This will be our final post for this trip. We have been home for two weeks now, and the time really flies by.
We have completed the blog, having completed at least done one pass on proof reading, and also having adding images to the daily posts. We have also added captions to the Photo Album Images that will play on the slide show.
Here are some fun facts about the trip:
- Walking: We walked over 108 miles in total for the trip according to Stephanie’s Galaxy Active 2 Watch. That was also a total of 246,982 steps. Over the 23 days, we averaged walking 10,291 steps per day equaling an average 4.53 miles per day. We had two days where we walked over 20,000 steps but the highest daily total was in Pontresina, where we walked 21,212 steps, or 9.36 miles.
- Overall Costs: Since we were able to use credit cards for almost all of our expenses, we were able to get a really good total trip cost. OUCH, Switzerland is an expensive place to visit. We will not post the total cost, but we averaged $292.00 per person per night, all inclusive. Math wizards can do the arithmetic. This was most likely the most expensive of any trips we have taken to date, but we also rented more apartments, which are generally higher in cost than a hotel, and we had a better class of seats for our flights. But meals are just expensive in Switzerland, dinners almost always exceeded $100.00 if we purchased a bottle of wine, Lunches were at least $60.00. Maybe to some, this is not a lot to spend, but for what we ordered, generally just normal meals, it seemed high. We were used to purchasing $8.00 Liters of house wine in Italy, not $48.00 bottles of really ordinary wine in Switzerland.
- COVID: Well the pandemic certainly added some interesting aspects to the trip, we probably set some personal records for mask wearing marathons, especially on the travel days to and from Europe. Also, we had a total of $435.00 in Covid related testing costs during the trip, not counting the costs of some KN95 and N95 masks we purchased to take with us. These costs may just be part of travel expenses going forward, but we sure learned a lot on this trip, but we are not sure we learned $435.00 worth.
- Accommodations Costs: We averaged a nightly cost of $205.00 for our accommodations for the 23 nights. This was one cost we fully understood before we left, all of the rooms were reserved prior to departure. There was a cost differential for Switzerland vs. Austria. In Switzerland, we averaged $223.00 per night, in Austria, we averaged $181.00 per night. This is not as close as it may seem. We were paying an average of $1.09 per Swiss Franc in Switzerland, and an average of $118 per Euro in Austria, so even with the higher Euro Cost the average US Dollar cost in Austria was less per night. I am sure we could derive a weighted average using the franc and euro differential costs, but not today.
- Food & Beverage Costs: We spent a total of $1,742.00 on restaurants and groceries on our credit card, or an average of $75.00 per day. We know that we also used a good portion of our swiss francs that we withdrew from an ATM on some of our meals near the end of our time in Switzerland, just to be able to use them up. Overall, we estimate we averaged about $85.00 to $90.00 per day for meals and adult beverages. Most all breakfasts were eaten in, or at hotels where they were included, and a few nights we also ate in when we had a large, late lunch. This was somewhat of an unknown cost going in.
- Transportation Costs: Between the rail transportation we used exclusively in Switzerland and the rental car plus fuel cost we had for Austria, as well as some other train and bus costs in Austria (getting to Munich Airport from Salzburg), we spent a total of $1,586.00 on transportation. This amounts to an average of $69.00 per day.
- Cell Phones SIM Cards: This was the biggest pleasant surprise of the trip. We did not pay that much, about $54.00 per phone for the entire trip, $28 per phone for the initial Orange Holiday Zen SIM card purchased on Amazon, and $26.00 for an additional 14 day top up. This gave us a lot of data, over 15 Gb, (maybe we each used about 3 Gb total), virtually unlimited SMS texts and around 120 minutes for calls to the USA per phone. We always had service, and never used the minutes for calls to the USA, opting to use WhatsApp over data for voice and video calls instead. We would certainly use this Orange SIM card again if we visit countries where it is available, which is most of the EU. It was much cheaper than the Italian SIM we bought in 2019 and certainly less than the $10.00 per day Verizon charges per phone to use their International Plan. In hindsight, we should have suspended our Verizon service while we were gone to save on that.
- Phone Apps: Every trip seems to get better with regard to the available apps for cell phones. Of course, having local SIM cards with local data plans goes a long way to making the phone apps more useful, and we relied heavily on phone apps during this trip. All of the major train lines have phone apps, which makes purchasing train tickets really simple. In addition, most of the major cities have apps for their bus lines too, so again, purchasing tickets is really simple and fast. With the ability to pre load credit cards into the app, ticket purchasing is just a couple of button clicks away. No longer do we have to worry with ticket machines in crowded train stations, with tight connections, and wondering if our credit card will be accepted. On the apps, the tickets are delivered directly to the phone for presentation on a train or bus during a ticket verification check. We also utilized Goggle Maps for directions, both walking and driving, and Google Translate for reading menu’s and signs. Both helped tremendously. Having cell phones makes travel much easier than it used to be.
Well that about wraps it up for this trip, we will have to start thinking about the next adventure, doing something for Stephanie’s 50th Birthday next year!