How much does it cost to travel and stay in Spain?

Cost of Travelling in Spain

The total cost of our trip to Spain

Before we talk money, we want to say that we understand that everybody has different budgets, types of travelling they like and amount of time they have to spend on holidays.

We retired in 2019 to travel the world but only managed one 8 week trip to Spain before we were grounded in Australia.

This return trip to Spain has been 3 years in the dreaming and planning and as we hadn’t been able to travel internationally for three years, we had a bit bigger budget than we probably would have had had we been able to travel every year. We also chose a few pretty upmarket accommodation places that certainly added to our cost, and we paid for the best insurance as well, for obvious reasons.

Let’s talk money

The total cost per day including airfares, insurance, accommodation, transport, food, wine, tours – literally everything - was $413.00 au (289 euro) per day for both of us.

Accommodation was on average was $202 (AU) or 141 Euro (4 and 5 star) per day.

Parador in Caceres

Luxury hotel in Haro

Nerja Apartment

Bahia Hotel Santander

Our budget was $500 (au) a day.

Included in the costs are the long haul flight costs from Australia to Europe and $5,200 au.

Where was the cheapest place to stay (accommodation)?

Toledo for a one night visit was $108 au

The second cheapest was Salamanca at $116 au per night. We stayed in a one bedroom apartment right in the old town with a private courtyard for a week.

The most expensive place we stayed was in Santander. We stayed in a luxury hotel during the most popular fiesta in Santander – so probably wouldn’t normally cost so much - $270 au per night

Food and Drink

The cost of food and drinks per day for the two of us was $114 au. We did absolutely no cooking for the whole holiday so that cost includes, breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks every single day.

There are more free tapas areas in Andalucía in the South of Spain.

On average all over Spain a small beer is 1.80 euro, medium is 2.80 euro.

A glass of wine is 2.80 – 3.50 euro.

Food and wine are relatively cheap all over Spain as well as the quality being excellent.

You can buy beer and wine very cheaply from supermarkets all over Spain as well.

If you venture out of the tourist/old town areas the food prices drop by up to 30%.

Do you need credit cards and cash?

Simple answer – no you don’t need a credit card and you only need a small amount of cash to buy local bus tickets directly from the driver.

We used an ING visa debit card for security deposits at hotels, booking all accommodation, paying for all transportation and all our day to day expenses.

Even the small authentic bars and restaurants all have credit/debit card facilities.

ING refunds all international transaction fees.

The card can be used at all ATM’s around Spain.

One very helpful hint was to always choose the local currency (euro) instead of Australian dollars. By doing that we saved up to 5% on some payments.

Only once in the whole trip we weren’t able to use the card because our two drinks cost under 5 euro.

Make sure you let your bank or financial institution know where and when you will be travelling overseas.

How We Plan Our Trip

Getting Around

First thing we do is think about where we would like to go – new places, revisit favourites, beach, mountains, wine regions, etc.

We mainly try and stay a week in each place, but rarely less than 3 nights. For us we like to relax and enjoy the city or village we are in and take our time to explore. Some of the best times we have had have been when we have no plans, we just head out and see what we can discover.

We don’t like to travel for more than 3 to 4 hours a day – so that makes it easy to choose which places to pick.

We like to find accommodation close to the main part of town and close to transport as we NEVER drive while we are overseas. We use public transport to travel all over Spain. Nearly all buses and trains have free Wifi. They are airconditioned, clean and comfortable. All our transport was on time and we had absolutely no issues at all.

The website I use to do my research is Rome2Rio. You can enter your starting destination, where you want to go and it gives you all the options available, how long it will take and the cost. Sometimes you can buy direct from the website, or it sends you to a third party or direct to the bus or train website.

We generally take a train if it is available, especially the AVE fast train. This train travels at over 300km an hour and you can go from Madrid (middle of Spain) to Malaga (Southern Spain) in just over 3 and half hours

The preferred website/app that Rome2Rio link to for purchasing tickets is Omio. It’s easy to use and has all the tickets stored for easy retrieval. I like to print the tickets if possible, but you certainly don’t need to.

Hints: *If you have the choice when booking bus tickets to choose Supa Economy – take it. There are only three seats across the bus so heaps more space. Also, screens with Wifi and very comfortable.

*The earlier you book, the better seats you get.

*Some smaller bus stations aren’t manned on Sundays – so if you turn up and think you will be able to buy a ticket – nope, not happening.

Where to stay

When we travel we use Booking.com to book all of our accommodation. You can book all types of accommodation on the website including apartments.

The app and website are so easy to use. All your bookings are easily found on the app and you can see exactly where the accommodation is. Another great feature is when you arrive in a new city, you can go to your booking and press the “get directions button” and Google maps directs you directly to your accommodation.

Booking.com also allows you to make bookings that have free cancellation and nothing to pay until arrival.

You can also use the filters to search for the exact sort of accommodation you want. We like one bedroom apartments with an outdoor area of some sort like a balcony or courtyard.

We also try not to stay in a plaza area that is a common walkway as these can be very noisy, especially at night.

Be sure to make sure if you are staying on 2nd floor or above that there is a lift as there are many buildings in Spain that only have stairs.

This trip we chose some amazing places to stay.

All the details are in the are in the respective podcast episodes or blog posts.

Is Spain much Cheaper than Paris and London?

HELL YES!! We spent four days in Paris and a week in London before our Spanish trip.