The weak dollar

well,  the dollar fluctuates,. so it depends on when you go.  it will continue to fluctuate.  in the passed 2 years for example it has been in a 15% range up or down I would say.  ask if it is going to get better or worse is like asking if a single stock is going to go up or down.  anyone who knew that with any certainty would be loaded.  Anyway there are a lot of variables.  is Greece going to default, will Italy go next and then Spain?  Is the U.S. going to default?  will China sell of all it's U.S. bonds along with Russia?  Is GDP going to grow?  Will China's real Estate bubble finally burst?  Is the U.S going to switch all over-the-road transportation to Natural Gas?  Are we going to do QE3?  Will the EU go broke and disband? etc, etc, etc...........

Just go on your trip, pay the exchange rate, and have a blast!  You can probably save any difference in exchange rate on hard shopping airline rates rather than planing your trip around exchange rate peaks.

bigfella3 - 2011-07-28 1:23 AM Weak? Looks pretty strong from New Zealand... You might start seeing alot more of your kiwi friends if it stays like this...

That's funny, I was going to suggest a trip to New Zealand.    But, careful when you stop in Australia on the way over.  Not so strong there.

Switzerland is crazy expensive all the time...

BikerGrrrl - 2011-07-28 7:32 AM

TriAya - 2011-07-28 7:30 AM If you're wedded to Europe for travel, you might consider going places where at least the prices aren't so high. With a little research, you could get a really lovely holiday in Hungary, Latvia, Slovenia (right on the Adriatic sea, even--gorgeous), and many other places.

This is a good point.  We were in Switzerland recently where the exchange from dollar to Swiss Franc is very close to 1:1, but everything was so freaking expensive!  We were relieved to reach Paris and be able to buy lunch for $15 each (after Euro to dollar conversion) opposed to $30 or more in Switzerland for nothing fancy (i.e. shared pizza and a drink).  

I am looking at a trip to Croatia, actually.  I found a super awesome bike/barge tour. 

The plane tickets to Europe are also very expensive.  Compared to about 4 years ago, I find them to be $300 or more per ticket on average.  Our tickets to Zurich would have been $1k, although we ultimately added the stop to Paris on the way home making them $1200.  All in all, a VERY expensive trip.  My recent check of a flight from MSP to Split was also in the $1k range.


I know that no one can estimate when this will change, but I really truly don't know about world politics and how these things work.    I am going to work in other trips and hope that Europe will become more accessible or just go less often.

Or... go to New Zealand apparently

Europe has a lot of low cost carriers so you might get a better fare by flying into a hub and buying the next flight seperately.  I got a cheap fare from Munich to Split that way.  But there are lots of other places you might consider that aren't especially hard to get to where you don't take quite the hit from the exchange rate and the dollar goes much further.  Central or South America for example.

This.  Although I haven't flown to Europe recently I've gone to other places and that tends to be what we do.  For example we just got back from Ecuador.  We flew to Miami and then hoped on one of their airlines from there.  We paid $500 less per person then my other friends who also flew out of Tucson but stayed on an American airline the whole way. 

ETA: and that lower price includes the price of a hotel on the way there and the way back, which was actually a nice way to break the flight up.  We found that compared to flying straight through we were much more refreshed then some of the others.  But eliminate that and you have an even bigger savings.