Quote:
Originally Posted by offhegoes03
yeah, that's not bad at all! I think I spent like $1900 outside of my plane ticket/rail pass for 4 weeks, but you definitely did wayyy better. Do you drink? If so, did you go out and drink much?
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Well, here's the deal. I met this girl at Coachella here in the states in April. She knew I was going to dublin and she was from Dublin so I think we talked for about 10 minutes the entire weekend in California. She asked what I wanted to see and I said castles and pubs. I was stoned, we didn't say much else. After the fest we e-mailed a bit and communicated through the coachella message board, she started offering to pick me and my roommate up from the airport. She had said this once prior to the fest but I wasn't gonna hold her to it. Well, she ends up taking off work for our entire trip. This is a girl I talked to once for 10 minutes in person. So she picks us up and we had a personal local tour guide for the entire Dublin leg of the trip. My roommate ends up hooking up with the girl later in the trip by the way but long story short, her brother took us out drinking to pub after pub drinking pint after pint of Guiness all night long in Dublin absolutely refusing to let us buy a round. He must have spent a pretty penny because I figure it was at least 3.5-4 euro a pint and we easily had 8 pints each. I remember having a couple beers in London. We were only there for a night though. I don't think I drank at all in amsterdam, just got stoned for four days. In Prague we drank a couple of the nights, maybe 2 out of 5 nights. In Rome I got drunk every single night on the spanish steps just buying beer from italian kids who ran up and down the steps selling it. It was cheap too, one euro per pint sized can. So, I drank a bit mostly beer, no hard alchol and I certainly didn't get drunk every single night.
Lets see what other details I can share about the budget. We booked almost all of our hostel stays in advance. Mostly used hostel world. Always chose the cheapest room with the most beds, for instance my very last night in dublin it was only 9 euros. Mind you it was also the worst night of sleep as well. Read read read as many reviews as you can keeping your own comfort levels in mind when it comes to booking hostels.
Food, we ate a lot of fast food because it was cheap. In Ireland we stayed at Isaacs hostel and they had a full kitchen so we actually grocery shopped there. Buying foods at markets is a very good way to save money of course and we pretty much kept to one nice meal in each country, sometimes two but never more. We had an awesome dinner at a small bistro near the spanish steps that was supprisingly reasonable in price in Rome. For two people, we got an anti pasta appetizer, a plate of pasta each, a drink and my roommate had 2-3 glasses of wine. Total cost was less than 40Euro.
Again though, lots of McDonalds and buying chips and bread and cheese and snacks from stores. The budget was helped big time in Ireland. My last night was my birthday and I didn't pay for my dinner. One day we went on a picket and Rainie (roommates girlfriend) packed up a full lunch with loads of snacks.
As far as transportation goes again, we were hooked up in Ireland though to get from the airport to downtown, the public bus is like 1 euro from the airport to downtown, there are shuttles that most tourists head to that charge like 12 euro I think. Always go for buses and trams when available. In London we took the stansted express from the airport to the hostel, it was pricey as was the tube from london to that other airport I forget the name of. In Prague we bit the bullet and paid a car service to take us form the airport to the hostel, we paid like 30 euro. We found a shuttle at a hotel that was only 3-4 euro for the ride back though. We walked all of prague the entire stay. We never did anything but walk in prague and it was awesome and beautiful. In Amsterdam we used the tram and many people don't pay on these trams but it's really cheap if you do pay. The tram takes you from central station to wherever you stay. You need to take a metra from the airport to the tram station. It's all fairly easy and inexpensive. We used a car service in rome to pick us up and bring us to our hostel. That one was insane, we paid like 42 Euro each so it was like an 85 Euro trip. My roommate left Rome early to meet back up with his new irish lady. I found a 12 Euro shuttle to the airport from Termini station to the airport that was the cheapest way to go and I got lucky finding it.
Any other questions?
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