How much to budget for Italy trip?

[trigal]

DH and I are going to Italy with my entire family at Christmas/New Years for two weeks.  As a gift, my parents are paying for our airfare and accommodations, but we will be paying for everything else (tours, food, in-country transportation, etc.).  How much would you recommend we budget for the trip?

[Deleted]

A few questions - what cities are you visiting? How are you traveling between cities? Have you picked out any guided tours or do you mostly explore on your own? Are you staying in hotels where breakfast is included? What types of restaurants do you normally eat at (cafes, sandwich shop, nice restaurant)?

We've been to Milan, Lake Como, and Venice. We do a lot of walking around on our own, so I factor in 50/day for museum passes, entrance fees, etc. We almost exclusively stay at places with breakfast, and generally do a quick on-the-go lunch, and then splurge for dinner with wine, dessert, etc. For this I might do about 150/day. For us, these are very high estimates and we very often come in under, which is all the better. I usually itemize specific transportation costs (and sometimes buy the tickets in advance) because that really depends on how much intra-country travel you're doing and the mode of transportation.

[Susie]

We went for 12 days, two years ago this October. I want to say we spent in the $7k ballpark, but that included flights.  I can't remember; the flights might have been $2k or so?  They were pretty reasonable in the grand scheme of things.

How much you spend will depend a lot on what cities you spend your time in. Venice was the most expensive city we visited, then Rome, then Florence. Siena and Corniglia (in Cinque Terre) were far less expensive, in terms of accommodations, dining, etc. We took trains between all the cities; they were not a particularly big part of the trip budget. You could easily spend a lot more than we did. We aimed for accommodations that were clean, safe, and near-ish what we wanted to see - not necessarily luxurious. We splurged a little more on food, and of course museums, etc.

[anna7602]

Ditto on it depending on the city. I spent a lot more on food in Venice than in Naples, for example. I found train travel in Italy to be pretty affordable, but everything else adds up. That said, I think if your airfare and accommodations are taken care of, you can probably set yourself a budget and stick to it on a daily basis more easily than you could somewhere in Northern Europe.

[trigal]

We will be in Rome for a week, then taking the train to Sorrento the following week. We are staying in an apartment in both places, so a variety of meal types with no more than one big meal each day. I'm not sure about the tours yet.

[Deleted]

I would definitely include the 3-day Roma Pass as part of your budget. That covered a lot of our admissions.

You may want to consider whether you want a Vatican tour. If so, find one you like and include it in the budget (we took one through Context Tours if you're looking for recommendations).

With a week in Rome, I'd also plan on taking at least one side trip. We were in Rome for 3.5 days but spent a day in Orvieto and felt it was well worth it. It doesn't take *that* long to see the highlights of Rome.

I'd also plan a trip to Pompeii from either Sorrento or Rome.

Once you have an itinerary in place, you'll have more of an idea of how much everything will cost. It is hard to come up with numbers without knowing how fancy the restaurants you're going to go to are, whether you'll spend a lot of time laying on the beach in Sorrento (which tends to be cheaper than sightseeing), etc.

[neonpink]

I stayed in an apartment in Rome for 10 days last November. It saved a lot of money for us since we went to the market for groceries and drinks. It made breakfast really lovely.
There is a ton to do in Rome. Lots of neighborhoods to explore. H and I rented a Vespa for a few days it was around 300-400 euros. It really made our trip. We took it to Ostia Antica and just had great fun on it.

The Roma pass can save you on the Metro as well as admissions to museums. The Vatican Necropolis Tour was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Like the poster V said if you figure out the basics of what you want to do/see you can create a budget.

I think we spent 50 euros some days and 150 others dining out and buying things. Some days we dined out at restaurants but honestly my favorite places were some of the carry out sandwich places that sold sandwiches were 3 euros. I wish I had one now. They were so fresh and good.