This cost breakdown of my Spring break trip was inspired by The Luxe Strategist. She is one of my favorite bloggers and my favorite financial blogger. If you haven’t already started following her, I highly recommend you do!
To me it meant a lot to travel to Europe. My entire life I had flown back and forth to India almost every year from the time I was eighteen years old to twenty-two. Despite all the stamps on my passport, I had never visited Europe and really wanted to experience what that was like. This past July I went to England for the first time and this past week, I visited France.
I traveled to Paris, France with two co-workers and we all had distinctively different styles which I believed added a lot to each of our experiences.
I decided not to include any pre-trip expenses as well as shopping while there. I did shop a lot and will be sharing a diary of that at the end of the month.
Cost Breakdown
I spent $1,651.46 for my time in Paris. We had stayed there for 4 full days and two half days.
You can also get an idea of how much everything cost day by day. I decided to divide this by 5 because with the half days, we really had 5 full days in Paris. I actually only had four because I got so sick one day and couldn’t do anything. However, that doesn’t influence any of the categories except for food/transport.
Flight= $745.35
We payed a pretty penny for our flight, it was $745.35. I think if I were to visit Paris again, I would go during February and go through London first. Though I will admit that it much easier to get through the airport in Paris than it was in London. A friend messaged me that he was planning to do that with his wife and got tickets for under $400, but at an off peak time.
Our airline was pretty much the international flight equivalent of Spirit airways. It was super barebones. But it did provide an in flight meal as well as a free checked bag. Those were two things I tried to not compromise on when booking my flight.
Housing=$296.52
I need to offer a huge thank you to everyone who recommended the neighborhood of Le Marais. Many people confirmed that this was a great neighborhood to stay in. Several years earlier my financial counselor had visited Paris and stayed in this very neighborhood and was kind enough to even share walking tours of different neighborhoods with me. It was much cheaper than other neighborhoods and was pretty close to almost everything we wanted to do. We could walk, take the metro or split an uber to everywhere we wanted for a super small cost.
I adored my airbnb. It was pretty small for three people but beautifully decorated and a good compromise because I didn’t want to spend anymore on housing costs.
If you’re interested in trying Airbnb, use this link for $40 in travel credit. After your first trip I get $20 in travel credit.
Food- $225.63
The meals in Paris were not cheap but everyday we unintentionally skipped at least breakfast or lunch. We ate lots of pastries and croissants to compensate for this. I thoroughly enjoyed our food as well as the delicious desserts.
I should have guessed it, but I didn’t realize how important potatoes were to French cuisine. It did feel super heavy to eat though!
There’s a huge coffee culture in France that I really enjoyed. People also drink orange juice with a lot of their meals. It’s also almost always cheaper to get the combo meals that you can then spilt with others.
Local Transportation= $84.96
This number includes the cost of an uber to and from the airpot. Super cheap, right? In most instances, ubers were a great option because we could spilt the cost 3 ways. Most rides ranged form costing between $2.50-$5. At times I opted for the metro which is around $2 or we would just walk because so many things were within a 20 minute walk from us.
Activities=$299.00
I’m so happy we didn’t get the Paris pass. But we still overspent on activities. We didn’t realize how tired we would be once we reached Paris and didn’t even do everything that we had payed in advance for.
It was really helpful to pay in advance for museums though and buying a “skip the line” ticket for the Palace of Versailles was one of my favorite experiences from the entire trip. The tour guide was funny and we literally saw ourselves skip a huge line of people.
Overall, it was a great trip! My inner frugal person knows I could do it again just a bit cheaper and one day I intend to do that. I think it’ll be a few years until I visit Europe again (or at least, European cities).
Have you been to Paris? What was your experience like?