Every budget on this site is built the same way: from receipts kept during the trip, converted at the rate actually paid, and divided by the number of days the trip lasted. The figures are meant to be copied and adjusted rather than admired, and each table says which year it was compiled in.
What the budgets include
Each budget covers the three lines that move the most: beds, ground transport and food. Flights are listed separately because they behave differently from everything else, and the entrance fees for museums and parks are broken out as their own column rather than buried in the daily figure. Insurance is shown as a monthly cost, not per day, since annual policies make the per day number meaningless.
What is never included is shopping, nightlife or the kind of spontaneous day out that no plan survives. Those are added as a percentage on top, and the percentage is written out in plain numbers instead of being hidden in the totals.
Daily rates by region
The rates fall into three bands that have held steady across several trips. Western Europe sits at the top, the Aegean and the Levant sit in the middle, and the long stretch through the south of the continent sits at the bottom, with a spread of roughly three to one between the highest and lowest. Within each band the number moves with the season more than with the country, which is why every table gives both a summer and a winter figure.
Where the money actually goes
Transport takes the largest share on any trip longer than three weeks, and beds take the largest share on anything shorter. Food is the most stable line of the three and the easiest to control, since it is the only one that can be halved without changing where you sleep or how you move. The single biggest saving in the archive came from travelling one week later in the season, which cut both the bed rate and the fare without touching the route at all.
How to use these numbers
Take the daily figure for the region, multiply by the number of nights, and add the separate lines for flights, insurance and entries. Then add twenty percent, because the first draft of every budget in this file has been wrong in the same direction. If the result does not fit, move the dates before you move the route: a shift of five days changes the price more than cutting two stops out of the plan.