Violet Sky

This European summer vacation ended up being about $4,000 less than our prior year’s European summer vacation, in large part due to using miles/points to buy our plane tickets. This was partially offset by some unnecessary extra spending (including $200 thrown away on a non-refundable hotel when we switched our departure from Milan to Naples), but it’s still nice seeing this kind of trip come in under $10,000.

Lodging

Merchant	Expense	Category
Hotel Bonsoir Madame	$537.79	Lodging
Airbnb – Milan	$549.72	Lodging
Airbnb – Bologna	$630.22	Lodging
Hotel Astoria	$242.08	Lodging
Airbnb – Torino	$349.67	Lodging
Hyatt Centric Milano	$203.37	Lodging
Palazzo Caracciolo Naples	$169.76	Lodging
Hotel Bonsoir Madam	$39.77	City tax
Hotel Astoria	$49.24	City tax and incidentals
Total	$2,771.62

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a recovering Airbnb user. Since this trip was again just myself and my husband, I started off searching most cities for hotels, then switched to Airbnbs if the prices seemed particularly high. For Genoa, this was really interesting – I started looking at hotels, and found them too expensive for what we got, so then I switched to Airbnbs and found them even more expensive than hotels, while not having that many more amenities.

Our favorite hotel of the trip was easily Hotel Bonsoir Madame in Paris, in no small part thanks to the upgrade we got. It was also in a great location and had all the critical amenities we needed, so while I wouldn’t book the other hotels again, I would definitely book Hotel Bonsoir Madame again.

Last thought on this section – when we switched our flight to leave out of Naples, we had to eat the $203.37 for the Hyatt Centric Milano as it was a non-refundable reservation. You win some, you lose some.

Food

Category	Expense
Alcohol	$139.35
Coffee	$40.19
Groceries	$703.12
Minimart	$164.64
Restaurant	$1,496.32
Total	$2,543.62

It’s a common theme in our budget and our vacations that we spend a lot on food, and this trip was no different. We did buy groceries in every single city, as we prefer to eat breakfast before we start out on our tourist activities, but of course, the bulk of our spending was at restaurant. Considering how much great food we ate this trip, it feels like money well spent. We also had the freshest chicken McNuggets of our entire lives at the McDonalds in Genoa, so even some of our cheaper restaurant spending turned out well.

Transportation

Category	Expense
Airfare	$1,663.86
Funicular	$115.86
Public Transportation	$118.74
Train	$881.33
Scooter	$24.56
Total	$2,804.35

I don’t participate on r/awardtravel on Reddit, but one sentiment I see expressed there again and again is “Why would anyone use British Airways award flights when they charge so much in fuel surcharges to go through LHR.” And that’s fair, because their fuel surcharges are egregious. However, in comparison with last year, where we spent over $4000 on two premium economy full price tickets on British Airways (because our options for flights to Europe out of PDX are quite limited, especially if we don’t want a layover in Iceland), paying less than $1700 for two premium economy tickets seems like a great deal. Our flight costs were reduced quite a bit when we cancelled our British Airways flight out of Milan, as they thankfully have a policy to refund all fuel surcharges as well as the $99 per person to choose our seats.

We also spent a lot more than I expected on trains, but man, I love train travel, no regrets there. I may never get to Sardinia because everything I’ve read says that you need a car to get around the island, and I love not driving in Italy.

Entertainment

Category	Expense
Tourism (museums, tours, art)	$194.79

There was surprisingly little that fell into this category this year and I have little to say about it – the Catacombs, the Lavazza museum, the Diabolik art museum exhibit were all worth the money and didn’t cost much to begin with.

Miscellaneous

Category	Expense
Fees	$6.57
Shopping	$821.88
Withdrawal	$288.79
Total	$1,117.24

One of our traditions when we travel is to bring back some local currency to our youngest child, who has always had an interest in money and thinks the different kinds of money we come back with are interesting. So $25 of the withdrawal there was us withdrawing CHF$20 to bring back. The rest? I’m going to be honest, I probably should have started working on this blog entry sooner, because I really have no idea what else we withdrew the money for. I see that we withdrew €80 in Torino and €100 in Bologna, and I do remember having cash left over in Napoli, which we spent on used comic books … but I don’t remember how else we spent the cash that we presumably withdrew for more specific reasons. Or maybe we withdrew it to have it and it flowed out of our hands in smaller increments. Or maybe my husband will read this and remember and remind me! Who knows how everything happened with the cash – this is why I don’t usually carry or use cash, clearly.

Looking at the shopping, it was a mix of books, souvenirs, and then a lot of nickel and diming ourselves at various minimarts and shops. Since we switched to Schwab’s checking for international trips, which reimburses us for foreign ATM fees, we pay only minimal fees – the $6.57 here was from the time I forgot my Schwab debit card back at the hotel and had instead brought my regular credit union debit card.

Totals

Category	Expense
Lodging	$2,771.62
Food	$2,543.62
Transportation	$2,804.35
Entertainment	$194.79
Miscellaneous	$1,117.24
Total	$9,431.62

And that’s the grand total! It’s easy to lose track of the total cost of things, especially when you book your flights and hotels/Airbnbs early – we booked a bunch of our lodging quite early to meet a spending promo on each of our Alaska airlines credit cards. Seeing this all added up, I don’t really have any complaints about any of it, and in fact will be using this as a baseline when estimating costs for our trip to France next year.