Travel Budget: Greece
I tend to think that a lot of budget travelers actually make terrible estimates of how much travel to any given area of the world will cost. Greece, for example, is clearly ‘Europe’ yet the costs here are substantially lower than (for example) Vienna and Amsterdam.
I passed 46 days in Greece in 2013, spending €1,555 total. This excludes my flight from Athens to Chania, which was included in the tickets I booked in and out of the country from nearby Istanbul.
One thing that jumps out at me immediately is that if I had skipped going out to bars a couple of times I would have spent around 350 Euro less. I also spent quite a bit of time camping and staying with a friend in Crete, so my accommodation costs were awesomely low. Even in Athens, though, I was only spending 12 Euro per night for a bed in a pretty nice dorm room not far from the Acropolis.
Food in Athens can be a poor value right near the Acropolis, but wander away a little bit and you’ll find cheaper (if not always higher quality options). To be honest, though, I was spending a lot of time working and wanted down time in the evenings so I ended up picking up simple groceries much of the time and cooking them in the kitchen in my hostel dorm.
Very informative post! This is slightly off topic but how do prices compare to Italy? I’m planning to spend a few weeks travelling through the main cities and am not really sure how much I’ll need.
Thanks!
Hey Owen, it honestly has been nearly ten years since I was in Italy so it would be hard to say for sure. At a guess, though, I’d bet big cities would be more expensive than Athens but the rural areas would be about the same as Crete.