A few weeks ago, I (and 3 of my friends) got back from the trip of a lifetime in Europe! We spent 1 day in Paris, 3 days in Greece and 3 days in Rome. It was absolutely incredible and I loved every minute we were there. What was even better was I knew I wasn't breaking the bank while there! Including flights, I spent just under $1200 on our ENTIRE trip. In researching online, I found that a trip like ours would cost upwards of $4000! Let me show you how I spent only $1200 for 7 full days in Europe and how you can save on your next overseas trip!


Flights:
We first flew from Washington, DC (Dulles) to Paris (with a stopover in Rekjevik), then Paris to Athens, Athens to Rome, Rome to Paris and finally Paris back to DC.

I found our roundtrip flights to Paris using Scott's Cheap Flights. If you don't know what Scott's Cheap Flights is, basically, it's an email you can subscribe to and Scott/Scott's team will send out emails when an airline has made a mistake on an airfare. These prices only last for a short period (anywhere from 24 hours to a few days) but there is usually a wide range of dates you can choose from. We saved HUNDREDS of dollars using SCF! Highly recommend! Note: he only sends out international trips (and some Hawaii and Alaska).

He has a free email and also a premium email ($49/year). I used the free one to get our flights but just recently upgraded to the premium one because it's SO worth it.

Scott had sent out a major airfare mistake deal for a round trip ticket from Washington, DC to Paris for $333 on IcelandAir. Then we booked our flights within Europe using Google Flights. Our flight from Paris to Athens on Aegean Air was $102. Our flight from Athens to Rome on Ryanair was $27. And our flight from Rome to Paris on Alitalia was about $67.

We also only each packed a backpack for the entire trip (to see what I packed, click here!) so we weren't paying extra for checked bags or anything!

Flights TOTAL: $529



Accommodations:
My mom was nice enough to let us use her hotel points to get a hotel for one night in Paris so that was free for us.

Since there were 4 of us, we found it cheapest to stay in Airbnbs and split the cost. If there were fewer of us, it probably would've been cheaper for us to stay in hostels. We stayed in the more basic and cheaper Airbnbs to save money but it was really perfect because it was all we needed! Since we each only packed a backpack for the entire trip so we tried to find Airbnbs with washers/dryers.

This was the Airbnb we stayed at in Athens ($46/night including fees).
This was the Airbnb we stayed at in Rome ($56/night including fees).

Also, we had super early flights from Athens to Rome and Rome to Paris so we decided to stay in Airbnbs closer to the airport for those 2 nights which cost us a little bit more (since we had to pay more cleaning fees) but we found the convenience to be highly worth it.

This was the Airbnb we stayed at near the airport in Athens ($48/night including fees).
This was the Airbnb we stayed at near the FCO airport in Rome ($66/night including fees).

For some reason, both Airbnbs we stayed at in Rome required us to pay a "city tax" in cash to the owner. It was only a few euros per person per night so, although we were not expecting that, we just paid without fuss.

What was also nice about staying in the Airbnbs near the airport was that, at both places, the owner offered to drive us to the airport for a fee (20 euros in Athens and 10 euros in Rome) which was really convenient for us not to have to worry about how we were getting to the airport.

Accommodations TOTAL: $106



Attractions, Food & Transportation:
These 3 categories I paid mostly in cash so I don't have an exact number I spent for each.

Most of the things we did in both Greece and Rome were free. In Rome, we did buy the 72-hour Roma Pass which allowed us to use public transportation for no extra cost and reduced/free tickets to some museums.

I love food so much. One of my favorite things about traveling is getting to actually TASTE the culture. To me, enjoying the food is part of enjoying the experience. That doesn't mean you have to spend tons of money on food. For the most part, we ate at places where the prices were around 10-15 euros per plate. In Europe, they don't really have tips but there is a fee for sitting down at a table. And we didn't sit down for every meal. Like for breakfast we usually grabbed a quick cappuccino and breakfast on the way to where we were going or we grabbed some street food that came highly recommended thanks to TripAdvisor.

We pretty much exclusively used public transportation for our entire trip. We used an app called City Mapper where you can put in your location and where you want to go and it will show you how you can get there just using public transportation. We found this to be the cheapest way to get around but not the way to save time. You could use taxis/ubers but that would cost a lot more (also, ubers weren't available in Greece when we were there).

Attractions, Food & Transportation TOTAL: $488


Shopping:
I wasn't planning on buying too many things to bring home (obvi since I only brought a backpack). But I did want to buy a pair of sandals from The Poet Sandal Maker in Athens, Greece! He's kind of a tourist-y/famous custom leather sandal maker that I found on Pinterest. The sandals I bought were 45 euros. Totally worth it, I've been wearing them several times a week since I got back.

We also came across a Starbucks near Monastiraki Square in Athens so I went in and bought a You Are Here mugs! The mug was the equivalent of $17.

Shopping TOTAL: $69


Trip TOTAL: $1192


A few other things to note:
- We only carried backpacks so we didn't check bags but looked for airbnbs with washers/dryers.

- My mom was nice enough to let us use her hotel points to get us a free hotel in Paris for one night. Otherwise we would've spent a little bit more but probably no more than $20.

- We were 4 adults splitting pretty much everything that we could (airbnbs, transportation, etc). That wouldn't work if you had a family obviously.

- So many people pay for someone else to plan their trip but you can save a huge amount of money planning on your own.

If you would like, use my link to sign up for airbnb!