A Travel Writer's Travel Blog

I cannot wait to get to Athens. Especially b/c I am talking about a 2 weeks vacation exploring Italy and Greece. So, aside from checking out Rome – on the run – and Vieste (6 days) , we’ll then fly to Athens. Here are some of the plans, roughly put on paper.

Day 1
Arrival: morning.
First step: get a map!
Get to the hotel (by metro or by bus)
I typically call Day 1 in a new city as “free time to check out things”. In this case, we’ll take a walk around and figure out distances (i.e to the Acropolis, tavernas, etc).

Day 2
Athens walking tour: 3-4 hours we’ll be checking out sites, chit-chatting and taking photos.
Lunch
Visit the Ancient Agora and Roman forum.

Day 3

I’m meeting up with a friend who lives in Athens so I sort of want her to take us around and see interesting stuff. Probably check out one or two of the museums (see list below).

Day 4

This will be a Sunday, so: watching the changing of the guards in Syntagma Square at 11 a.m. is the first thing on our list, then it’s visiting the Acropolis.

Day 5

Day trip to Cape Sounion planned for today.

Day 6

Our flight departs at 12 p.m. but we’ll be at he airport around 9:30 a.m. So, leaving right after breakfast.

Other things we want to check out (but haven’t made plans yet):

• Railway Museum: free
• War Museum: free
• National Archeological Museum (7 euros)
• National Gardens

Especially during winter (and yes, March is technically a cold month in Greece) , the museums are open until 3 p.m. so we have to plan visiting them in the mornings and then do other stuff.

Find one major expense to cut from your daily life. How much can you save for travel by cutting it? How many other expenses (large or small) could you reduce in order to put that money toward travel?

This is the prompt for this week’s Indie Travel Challenge.

I am proud to say that we – fiance and I – have already found 3 expenses to cut from our weekly/monthly budget.

Fiance quit smoking in September 2011. At almost US$4 a pack , we have saved up to US$120 per month (he didn’t always get a pack a day though).

Also, we drastically cut our “going out” expenses. We still go out to folk concerts, rock concerts, play darts or billiards, but we aim to stick to US$10-15 per night. And we haven’t set foot in a restaurant since July 2011 (when we were traveling, btw).

It might not seem a lot but we are talking about Romania here. A country where the medium wage is around US$400 (if you are lucky). So, US$4 for a pack of smokes is a lot! A small (250 ml) bottle of soda is about US$1.5 (depending on the place) , while an hour playing billiards is about US$7.60.

By comparison, a night in a guesthouse in Rome in March this year will set us back US$40 per night. And a bus ride from the airport to Termini is US$5.30 one way.

Oh yeah and as of October 2011, we are completely debt free!

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