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How much did you budget for eating in Italy?
We are trying to travel to Italy in 2014 due to H's work schedule (already have trips planned for 2012 and 2013).
Including breakfast (if your hotel doesn't serve it), lunch, dinner, and snacks... how much should we budget on a daily basis? Most lunches will be in cafes/sit-down restaurants, and maybe 1 fancy dinner while we are there...
Re: How much did you budget for eating in Italy?
honestly-we didn't. we ate where we wanted.
many many many guide books have a scale of $ signs to show you what the meal costs there. since everyone eats at different places and has a different meal I'd go by those as per your tastes and budget.
Apartments- did you find these on vrbo or homeaway? Can I ask which areas you stayed in (if you recommend them)? Or, would you recommend the apartment you stayed in?
we found them through italy-accom.com (rome), venere.com (florence), and vrbo.com (venice).
if i had it to do again, i'd have booked them all through italy-accom.com. they were a little more expensive but they also left guidebooks and a long list of recommendations in the apartment. in rome, we stayed in trastevere and i highly recommend that neighborhood. especially spirito di vino and the little pizza place that is off piazza santa cecilia (both around the corner from the apartment). in florence, we were near piazza savonarola and the apartment was in the neighborhood i'd lived in during college. i like the neighborhood but it was also familiar to me. if it is your first time to florence, you might want to be more centrally located. i am forgetting the neighborhood in venice but it was near ca d'oro.
be prepared for some places to only have a bathtub or a so-so shower situation. it was a trade off but worth it to us at the time. the euro was better then so even the apartments were like 100-120 euros/night.
To butt in, I rented an apartment in Rome through http://www.rentalinrome.com/ per the advice of a co-worker. We had a beautiful apartment in an awesome location just off of Campo di' Fiori which I highly recommend. Renting this apartment verus staying in a hotel saved us a ton of money. I believe we only paid 115 Euro per night. In other cities such as Florence and Venice we stayed in a hotel or B & B and in hindsight I really wished we had selected an apartment instead!
In terms of budgeting for food, we spent about $5K on our two week trip (not including airfare) and we traveled to Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Milan, and Italy. I believe we spent about $2K of that on hotel/apartment rentals, so the other $3K was split between food, sightseeing, tours, and a cooking class. We had a combination of very nice meals all the way to grabbing slices of piazza to go. Generally, we would have one sit-down meal per day and the rest would be sandwiches or pizza.
I don't have a budget, but some general thoughts fwtw, I've found Venice, on average, to be the most expensive city in IT for both lodging and eating options (obviously, pizza on the corner in Venice is cheaper than dining in at a Michelin star restaurant in Florence/Rome, but apples to apples
, I think Venice is pricey-est).
Using Rome as bench mark, I think you can get a nice sit-down lunch (ie not grab-and-go but not fine dinning) for 2 w/ house wine for about 45euro. The same kind of dinner w/ house wine and coffee, probably more like 80euro. Again, you can go much higher (or lower), but that's about where we usually fallout eating at moderate places city center.
Smaller places in Tuscany are slightly cheaper as is Naples-- decent sit-down lunch here is more like 30euro for 2, I spent 62euro on dinner at what I'd say is a nicer restaurant last night, more middle of the road place would be about 50euro.
GL
I'm a bit surprised by the number of people who don't budget. Surprised and jealous. We budget down to the last dollar - when traveling and at home (which is how we can afford to travel).
Anyways....in 2007 (take that - and the fluctuating euro - into consideration) we spent an average of $100 per day on food and lots of drinks.
We budgeted $5 a day for breakfast (most places we stayed had free breakfast and at others I ate a granola bar or grabbed a pastry while husband had a coffee, so some days we spent $5 and some days we spent nothing and the put that money towards drinks or dinner), $30 a day for lunch (we had lunch included in our activities on two days and on the first day we were on a train so we just had a slice of pizza in the station, other days we shared pizza or a sandwich for 5-10 bucks and maybe twice we had nice sit down lunches with wine and paid like $50 for those; on days).
Then we budgeted $65 a night for dinner. Again, three times we had dinner included where we stayed, plus one night we just had a picnic on our deck so that was under $15. So while we usually spent about $60-$80 on dinner (and once more like $120), we still stayed in budget. Basically on the nights I expected us to spend a lot on drinks and dinner, we skimped on lunch and breakfast and when we had a nice lunch, we spent less (or nothing) on dinner.
If you're not willing to do that, you could probably get by with $150 or so per day, but more like $200 if you'd rather splurge more often,
ok, so for the italy trip, we basically did budget $200/day (for lunch, dinner, and sightseeing) when we were initially planning. since it was our belated honeymoon, we didn't really sweat it once we were there. some days it was less and others it was more.
eh yes and no. many hotels also include a huge breakfast (along with fruits etc.. to take with you)-all ofthe ones i've stayed in did anyway. i dont find anything wrong with renting an apartment, it's fine, but i haven't found them to be more economical than a hotel per se. and i've looked. just mho.