Overview
We tried to keep receipts for everything which wasn’t difficult as you receive a receipt everywhere. Some were easy, as we charged on credit cards, but some small purchases probably got lost. Certainly, things like a bottle of water, stamps, post cards, etc were overlooked.
This is by far the most expensive trip we have taken. It was also one of the longest, as we typically only go for 10 days max. But, this was our 50th wedding anniversary trip and so we splurged.
The largest single cost was the business class flight, round trip between JFK and Athens. We shopped this a bit and got the best price by using our BA points to get a reduced business class rate.
We also think that costs were higher because of the itinerary we (read Jerry) selected. Athens, Dubrovnik, and Venice are NOT logically connected and so traveling between them was not easy from a time standpoint or cost standpoint. There were no non-flight connections between any of them that made sense but flights were not much better.
As previously stated in the intro, we could have saved some cost by NOT returning to Athens for our departure to the US. Going back from Venice to Rome and then leaving from Rome would have probably save cost of Rome to Athens flight and one expensive hotel night in Sofitel Hotel in Athens airport (at $300 for one night).
Next biggest expense was Hotels, which we selected from Rick Steves upper tier selections and are basically happy that we did, based upon the good locations of each.
Costs by Category
| Category | Amount |
| Business Class Flights | $ 8,837.56 |
| Clothing (new sneakers) | $ 71.90 |
| Coach Flights (in Europe) | $ 1,483.84 |
| Food | $ 1,545.10 |
| Gift | $ 1,079.28 |
| Hotel | $ 3,555.30 |
| Laundry (Dubrovnik) | $ 53.20 |
| Sightseeing | $ 1,132.55 |
| Souvenir | $ 26.39 |
| Taxi (includes water taxi & trip to Mostar) | $ 1,013.46 |
| Grand Total | $ 18,798.57 |