A few years ago my boyfriend and I purchased WOW Airlines tickets to Scotland. They were super cheap and came with a 17-hour layover in Iceland.
While we had paid a lot of attention to how much we were going to spend in Scotland, those 17 hours in Iceland were kind of a throwaway on our trip budget and planning. In 17 hours we would have a couple of meals, and we bought tickets to the Blue Lagoon, which was only a few miles from the airport. How much could it possibly cost? I don’t think we considered anything beyond those Blue Lagoon tickets for even a second.
The answer is a lot. While flying to Iceland is cheap, everything in Iceland is insanely expensive. I remember the first shock being that 15-minute cab ride to the Blue Lagoon. While I might have guessed it would have cost $20 or less, we paid $67 one way, so much that I still remember the exact dollar amount years later.
Our dinner was so expensive I’ve blacked out its cost in my mind, but I do remember the scrambled eggs and bacon that I had at the airport on the way out of town that cost roughly $30. $30 for literally two mediocre scrambled eggs and two slices of bacon.
TripCost is a site that can help you discover those unexpected costs before you go, rather than after you’ve arrived.
With the service, you enter where you’re traveling and when, and the site will tell you what your budget should look like based on the average cost for people there.
For instance, if I made that week-long trip to Aberdeen now, the site suggests budgeting $80 for the week so I can have a beer a night (conservative, if you ask me), $326 for food, for a casual two-course meal in a pub twice a day, and $227 for cabs, presuming I plan on using something like Uber 5 times a day.
Within the site, you can tweak things based on your own plans. For instance, if you plan on using public transportation rather than a taxi or ride-sharing service you can change things to that, or you can say you’d rather stay in an Airbnb than a 2-star hotel.
It’s certainly not going to be able to give you the precise dollar amount you’re going to spend on your trip down to the penny, but it can give you a decent idea of what to expect and can help alert you to any $30 scrambled egg problems before it’s 7 am and you’re hungry in a foreign country.