16 Nights Exploring Italy – How Much Did We Spend?

What happens when you get a wedding invitation for a wedding in Italy and both you and your sister have no commitments for the month after? You extend the trip and do a little tour – right!!

Well that’s what we did!!! One of our close family friends got married on August bank holiday Monday in glorious Sorrento and instead of just going for the weekend we decided to extend the trip by two extra weeks to see the sights.

After a tough negociation we decided on heading north from Sorrento and our route looked like this…

Sorrent → Rome → Pisa → Florence → Bologna → Venice → Verona → Milan (inlcuding day trip to Lake Como)

We saw and did quite a lot over our two weeks and all in all we didn’t do too badly in regards to the budget!

So let’s get into it!! Exactly what we spent travelling Italy for two weeks…

Flights = £409

Our flight situation for this trip was kinda all over the place! My sister flew out to Italy from the UK with our parents but not on the same flight because she only needed a one-way and it was cheaper to fly with another company. My parents covered her flight out. But I flew in from the US because I had been working out there. My parents did not cover that flight but credit card points almost did. I paid £296.10 for my PREMIUM ECONOMY flight from Chicago to Naples – thank you travel hacking!! Then we had to pay for our return flights home from Milan, which were £112 for the both of us.

Transport Between Stops = £184.80

We hit up 8 stops on our little tour of Italy, and mostly travelled by Flixbus between them which was an absolute steal. Like we were getting tickets for £8 for both of us 🤯

Hotels = £716.40

Our parents covered the 4 night hotel in Sorrento, we took an overnight bus and slept in the airport on the last night so in the end we only had to pay for 10 nights. We did a mix of hostels and budget hotels which averaged £71.64 per night (including city tax) so not terrible.

Public Transport = £121.18

Staying in places based on the cost meant we were often far out of the city so we made the most of public transport. Plus we did have to take a couple of taxis – like why is there no public transport in Verona?!?

Food & Drink = £540.65

We always knew this was going to be a big’un! The food in Italy is infamous for a good reason – it’s INCREDIBLE!! And we fully indulged ourselves – did someone say gelato for breakfast??

Due to the nature of our trip we did eat out a lot but thankfully we did have a few hotels that included breakfast – bonus!! Plus we are those people that have no shame and take a little bit extra away with them from the brekkie buffet 😉

Tours = £147.18

We did two tours during our trip both when we were in Rome and both were nonnegotiable for me! One was a highlights tour of the Colosseum which was the perfect length – plus this included access to the forum which we should’ve used better. The other was a guided tour of the Vatican – which turned out to just be museum not the actual Vatican, so I got very confused. Looking back this one probably could’ve been missed and we should’ve just bought normal tickets and explored on our own.

Random = £31.72

I like to collect postcards from each place I visit and my sister collects magnets so those little things added up!! Plus this also includes the fee we paid to rent some sun beds at Lake Como.

Total = £2150.93

These prices are for two adults but we combined our finances for this trip to save faffing around! Both of us put £1k into the pot so we did go slightly over but we did everything that we wanted to do, made some incredible memories and splurged a couple of times so we kinda expected to go over!

Have you been to Italy before? What was your favourite place?