budget,  travel

What do you need to save for an international trip

May 15, 2019 /

Some international trips are more expensive than others. When we visit the republic of Georgia we have a lot less that we need to save for so when planning this trip to France I needed to take several things into account, the first one being that France is a lot more expensive than Georgia.

Rental car

Last time we visited France we were able to borrow our friend’s car. This time we are traveling from Spain to the North of France so we are renting a car for 2 weeks. I went online and searched car rentals and selected the cheapest one. I ended up paying almost a hundred dollars more by waiting longer so I would suggest select a rental as soon as possible (this was several months before our planned trip). Because we are a large family, our rental is more expensive. I am bringing my 2 youngest car seats.

black 5-door hatchback
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Tolls

Does the country you will be traveling in have tolls? I actually completely forgot about highways being toll highways in France and my friend reminded me of that fact. If you know where you will be traveling, you can estimate the cost by looking it up online.

brown wooden house
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Gas

Gas is a lot more expensive in Europe, especially in Western Europe! Remember you are paying by the liter and not the gallon.

Food

I dedicated a post about saving on food on trips and we plan to buy lunch food at the grocery store the week we are traveling. Breakfast will be from local bakeries (I cannot wait for fresh baguette, croissants and pain au chocolat!).  We will have some dinners with friends that first week too. We will try to find inexpensive dinner options when we are on our own. I am bringing some snacks as emergencies too.

Souvenirs

We typically do not come back with much in the way of souvenirs. I usually like to bring back local wine, French mustard and herbes of Provence. The boys will probably come back with a t shirt and a key chain and of course we will have to get some gifts for friends.

assorted-color toy lot
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Site fees

While a lot of our activities will be free as in seeing the sights, going to local markets, there will be some fees for certain sites. The boys love medieval castles so we plan to visit a few during this trip. We hope to spend a day in Paris seeing the sights but not actually visiting anything so that should make that day trip fairly inexpensive.

A bientôt!

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