A Summer In Europe Was Cheaper Than A Summer In The US

I am putting the finishing touches on this summer's three week domestic travel itinerary, which will be a family road trip through northern California.

I just totaled up the prices for our airbnb stays. Blame it on pent-up demand for travel, the relative safety of the outdoors, or simply the compelling nature of visiting our national parks, but it's going to be more than I thought.

Travel in the US during peak time will be compounded in rural areas where housing supply is scarce. In a one horse town, the lone landlord can charge a bundle to sleep in the barn, especially since most people who visit are tent camping or driving enormous RVs.

We are staying in places that are far nicer than rustic cabins by all local standards. That's okay because I want everyone to enjoy the trip and not feel deprived.

It would be more frugal to camp along the way, but we get the hand we are dealt, and only half of my family would be content to tent. Batting .5oo is impressive in baseball but underwhelming as a measure of family happiness.

Europe On The Cheap

In Europe, we knew we were up against a potentially expensive trip, so we saved where we could. For starters, we ate food from grocery stores for at least 2 meals every day, and dinners tended to be in affordable local tavernas or as to go orders from kebab stands eaten in a beautiful park setting.

Throw in a generous budget for gelato and espresso, and we felt we had food in abundance.

Additionally, we leveraged high density urban places suffering excess housing supply with our willingness to go a little outside of traditionally favored areas:

• In Napflion, we opted for a place upstairs from a delicious bakery and a block from a twice weekly farmers' market where we grabbed a morning pastry and my daily espresso before taking the 15 minute walk into the charming Old Town.
• An apartment in Barcelona was chosen for proximity to an Aldi grocery store.
• We also visited more remote places that had lower demand in the off season, like our 500 year old renovated Cycladic home in Kythira that went for $60 a night, and came complete with an in-floor cistern for collecting rainwater.

Additional savings in Greece and Spain  were obtained through airfare purchased with Chase Ultimate Rewards points and coach seats. Which saved us over $4000 in airfare.

Travel around town tended to be a combination of public transport and Uber rides (the latter were often more favorable for a family of four). We spent ~$20 a day on transport around town.

Free air travel, grocery store meals and affordable housing gave us our unfair advantage.

American Exceptionalism Is Exceptionally Priced

For this summer, our Airbnbs are hovering around ~$200 per night for our family of four. Having said that, it will constitute the greatest expense.

I expect gas costs will run ~$500 based on the distance we are driving.

Food will be almost exclusively home-cooked meals from a couple of well-spaced Costco runs, as we'll be in remote places for a week at a time, with the opportunity to restock every week or so as we drive through a major urban center. I'm estimating these costs to run $500 for three weeks.

We'll be visiting caves; hiking past boiling lakes, volcanic fumaroles and geysers; feeling dwarfed by redwood giants in old growth forests; and even whitewater rafting some class III rapids in the Salmon River. The cost for the few attractions with associated charges (rafting, cave tours) will run $420.

Over spring break, we purchased an America The Beautiful national park annual pass for $80. The purchase felt bittersweet; last year we'd planned to travel over Spring Break, which would have allowed us to score a free annual pass when my son was a fourth grader.

A week later, a friend who had kids at the same time I did informed me that due to COVID, the free pass offer had been extended to 5th graders for this year. While I am proud to support the parks, it pained to pay for something I might have otherwise obtained for free.

So we're looking at a summer domestic travel budget of $4900 for three weeks - an astoundingly high number given our history of frugal travel.

I'm not going to fret over the cost, as it's a small drop in the bucket of our overall portfolio and well within our annual travel budget. [Is the hedonic treadmill rearing it's ugly head, acclimating me to ever higher spending habits? Only time will tell.]

All those accumulated Chase Ultimate Rewards Points are crying out to be spent on future travel abroad.

The itinerary I deferred back in the summer of 2020 will once again be front and center for summer 2022. The winning combination of free air travel, grocery store meals and affordable housing is likely to come in under the cost of this summer's domestic travel.