Give Me Back My Five Bucks

We  headed to Portugal to meet up with two of Nic’s University friends from Quebec for a few days (they now live in Sweden), and it was a lot of fun! So far, all of our travel has been just the two of us. Being with other people meant being a lot more flexible in terms of how (and where) we spent our money. $537.16 seems like a lot of money to me, but it works out to $134.29 per day. Which isn’t bad. Cost Accommodation (4 nights): $0 – HostelBookers.com sponsorship Transportation: $261.67 (€198.76) Food: $114.60 (€87.05) City Transit: $74.90 (€56.95) Entertainment: … Continue reading →

After a couple of weeks of gorgeous weather in Germany, it just *had* to be cold, rainy, and a little bit snowy during our trip to Vienna. :) Even thought the weather wasn’t on our side, we had a really good time. I’d love to go back again one day, if only to eat more chocolate torte. While I felt like two days was enough to see Geneva, it wasn’t enough time to see all of Vienna. Cost Accommodation (2 nights): $0 – HostelBookers.com sponsorship Transportation: $176.12 (€133,50) Food: $45.73 (€34,50) City Transit: $7.59 (€5,70) Entertainment: $49.29 (€37) Miscellaneous: $8.26 (€6,20) TOTAL: $276.99 Entertainment There … Continue reading →

Before I decided to quit my job and move to Europe, I had three rules that I knew I was going to follow: I will not incur any debt because of this trip. I will not take any money from my Emergency Fund (unless it’s an actual emergency). I will not sacrifice my savings goals. And while I know that living in Europe for 7 months is going to be (and has been so far) an amazing experience, I’m surprised at how many comments and e-mails I’ve gotten from people (and even friends in real life) who have suggested I … Continue reading →

Before we planned our trip to Geneva, we knew it was going to be an expensive trip. But we didn’t realize just how expensive it was until we got there! I’m amazed we were able to get away with spending so little, in such an pricey city. Cost Accommodation (3 nights): $137.43 - AirBnB Transportation: $83.76 Food: $123.48 City Transit: $7.60 Entertainment: $70.35 Miscellaneous: $4.58 TOTAL: $427.20 Entertainment In the city of Geneva, everything we did was free. We walked around a lot, relaxed along the river, and checked out all the tourist hot spots. The main reason we went on … Continue reading →

This month we had two trips planned – Geneva and Vienna. Vienna was easy to plan. We were able to secure a hostel sponsor almost immediately, and a roundtrip train ticket is going to cost about €98 each ($128). However, when we started planning for Geneva, we realized it was going to be a lot more expensive than we expected. Not only was I unable to secure a hostel sponsor for our trip (all hostels were booked solid months in advance because of the 2012 Motor Show – which is the reason why we’re headed there too), but the cheapest train ticket we … Continue reading →