For no really good reason we figure that a tour, not including air fare, should cost 100 Euros per day for Europe or 100 US dollars per day in the US. That is, of course, for the two of us combined. It's a crazy figure, because so much can affect actual costs, but it helps in planning. That is, it helps in checking if we have enough money to go, and it helps in seeing if we are squandering too much cash while on the road.

This time, we were really well under the guideline, until we somehow quit camping and also started taking some boats and trains. Then our costs shot up, but in fact we ended up spending about 9000 euros for about 91 days. And since we did have 9000 euros in our back pocket (or we would not have left), we are cool and think it was fine.

It is instructive though to see how those euros broke down. Almost half went for hotels, while only 6 percent was taken by camping fees. And that even includes the fact that when we found a cabin at a campground, I called it "camping" (a designation that Dodie thinks is wrong.) We actually "camped" on 23 of the 91 days, which is almost exactly 1/4 of the time.

The average cost for a hotel was 71 euros. Within this, the lowest cost was 38 euros, at the Hotel Les Coulombes in Verdun. This hotel was fine and even had two good bakeries across the street. The highest cost was at Hotel Sternen in Aarau, Switzerland, 120 euros. That narrowly beat out Basel and Paris, which were pretty darn pricey too.

To go along with our new lazy touring style, we jumped on quite a few trains, shuttles, boats, and subways, for a total cost of 956 euros. That includes 352 euros on trains and subways for our three day whirlwind tour of Paris, 100 euros for our "tour" of Lake Lucerne, and more than that for vaporettos and ferries at Venice. We are not saying any of this should not have happened on a bike tour. On the contrary, it made the tour really a lot more fun!

Also in the lost more fun category is the remarkable fact that we spent almost 1/4 of the "food" budget in bakeries, presumably on pastries. This may not really be fact, though. The whole food area is hard to break out. A goodly part of the hotel cost included breakfast and whatever we could take along for lunch. And money spent in bakeries is not always for pastries. Sometimes we might even buy a healthful sandwich! Finally, money spent on "food" includes meals in restaurants, which can be greater houses of diet sin than bakeries.

Another interesting category is spending on "tourism" which includes admission to cathedrals and museums, as well as the hop on hop off tours. If you add to this souvenirs (which also includes postage for mailing them home), you get almost 1000 euros. Again, worth it - we say.

We read a lot of blogs from cycle tourists who get by without a lot of the luxuries that you see here in our tallies. We admire these folks, but we don't feel the need to do it that way. We find that we are able to tour for about half the year without running down our savings. So if it were just about money, we could carry on like this forever. Much more limiting would be if it were not fun anymore. So within that 100 euro or dollar limit, let's have as much fun as possible!

With that in mind. even though I like the pun of calling it a "breakdown", here is how the fun built up:

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