Four Months in Europe at $30/night

Our first year of full-time nomad/fauxmad travel was intentionally planned as a learning experience. We have sampled travel by air, land, and sea. We've stayed in one place for over a month, then we've packed and unpacked our suitcases in a new hotel every couple of days for a few weeks. We've paid cash, used credit card points, and even scored a free European river cruise by agreeing to get “bumped” when the cruise company overbooked. Our most recent trip provides good examples of the different ways we've been able to always stay in very nice, very comfortable places for very little money.

We left our apartment in Costa Rica on March 13, visited eleven European countries, and will return on July 23. Our average cost for 130 nights away from home was less than $30.00 per night. We didn't stay in any hostels and never shared a bathroom.

Here's where we went:

Here's what we spent:

Here's how we did it, by category:

Airbnb: We use “Airbnb” to refer to any place that isn't a conventional hotel with a front desk, even if it is a commercial rental secured on another platform like Booking.com. Our longest stay was for 30 nights at the start of the trip in a wonderful one-bedroom apartment overlooking Kotor Bay, Montenegro. Taking advantage of the discount for 28-day stays, we paid $1,325.

In Old Town Split, Croatia, we stayed four nights in a cute studio apartment for $216.00.

Between the end of a housesit in the Netherlands and the start of another in Haddington, Scotland, we booked two nights in Edinburgh for $329.00. We also used Airbnb for a one-night gap between local housesits in Scotland for $303.00. While that seems expensive for one night, we were traveling with four other family members, so we needed accommodations for six people.

Hotels: We used hotels only for “in-transit” stays. We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale late in the evening before our cruise departure and stayed in a pretty nasty place for $205.00. Our flight from Rome to Dubrovnik arrived too late for us to get to our destination in Montenegro, so we stayed in a sweet little hotel there for $112.00. And while our final flight from New York to Costa Rica was incredibly cheap, it included an overnight layover in Charlotte, NC, that cost $98.00 (we still came out a few hundred dollars ahead on the airfare, so it was worth it).

Repositioning Cruise: Rather than fly to Europe, we tried our first repositioning cruise, taking the Emerald Princess from Ft. Lauderdale to Rome. All in, the cruise cost $2,200.00. Backing out the estimated cost of airfare ($700.00 one way for both of us) and meals/entertainment ($400 for two weeks), we figure that our accommodation cost for the 14 nights onboard the ship was $1,100.00.

Viking River Cruise: We spent seven nights cruising down the Rhine River from Basel to Amsterdam for free! This was something of a fluke. We originally booked this cruise for December 2024 as a “first Christmas on the road” splurge at a cost of around $4,000. Two days before it was to leave, Viking sent us an email offering us a free cruise on the same itinerary if we were willing to reschedule to a later date, as the company had overbooked. Since we were already planning to visit Europe in the spring of 2025, we happily took them up on the offer. I thought about excluding this week from our average accommodation cost per night (which would raise it to $29.74 from $28.37), but since our flexibility with travel plans allowed us this opportunity, I'm counting it as a stay we've earned.

Home Exchange: In a previous blog post, we wrote about our decision to purchase a condominium in Santa Ana, Costa Rica, to serve as our home base. We want to put it to use while we are traveling but are reluctant to rent it out on Airbnb. The expense and hassle of managing a rental property is more than we want to take on at this point. Instead, we listed our apartment on Home Exchange and opened up a wonderful world of in-kind trades that are paying off really well for us. Home Exchange acts as a clearinghouse for people swapping stays in each other's primary or secondary residences. It allows for reciprocal exchanges (you stay at our place, we stay at yours) or exchanges for “Guest Points,” where we earn points when people stay in our apartment and can then trade those points for stays in other people's spaces.

We were able to share our apartment for about four weeks' worth of Guest Points, as well as earn bonus points upon registration and through referrals. We then used our points for stays in Croatia (8 nights with the most wonderful hosts—truly a highlight of this trip), Zurich, and Amersfoort, Netherlands. All in, we stayed 17 nights for free on this trip and have plans to use our bank of points in Seattle, San Francisco, and Tahiti later this year. This gives us a really big financial savings, particularly in a place like Zurich, where we stayed for five nights. Zurich is probably the most expensive city in Europe. Our two apartments there were lovely, with three times the space of hotel rooms, kitchens, and both had delightful balconies. The cost to stay in something remotely equivalent in Zurich would have been well over $1,000.

Our HomeExchange abodes in the Netherlands and Croatia

An unexpected bonus with Home Exchange has come from our interactions with other hosts and guests. We had two long, great dinners and started what we know will be a lifelong friendship with our hosts in Croatia, who “rent” their ADU out on Home Exchange during the shoulder season. Our WhatsApp communications with a couple from coastal Costa Rica who stayed in our apartment on each end of air travel from San Jose were so lovely that we are making plans to visit them when we return home in a few months. We have similar stories to tell about the other hosts and guests we've been meeting. It makes the experience much less transactional and more like just doing favors for friends. We have been loving it.

TrustedHousesitters: Petsitting is a joy. We adopted three shelter pitbull mixes over the years who all lived to a ripe old age before passing on. We miss them terribly but know that dog ownership would not fit well with our traveling life. The opportunity to live for a week or two with dogs and cats, and in one home recently, two horses(!), is a gift to us. It is also a key factor in keeping our travel budget in line. For almost one third of the nights on our current trip, we are staying free of charge in lovely homes with some really great animals. The homes we have chosen have all been spacious and situated in pleasant environments, convenient to public transportation and shopping, and almost all have usable outdoor space like a balcony or patio, which is important to us.

A sampling of our housesits this trip

We don't mind the most obvious downside to petsitting—the need to be pretty much stationary for a while. Our pet owners/hosts have invariably gone out of their way to give us some freedom to tour around a bit, acknowledging that they don't expect us to watch TV all day with their cats and dogs. Being deliberate in our planning, we try to slot the petsits between more active endeavors when we know that we will be on the move a lot, so we look forward to some time at a slower pace caring for the pets. These gigs have been great “fill-in” stops between tours and activities, allowing us to move across Europe at a more leisurely pace.

Perhaps the best part of housesitting has been our enormous good fortune at two particular sits outside Edinburgh, Scotland, where we booked two homes (a 3 dog/1 cat/3 ducks and a 2 dog/1 cat) back to back for a total of 3½ weeks. Early in the process, we mentioned to both owners that we had friends and family planning to visit Scotland during the time we were there. In both cases, the owners happily suggested that we have the visitors stay with us during the sits. These are both lovely, large family homes, and the opportunity to share the spaces with our loved ones was absolutely priceless. Needless to say, we are big fans of TrustedHousesitters.

Conclusion

Looking back on our first year of full-time travel, it’s been quite the adventure trying out all kinds of travel styles and places to stay. We’ve done everything from long Airbnb stays and quick hotel stops to free river cruises and awesome home exchanges. Plus, housesitting has been a total game-changer, letting us hang out with great pets and save a ton on lodging. All this mix-and-match traveling helped us keep costs super low—under $30 a night on average—while still staying in really comfy, nice spots. Along the way, we’ve met amazing people and made some lifelong friends, which has made the whole experience even better. It’s been a fun, flexible way to travel smart and enjoy every minute.