The following will be an accounting of my 2018 trip to Turkey & Croatia. If you’ve not read the blog, you can do so here. Or if you want a summary of the entire trip you can check that out here. It might provide some extra context to the costs below!
The Transportation ($982.39)
The Flights ($684.88)
There were three flights which we booked for this month long trip. The first is the main booking to get from North America to Europe and back. This was an Aeroplan “Round the World” (RTW) booking which allowed for a destination and stopovers. We originally planned to visit both Croatia and Montenegro, however after some consideration we made changes to the bookings which incurred a change fee. In total these flights cost $495.21 and 115,000 Aeroplan Points. What gives this even more value is that it’s a business class booking and so I was also able to fly in comfort for a majority of my flights!
One of the flights not included in the Aeroplan booking is the round trip flight from Istanbul to Cappadocia (Kayseri) in order for us to make our last attempt at hot air ballooning. Thankfully everything worked out and this impromptu day trip cost $110.67 individually (After conversion).
The final flight booked is a flight from Zagreb to Dubrovnik. Because our Aeroplan booking has Zagreb as a stopover, we needed to pay our own way down to Dubrovnik before driving up. This flight cost $79 individually.
Other Transportation Costs ($297.51)
For other transportation we have two items. The first item is a car rental which we picked up in Dubrovnik and would return in Zagreb after driving through Croatia. All in all the cost of the rental $662.79 or $220.93 for each person.
The other transportation cost is a round trip ferry ride to the island of Hvar. This cost us each $76.58. The cost is broken up between the ferry cost for the car and each passenger.
Total Transportation Costs
| Airfare | $684.88 |
| Other Transportation | $297.51 |
| Total | =$982.39 |
Accommodations ($431.92)
With such a long trip, we stayed in a huge variety of accommodations. The first half of our trip through turkey was all taken care of via our GAdventures Absolute Turkey tour. Totalling up our AirBnB bookings for the few days in Istanbul after our tour and throughout Croatia results in an individual accommodation cost of $431.92
Total Accommodation Costs
| Montreal AirBnB | $431.92 |
| Total | = $431.92 |
Food and Beverage ($900)
The further back we go with these trips, the harder it is to find costs for food that we ate. There are some notable meals like eating at 360 in Dubrovnik or having some tasty fish grilled by our boat captain. It’s hard to pin down how much everything cost, so I will attempt to average out the cost per meal for the 30 days. In general most meals would average $15 and most days we would have complimentary breakfast at the hotels or cook our own at the AirBnBs. So with this in mind I’m happy to average out our food costs to around $900 for the entire trip.
Miscellaneous Expenses ($2098.09)
There are quite a few miscellaneous expenses to talk about. The biggest is our G Adventures Absolute Turkey tour which covers the first half of the entire trip.
This included a fair amount of food, accommodations, transportation and activities. Because we booked this through the same travel agent that we booked our Africa Trip with there were a few discounts applied to the cost of this trip. When all is said and done we paid $1894.34 for this. Because we weren’t able to go up in a hot air balloon as part of this trip G Adventures refunded $220 to us for our inability to Balloon bringing the total cost of this tour down to $1674.34
In addition to the G Adventures tour, we also booked our additional hot air balloon activity to make up for our failed attempt. This was done through Turkiye Balloons and cost $260.09 for each person.
The other tour that we booked was in Hvar. This was a Blue and Green Cave tour and it cost each person $123.39 (Note that while the image shows for four people, we were able to rebook our tour when FunkyCat was unable to join us).
The only other expense in this category would be the cost of a visa to enter Turkey. This cost $40.27.
In total our Miscellaneous expenses come out to $2098.09
Totals
If you add everything up:
| Transportation | $982.39 |
| Accommodations | + $431.92 |
| Food & Beverage | + $900 |
| Miscellaneous | + $2089.09 |
| Total | = $4403.40 |
We get a grand total trip cost of $4403.40. Averaging this out over 30 days we get $146.78 per day. Overall I’m really happy with how this trip turned out cost wise. I think there is some hidden value in being able to fly business class on all of my flights which makes the transportation “bang for buck” much higher!
Hopefully if you’re still reading to this point you find this helpful! If there is extra information you’d like to know, or have suggestions on how this can be done better, please feel free to drop a comment below and let me know!