The Tally

Occasionally someone will ask, “How much is a trip to Germany?” Like any other question, first of all figure out who you’re talking to, and what are their priorities. How do they want to travel? Where do they want to stay? Then use the patented, “I don’t know?” That’s the safest answer, because everyone’s travel plans are different. Some people’s idea of ‘camping’ may be a 4-star hotel instead of their normal 5-star.

I do have some idea what Anne and I just spent for our 3 week stay in Holland, Belgium, and Germany, plus her extra 2 week family extension. We tried to keep every receipt and tab that we could. Basically it breaks down like this -

Transportation 44%
Hotel 30%
Food 21%
Tourism 4%
Fees 1%

• Transportation includes airfare, rental car, fuel, and parking. We flew US Airways, rented an Audi A3 from Thrifty, bought benzign whenever we needed it, and paid to park everywhere. We drove a total of 2000 miles, although it didn’t seem like that much at the time.
• Hotels were mostly 2-3 stars, with a few exceptions. We reserved the majority of our rooms ahead of time instead of finding the less expensive ‘zimmer frei’ rooms available throughout Europe. I didn’t want to spend time finding rooms when we arrived in a city, I just wanted to check in! Most of the rooms included breakfast, or at least it was available, so that would be included in the next category …
• Food includes meals and occasional refreshments. As enticing as they may be, we did not eat at any of the well known fast food restaurants. I highly recommend them if you are in search of clean restroom, and some do sell bier. Our closest adventure to fast food was a döner kebab on Rügen .
• Tourism was tours, toilets (don’t plan on peeing for free), souveniors and other stuff. This was a low priority for me, but Anne did a nice job of bring back gifts for family and friends.
• Fees is a very small category, but I included it just so you wouldn’t be shocked. Some were ATM fees when we withdrew cash, and some were charges from the credit card companies.

The main thing to remember is no matter how much it cost, the memories are priceless. I’ve uploaded photos of our drive from Brussels to the Mosel, and getting settled into the hotel in Alf -

Brussels to Alf

This entry was posted on 8. August 2008 at 21:02 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.