flight…not great if you want to change your plans at the last minute, or you oversleep and miss the bus to the airport! If you want to do 6 countries in 14 days or something then definitely fly, if you want to see 1 country then trains would probably be a better option. But again YMMV.
You can buy a big Thomas Cook European Train timetable, and plan your journeys around suitable trains before you even set foot in Europe.
www.trenitalia.com is the Italian train website, you can check out their prices and timetables to see if it would suit you. You can also buy some tickets online, if you register (it’s free and they don’t send you junk).
Personally, I like lonely Planet guides, they have one called “Europe on a Shoestring” which might suit you, or you can get individual ones for each country.
In a 2 week trip I wouldn’t advise more than one country, personally. Heck, you could spend 2 weeks just in Florence and barely skim the surface. IMHO, more than 2 (maybe 3) major cities in 2 weeks is going to feel pretty rushed.
Moved to IMHO.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
Just to clear up some confusion about the name* Eurostar*. As well as being the name of the trains that run through the Channel Tunnel between London and mainland Europe it is also the name of a train service in Italy . To quote a web-site
" Eurostar is the new system of high quality trains operating in Italy on the routes connecting the main Italian cities and towns. That means new technologies, comfort and speed for the traveller. With a variety of city combinations covering Italy, you can chart your route easily with Eurostar. Major cities on this route include Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Bologna, and Naples. "
Re Eurail passes: They can be good value if you’re doing the five-countries-in-two-weeks tour, but if you’re sticking to a relatively small geographic area (which is much less stressful and more fun), you’ll probably be much better off just buying tickets as you go. This is especially true if you go to Italy, where the trains are dead cheap.
I’m with Hello Again about sticking to one country for a trip of this length. There’s a heck of a lot more than two weeks’ worth of stuff to see in Italy, and I’m sure the same is true of France. I’d also recommend getting off the beaten path and going to some smaller towns; big cities are expensive and can be exhausting if you go nowhere else for two weeks.
I’ve been flipping through my travel journals from last year, and it looks like my spending averaged out to about 50 to 55 Euros a day in Italy. That means staying in hostels, walking a lot, and doing mostly stuff that was cheap or free, but with a few splurges on museum fees and decent restaurants. (You could probably get by on less money if you don’t mind living on sandwiches and water, but it’s Italy, and I think eating well is an obligation :)) Venice was definitely a money pit (but gorgeous); Rome and Verona were a bit cheaper. I’ll let someone who has been there more recently give you some figures for France.
Thanks for the replies so far; I’ll definitely look into the guide books, that was part of the plan from the beginning, but I was looking to the Dopers for some firsthand experience, and of course you’re coming through for me again.
I was leaning towards just staying in one country this time around; probably France, since I really, really want to see the Chateau of Versailles.
Versailles is fab ( I’ve been twice). It’s connected by train to Paris and most of the smaller towns in the vicinity. Try and go on a nice day so you can make the most of the gardens…bring your own food and drink, it’s incredibly overpriced once you get there.
All the different regions of France are so different, you’ll never get bored. Paris is, of course, a must. The Eiffel tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, La Sainte Chapelle, all the museums and galleries…just generally wandering around, it’s fantastic.
Last time I was in France we were in Avignon and Normandy. If you like History, you have the D-day beaches and tapestry in Bayeaux (stay at the slightly bonkers Family Home Hostel if you want to meet other travellers and have fun). Avignon is a beautiful Provençal city, with lots of culture and a great atmosphere.
Other places I really enjoyed on previous trips were Saint Malo in Brittany and Bayonne in the Pays Basque. Marseilles is great, but I’ve heard bad stories from people who travelled there solo.
There is another option you might consider if you were staying in one country during the summer is a tent and a bicycle (you can take the bike on most long-distance trains). It’s the way most German, Danish and Dutch backpackers get about. You’d save money on your accommodation (you can pick up a cheap 2 man tent for 40 euro, a pitch would be about 3euro a night) and buy a 2nd hand bicyle cheaply) and transport, without limiting your options. It’s probably something more suitable for a couple or group, but I’m throwing it out there as an idea.