On Monday, June 27th, we left Annecy to get to Basel for our last night in Europe. We drove in France, Switzerland and Germany that day.
Having rented the car in Stuttgart, we returned it in the little town of Lorrach, Germany, just over the border from Basel to save money on the rental. Even though there may be some taxi or public transportation costs, it is still cheaper to rent a car in town in Europe rather than at the airport (or often at a train station). And, it is dramatically cheaper to return it to the country of the original rental rather than in a different country -- even if it's not to the same town.
If you take a taxi, you may be lucky enough to get a driver who can speak English and is entertaining at the same time. For the ride from Lorrach, we got just such a man who had even done a big bus tour of the US. The ride was fun. I wonder if I should count that as ground transportation or entertainment?
He dropped us at the downtown train station. There we could catch a free bus for the EuroAirport. This airport is right where Switzerland, France and Germany come together. We stayed at Airport Hotel Basel. There was a bus stop right across the street from it and they had a free airport shuttle that we took the next morning. Within 1/2 mile or less, we were in France, where the airport is actually located.
It was a long trip home, as the documentation below shows. The worst part was getting back into the US at Philadelphia. There were tons of people arriving at the time we did and hardly any passport control people to check our passports coming in. No additional resources were brought in to help.
There were so many people that to TSA's credit, they did put on extra workers and opened extra workstations to handle the crowd. After we got through security, we literally had to run and were almost the last ones to get on our connecting flight to Phoenix. They held it a bit due to the crowds and to the large group of students who had been with us since Frankfurt, not all of which had yet made it through.
I think part of the reason for the crowds was that the weather was miserable and several flights were delayed due to the circling required to get through the storms.
If you click on the documents below, you will see that we flew this route: Basel --> Frankfurt --> Philadelphia --> Phoenix --> Tucson. Someday I hope to be able to do a non-stop somewhere, but living in Tucson, that's unlikely. At best we may be able to do a one stop, like Tucson --> Atlanta --> Madrid.
Just for fun, this is the view from our room in Basel.
We had pretty bad bar food when we arrived there, but the dinner was excellent. The next morning we just had the continental breakfast before heading for the airport.
As you all know, we made it home just fine. Now for the costs.
This time we also just about matched Rick Steves' suggested daily average without airfare per person for moderate European travel. It cost us $390 per day or $195 per person. The last time I read his numbers it was $185 per person, I think. I figure if we are close to $200 per person, we're doing good.
Here are the particulars:
Airfare -- $3450. That included both of us, Tucson to Lisbon, Lisbon to Florence, Florence to Stuttgart, Basel to Tucson. We did all the internal European flying via European low-cost airlines rather than booking typical American ones or their partners. We saved 1/2 the flying cost by doing that, ie. this airfare number would have been twice as much. It was a big chunk of the cost and was one we didn't have to pay last time.
Ground transportation -- $ 1130. This included taxis, rental car, parking, fuel, public transportation, etc. That was actually much cheaper than on our last trip. Of course, this trip was only 1 month instead of 2.
Lodging -- $3985. Even with the two, one-week apartment rentals, the average cost per day was $142. The closest thing to a Motel 6 in Europe is a hostel and my hostel days are long gone.
Food -- $3710. That included what we bought for our apartments, the meals we ate out and the cost of breakfast where we had to pay for it separately. That's an average of $133 per day.
Fun -- $925. This included all museum entrances, entertainment, etc. Many of the things we did for entertainment were also ground transportation, so we got by very cheaply on this at $33 per day average.
Miscellaneous -- $1090. This includes parking in Tucson, pet boarding, foreign transaction fees, laundry, tips, postcards, stamps, extra phone charges -- you get the picture. It can really add up if you're not careful. For this trip it was about $39 per day.
So the grand total with everything was $14,290. I had estimated a total cost of $13,555, so we went over the estimate by $735 or $26 per day. Almost all of that was for food.
What can I say? We like to eat and feel that the food is a major part of the trip. Okay, I'll admit it, in some places we are all about the food like our son-in-law, Jason, but we both came home weighing the same or less, so how can that be wrong?
I secretly hoped we would cut the cost of our first trip in half since this one was for 1/2 the time, but the airfare put us way over. Without the airfare, this trip would have been 44% of the cost of the 2009 one. With the airfare, it was 58%.
I hope the 2012 one will be even cheaper, but we are budgeting about $10,000 for it just in case. It still sounds like a lot of money, but if you take some time to research travel packages, you will find that the costs are very similar for much less time.
The other two possibilities I looked at for this year's trip was Scandinavia (16 days) and Greece (13 days). They both would have been packaged bus tours and we would likely have stayed over somewhere to make the whole trip about a month long.
The land only (no airfare) price for just the packaged Scandinavia itinerary at the time we would go was about $5600 per person (total $11,200 without airfare) and the Greece one at the time we would go was about $3000 per person (total $6000 without airfare). We might do one of these sometime. Actually I'm thinking Greece in the spring of 2013 for our 25th anniversary. It's never too early to plan and budget for these things.
Joan asked me how we saved money for these trips when we have no income. I reminded her that we do have income, we both get Social Security, Trout gets a pension and we both have IRAs we draw upon. But the answer is the same as for saving for anything, working or not, we physically, electronically and mentally set the money aside and don't spend it on other things or in other ways. So simple to say, much harder to do, but possible if you're really obsessed.
I hope you enjoyed seeing where we went and what we did. It was definitely a different trip from the 2009 one.
