Paris and Amsterdam

MissD93

We're flying out to Paris on February 14th and flying back from Amsterdam on the 21st. We're doing four nights in Paris and three in Amsterdam. I was hoping the wonderful people of boards would be able to give me an idea of a budget or if anyone has any suggestions it'd be much appreciated. It's a trip I booked for my boyfriends birthday so I've flights, hotels, my car parking space in Dublin airport and a transfer from the airport in Paris to the hotel done , I also have the effilel tour paid for and the hotel includes breakfast for four mornings. I was hoping around 800 would be enough for the rest of the trip between the two of us but now I'm unsure, does anyone know what I should be budgeting for meals, activities and miscellaneous 😊😊thank you

littlevillage

Your question is a "how long is a piece of string" question because when travelling in a European capital you can spend virtually any amount of money or you can spend very little. Depends what you plan on doing? If you plan on living like a Euro-railer student .. eating spam from a can and playing cards in the hostel every night ... (and crying for the rest of the time!!!) you can probably live for less than €10 a day. If you want to see the sites and eat and drink in restaurants & bars etc. then that costs. But if you are a normal person you will spend according to the budget you have available to you.

When I go abroad I still bring cash but also have the security of a fully empty credit card too (ie. not maxxed out), you really don't want to get into a situation abroad where you run out of money.

If you are not in a position to bring an empty credit card as back-up ... then bring about twice the money you reckon you'll need.

The best advice I ever read about travelling was.... "bring half the clothes you think you'll need and twice the money" Bon voyage !!

spurious

Go even a couple of streets from the main tourist attractions and restaurant prices drop considerably.

Ponster

When I'm on a budget and the hotel provides breakfast I tend not to have a sit-down lunch and instead just grab something while out walking.
Lets say £5pp for lunch (sandwich and water) and £25pp for an evening meal + wine. That's £240 a day for the first 4 days.
When there is no breakfast included I do with a cup of tea/coffee until lunch and have a larger sit-down lunch. So the final 3 days would be approx. £75 a day.

So £465 on food leaves 350 or so for other stuff for the 7 days. That's probably do-able but I'd suggest knowing in advance what it is that you're planning on actually doing each day. Have a list of the places you want to visit, work out what is costs to visit and work out your daily budget. If you've not been to either city before though let me tell you that it's very, very easy to not actually spend much on seeing the sights but you will spend a lot of time walking around from place to place (I'd suggest metro in Paris but buses can be a lot more fun IMHO). Treat both places as cities that you'll come back to again in the future and try not to cram everything into the one visit

When I travel to a new city I usually do a fair bit of planning and work out what sites we'd like to see and then find good value places to eat in the locality and have them saved in a custom Google Maps. You can download the map in advance so that you don't need data to use it. So when we walk out of that museum at 3pm and we're starving we don't head into the first place we see but instead check the phone for the places that we've previously tagged.

Tenzor07

€800 should be plenty, as long as you're clever about where you dine.

For example the tasting menu at the Jules Verne in the tower is around €200.

I paid around €14 for two coffees close to the tower also.

So do your research, avoid all the tourist traps..