After Japan we jumped over to Europe–Serbia, to be exact. Jeff had met and befriended a woman from Belgrade when he studied abroad in Japan several years ago, so that sparked our interest in “living” in Belgrade for a few months over the summer. Once we started looking into it further, it seemed like it would be a good central location to use as a temporary headquarters so we could bounce around that area of Europe for short jaunts. We had planned to do a lot of mini-trips from Belgrade, but because of work and health issues (Jeff and I both got sick), not to mention poor timing, we ended up just doing trips to Croatia and Greece. Not that we’re complaining, because we had an awesome time!
But how much did this summer fling cost us?
Note: Most of our purchases were on the credit card, but some were made in cash. To get an accurate approximation of how much in USD we spent, I used the exchange rate that our cards gave us on the day on or nearest to the date that our cash purchase was made.
Zdravo, Srbija!
TOTAL: US$2996.74
Transportation: US$1081.80
Accommodation: US$1145
Food: US$590.56
Adventure/sightseeing: US$26.43
Miscellaneous: US$152.95
Belgrade is cheap as, which we knew going in, but still surprised us when we arrived. (US$0.90 for a bottle of cider!? Hell to the yeah.) Our apartment was less than US$20 per night (and that’s not per person, that’s total); food was cheap (think about US$5 per meal total, US$10 if we really wanted to splurge–and this was for delivery through the awesome Donesi app!); and we didn’t really do a lot of moving around or sightseeing because we were working on translation projects. Once we took the bus up north to hang with Jeff’s friend and her partner and his family at the river, but even that hardly cost us much more than the price of the bus tickets.
Dobar Dan, Hrvatska!
TOTAL: US$1742.10
Transportation: US$453.59
Accommodation: US$617
Food: US$430.03
Adventure/sightseeing: US$177.14
Miscellaneous: US$64.34
You should know that Jeff and I are nerds by now, and therefore not above traveling somewhere because it was a filming location for a show or movie we enjoy. Westeros Croatia was gorgeous, but a little pricey because we stayed in AirBnBs the entire time instead of Couchsurfing like we had originally planned to do for our mini-trips out of Belgrade. Food was also more expensive, and we couldn’t cook so we had to eat out. We also splurged on some sightseeing and touristy stuff, like a boat ride out to Kornati National Park from Zadar.
Yassoo, Elláda!
TOTAL: US$1219.95
Transportation: US$399.82
Accommodation: US$379
Food: US$224.71
Adventure/sightseeing: US$207.06
Miscellaneous: US$9.36
I’ve wanted to visit Greece since I was little. I’ve always been fascinated by their ancient culture, not to mention a huge fan of Greek cuisine. Our splurge here was our day trip to the Temple of Apollo and Delphi, and it was absolutely amazing. We opted to stay in an AirBnB in Athens again instead of trying to find Couchsurfing hosts because we were there for so long (6 nights), and it was totally worth it because we got an entire gorgeous apartment to ourselves, with a fully-equipped kitchen, which meant we got to cook (a bit).
Grand Total for SERBIA, CROATIA, and GREECE: US$3261.79 / 61 days ≈ US$53.47/day
Not bad–in fact, pretty damn amazing–considering how much we spent in Croatia and Greece. Since we spent next to nothing in Serbia, it really helped balance it out.
Grand Total So far: US$7,820.69 (New Zealand) + US$3,547.80 (Australia) + US$6,153.16 (Japan) + US$3261.79 (SERBIA, CROATIA, and GREECE)= US$20,783.44
Divide that by 266 days of travel and that leaves us with an average of just over US$78.13 for both of us, or about US$39.07 per person per day. We’re doing great keeping to our budget of US$50 per person per day, but we’re picking up the pace and visiting more and more expensive European destinations, so I have a feeling our average is gonna jump up pretty quick when I get around to crunching the numbers.
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