Can anyone talk to me about Portugal?

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Problem is that I've got a few years before I can afford the big Europe trips that people take.

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Visiting Europe is not that expensive. The major costs are the flights and if you take some of the sound advice here in regards to flights you’ll find some flights relatively cheap. But once in Europe, it’s fairly inexpensive.

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Visiting Europe is not that expensive. The major costs are the flights and if you take some of the sound advice here in regards to flights you’ll find some flights relatively cheap. But once in Europe, it’s fairly inexpensive.

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Yeah bringing four makes it all the more expensive. I've done a little research for the end of May 2019 and we could fly from Atlanta to Lisbon for about $3500 total. Those are 12-15 hour flights (up to 2 layovers) that start late in the US and finish early morning in Portugal.

It looks like if I'm willing to extend the vacation a bit and spend a little more, I could fly to NYC and hang out a day or two before getting a direct to Portugal. I'd much rather a 6-8 hour flight with kids than 12-15 hours.

Portugal is on my short list to go next, but given that unless you can get cheap flights for under $700 you'd be better off going else where to save money imo. I haven't seen many dirt cheap flights to Portugal for $500s or less. There's only a couple places that fly direct to Portugal.

As said, when you are actually in Europe it is generally cheaper or at the worst the same price as the USA. My sister was a stewardess and flew to Paris with her fiancé and got an Airbnb apt for $75/ night and they spent under $800 total on the trip for 5 nights.

The keys to a budget friendly European trip is cheap flights, not traveling much when in Europe between cities, and cheap lodging. The other thing that really adds up is museums and activities (obviously). For a family of 4 a museum may be $100, do that 5-6+ times and you've added almost $1000 to your trip. Those are not necessary unless it's absolutely your thing.

You can do 7-10 night trip for a family of 4 flying into Paris and out of Amsterdam hitting both cities for under $3000 total very easily.

Street food and grocery store food is generally a better quality in Europe than the USA. So you can have fun and eat well for pretty cheap.

$400-550 flights are absolutely obtainable for that time of year. Especially to Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Rome, Paris, and a handful of the other large hubs.

With kids, Dublin can be great because it's the shortest flight. East coast to Dublin is a 6.5 hr flight and they can be had routinely for sub $600.

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it depends on where you go. London is really expensive, as is a'dam and paris.

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I agree, but I don't think its fair to say it HAS to be expensive.

Last summer I stayed in a 1 bedroom flat for $200/ night in London with 2 kids. It was something like $789 total, 3 blocks from Hyde Park. You could easily stay further away for cheaper. Now hotels were double or triple that. Pubs are not that expensive IMO, pretty normal. You can do street food like good fish and chips for like $8-10. There's a lot to do there that costs a lot, and obviously its like NYC or any big city and you can spend basically as much as you want on lodging, food, etc.

Paris honestly is probably one of the best cities in the world to go and live cheaply. Sooo much amazing affordable food and sites to see, its a great city to relax. But you can also spend as much as you want on lodging and food.

I just feel like they are all very doable on a very strict budget additionally.

As the previous posters have stated, the flights are the big difference. Europe is actually pretty cheap once you get the flights out of the way (minus the obvious expensive cities like Paris and London). A week in LA/San Fran or New York will cost you just as much as a week in Europe.

Portugal/Spain will be my next Europe vacation.

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Last summer I stayed in a 1 bedroom flat for $200/ night in London with 2 kids.

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I would call that expensive.

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I just feel like they are all very doable on a very strict budget additionally.

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It depends on the budget.

Generally I prefer to visit places that are cheaper than where I live, although I have already visited Europe multiple times and hit all the big sites in western europe save Scotland.

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I would call that expensive

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Ha, touche ok it's not cheap. But almost anyone can afford it was my point. It's very easy to stay on a strict budget if you want to. Sure there's a lot of ways to spend big money but you don't have to or need to.

I was just trying to say that if you can get cheap airfare you can do a vacation pretty reasonably and close to not much more than the average family spends on a summer beach trip.

i just got an email promoting RT fares to Europe; RT from DFW to Madrid, $448. Plenty of other cheap Euro destinations as well.

Portugal is dope. We did Lisbon (cascais), Porto, Douro Valley, then back to Lisbon last year.

Early 30s with no kids, so I can’t speak to that.

If you like sea food you will love the cuisine, those folks know their way around octopus and cod.

We pretty much ate, drank, and walked around and saw stuff. I thought all the restaurants were very reasonable, partly because the booze is typically way more affordable. Decent bottles of wine for around 10-15 euros, and you can get beers for typically 1-3 euros.

I’m a craft beer guy, but the fact that we have accepted 7 bucks a beer in the US is ridiculous. Nothing I love more than sitting out at a cafe, having a cheap beer or a coffee and people watching.