Ok, so I finally did a bit of math to have an estimate of my budget, and my spending…

I decided I’ll post it here. It was really helpful for me to read on other blog how much they had spent, so I could have an indication of what I might need.

I have calculated with a certain amount of money per day, and multiplied it with the number of days I stayed in each city.

I tried to keep track of my expenses by writing it into my little green book each night.

Keeping track of the credit card is easy, and I think I remembered all the bigger sums, but ok, I might have forgotten some smaller things.

I broke it down into the following categories: Accommodation, Restaurants & Bars, Supermarket, Transport, Culture and other expenditure.

Here are the rough figures for the 23 days I stayed in Brazil

900 € Accommodation (700 in rio, 200 in Sao Paulo)
500 € Restaurants & Bars
200 € Transport (including the three airport taxis)
110 € Other (haircut, the beach chairs or the phone chip)
100 € Supermarkets
65   € Culture (movies, museums and entry fees)

All in all 1875 €, and even if I forgot something I’m still under my budget limit.

Brazil was expensive. Don’t expect it to be a cheap southern country. Drinks and restaurant prices can easily match European capital cities. Ipanema also was surely not the cheapest place to live in. Sao Paulo was a bit cheaper I felt, but only oh so slightly.

Restaurants and bars were the biggest post after accommodation, as expected. I did not cook as much as I thought, being a bit lazy. I have 90 Reais left, which I will change into Pesos…

Again, on this trip I can feel the advantages of having one singe currency in Europe, whatever the crisis’ impact on it, thank Delors for not having to change money back and forth all the time…