Italy Essential TRAVEL TIPS 🇮🇹 - Watch BEFORE You Visit! The Pros, Cons, and Cost to Travel

[Music] we just spent the last just under two months traveling through Italy we started in the northern region and we made our way about as far as you can get South now when you're traveling to Italy one thing everybody always tells you is it's Italy it's amazing and they just tell you all these great things about it yes and they would be correct it is amazing and there are a lot of great things about Italy there are also some cons and one of those cons is our expenses and we're going to cover all that but we're going to get to the pros and cons right now so we're going to start with what we loved about Italy because honestly that's a really easy place to start we loved the old towns and the absolutely Gorge gous architecture the rich culture the history uh being able to travel out into the Tuscan Hillside and taking the wineries and just all of that region it was very much what you see in pictures and what you expect yeah and you know sometimes when you go into a place you get there and it's not quite as uhu uh instagrammable as you might have imagined well in Italy it is so that was definitely a positive that we got to experience we also got to experience the food the pizza the pasta the seafood the desserts the gelato the wine at about $6 a bottle you can't beat that yeah and you know so that those two things alone uh really made the experience that much more enjoyable another thing that we really appreciated is no matter where we traveled uh in all the little towns and bigger cities that we were in we felt very safe and that is something that I know we get a lot of questions about of uh how safe we feel uh we do get questions as well as for if you were traveling alone how safe would you feel and I would say that I'd feel safe everywhere that we went okay now this next one uh being Americans uh coming from the US in running the rat race this doesn't just pertain to Italy it's Europe in general but Italy does have that relaxed laidback lifestyle you stop and get yourself a coffee you smell the roses as you wash by maybe but we really do enjoy the pace of life here in Italy it's something that that didn't really surprise us get used to it dur times though I still get kind of ansy we we do I mean sometimes you like where's our waiter you know and you kind of have to look for them uh and but you know I I also there's an appreciation of not having them come and Hound you with the bill much and hurry you along so uh the other thing that we found as a real positive was in any of the bigger cities that we traveled to English was very widely spoken so if that's a concern of yours which I know for many people it is is the communication not an issue whatsoever yeah the bigger cities it wasn't a problem at all and that brings me to my next point is Italy is a very good launching point to get really where anywhere you need to in the region um whether it be turkey whether it be Western Europe it's a great place to jump on a flight and get anywhere you need to go now are there any cons traveling to it no way Italy you think not but there there are some cons we actually found a few one of them that stood out probably more in certain areas than others was how it could be quite dirty now in the bigger cities sometimes you can just expect that uh when we would go to the smaller kind of picturesque towns you didn't see that so muchan right uh you know you're traveling ways to drop off your garbage it's not you're not putting it right outside the doorstep step you don't have a garbage can right at your place you're traveling a good couple blocks or whatever to drop your garbage off uh garbage can's kind of overflowing things like that now when we arrived into our final stop which was pmo we were honestly shocked and we'll kind of go a little bit more into that situation later but we were honestly shocked at how incredibly dirty it was out of all the places that we have traveled and we've been to Southeast Asia we have not seen it that 30 now we are going to get some negative comments about these cons and that one's probably going to be the number one thing we're going to get the most negative comments about that's okay that's okay we've been to a lot of places and uh palmo um was the dirtiest yeah just what it was it's just what it is and we were there for a while it's not like we were there for two days okay now we've mentioned all these great positive things about Italy with that comes the price of Housing and eating out just your general costs of things that you would expect to spend money on and relatively speaking it might be less than some parts of the US where we're used to but much more expensive than places like Poland or the Czech Republic or even Germany where we just had come from so we did find um some of those expenses to be uh higher than we're currently used to right and it doesn't matter what time of year you're traveling is the one thing with that and you know a lot of places you can go in offseason you could travel in the winter time and you're going to see a really drastic cut and what you're going to be paying for accommodations you really don't see that same drastic cut in uh say Florence you know you're just going to pay a lot of money for your place you may see it right right in the dead of winter but usually you can skirt a little and get a break and you just couldn't get that now if you were somebody that travels with any kind of disability at all it'll in general would be a challenging area to be uh we it's a lot of cobblestone it's uh we didn't find that there was accessibility as far as ramps coming up on the sidewalks or we also found a lot of areas that we were in PLO being one of them and then also a lot of your small towns the cars are parked on the sidewalks or they're parked where you typically would walk so I think that if you're somebody that has a lot of concerns there it would be a challenging Place yeah a lot of Narrows streets uh narrow sidewalks and just as many cars so that that creates a uh a parking problem and it's not not real conducive to pedestrians and a lot of stairs and steps a lot of stairs and steps um and these cars they move rather quickly and they do not stop for us pedestrians that that might need for you to stop squeaking across the street um we would go at an angle so in case we did get hit it wouldn't quite hurt as bad we did see an elderly lady get hit by a car yeah and and so uh it just something to be she was fine the guy stopped and got out got her some water yeah we were just kind of surprised to see that because you know once again being in like in Southeast Asia you kind of had to just force your way across the street but when you did force your way across the street they stopped you they wouldn't run into you they were not going to run into you in Italy we honestly you feared they were going to run into you they weren't stopping I mean they would just keep pushing up on you another thing you're going to find when you are renting your Airbnb or when you are getting a hotel there is a touris tax through Italy so that is going to be a different amount each night based on what city you're in it's not a flat rate it depends on each location so make sure you're aware of that when you are booking a this the only experience that we had booking in Airbnb where the price went up dramatically when you add one more person and and then finding out that a big portion of that had to do with the tourist tax that was added on now like many European countries I mean they've got it figured out and my I think we should put this in the Pro category yeah it's kind of pro but it did kind of hinder us more than once so we decided to put it in the con category and that's midday a lot of restaurants and shops close down and on Sundays the grocery stores close which I think is a great idea I wish the entire world would do it that way everybody needs a break and a nap midday so that is something that can go in either category uh we were going to push it to the pro category but more than a couple times we would forget or we would need to go to the grocery store and it's a Sunday afternoon so we'd have to scramble a little bit yeah it's something to be aware of we we've made a good practice or we try to not arrive to a location a new location on say as Sunday we've done that before and you go and just want to grab a few groceries and you can't grab anything so you're really kind of stuck with the convenience store and that's fine for your Basics but once again it's one of those things you just kind of have to be aware of and I'm sure that as you got used to it uh then it would just become normal or if you like nighti if if you're if you're a NTI type of person that likes to stay up late eat late go out go dancing whatever you want to do it's great for that too because you can take a nap in the middle of the day and then head out that night well and on that note they actually don't typically eat their dinner until 7 8:00 at night so when they're closing down in that midday when they open back up say around 5:00 most people aren't going out and having dinner until 7 8:00 at night now for us that once again was kind of in that con category because we're older and we just eat earli we eat at a different time we're hungry around 5:30 6:00 and things aren't open open so um an example of that is we went to go just get a takeout pizza and even the takeout pizza place didn't open until 7:00 so it was like okay but you know once again you kind of get used to it on the note of food if you have any food concerns as far as gluten or just even wanting to try and eat maybe a lower carb diet Italy is going to be a challenge for you I tend to flow more that direction and eating out is tough I mean it's now I love gluten and I love carbs so I don't think there were many carbs left in Italy when we left just to so you know I love gluten I love carbs I didn't have a problem at all but if you do have a problem it will be challenging it would be a bit challenging now transportation is another one where it's kind of Hit or Miss we found it to be Miss more often than hit the trains were a little bit outdated and they weren't always on time there was one time where it actually stopped we had to get up fortunately it stopped at a station thank goodness thank goodness we had to get off yeah switch trains a problem with the train so we we did have some complications when it came to the train system now that might have just been our bad luck we don't know but it is what we experienced over a two-month period right and even in the cities there was not really great accessibility some towns that you go into there's a tram that goes through the town so it makes it really easy to just kind of get around we didn't find that in the bigger cities or even the smaller areas that we were in and then if you want to maybe Veer and go ahead and use Uber or taxi which they have it was expensive very expensive another thing we were really bummed about is that we rely on Wi-Fi and a lot of places we have traveled to they have it available on the buses and the trains and we did not get that in Italy anywhere even well they had Wi-Fi but you had to sign into your email account to hook on the Wi-Fi how you supposed to hook onto your email account if you don't have cell service right they would actually they wanted to send you like a code to your texting or an email that made zero sense to us at all so we were never able to access it so that to us was a real downside because a lot of time we don't have cell service with that being said we did look into SIM cards for this very reason and they were quite expensive by the time we decided to look at SIM cards uh we were within a month of leaving Italy anyway so we decided not to they were they were expensive they were about $45 a month so yeah we actually priced them a couple times we went in in Florence and priced it and it was about it was over40 for a month's time and then we priced it again when we started traveling again cuz there were some situations where we did run into needing uh coverage and once again it was just so expensive we just haven't been used to having to pay that much for coverage but we're going to start we have decided that we're going to break down and we're going to start spending the money to get selfservice the SIM card our phones do not take eim everybody's telling us you know catch up it's 2023 now get an eim our phones don't take eim so it's a SIM card and it works every time it works great you just have to pay for it so we're going to start doing that so now to what just under two months in Italy cost us we ended up going to four different areas we were in Florence we were in then we kind of did a week of kind of day trips we went to pulia we went to tropia and then we ended up down in Sicily in poo so we're going to break down each of those areas for you and the amount of time that we were there and we were going to start off in Florence so our first stop was Florence now we love Florence we had a great month in Florence we Carrie picked a great neighborhood for us to stay in as well it was in walking distance to just about everything it was your typical uh Italy what you might think of if you're in Italy which was perfect now the Airbnb was also typical of what you might find in a traditional Italian home mhm it cost $1700 $1,758 to be exact and that's quite high for us it's very high and on that note of when I was talking about how it doesn't matter really what time of year you're traveling there uh we didn't have a whole lot of options at that point this is what we were going to pay to get a place that was close enough to the city center and gave us the space that we needed um one of the things that we actually didn't mention in our in our cons that I would kind of say with that started with this location when you are traveling through a country that is so historically I mean it's it's it's all the buildings are historical and they're old beautifully beautifully old it's beautifully old but you are going to deal with all of those non-modern things that you're used to right and so we had a few instances in this hotel or in this place that we stayed we had a chunk of the ceiling fall down on the bed it was a good size chunk of the ceiling um fortunately it happened after we were out of bed um there were a lot of just little things that you're going to have to deal with in these older buildings so just kind of be aware of that this place definitely checked a lot of those boxes of uh of being old but it was a great location and we did love our time in Florence for sure great thing about where we stayed the neighborhood we stayed in was there was three grocery stores right nearby when I say nearby within maybe a 5 or 10 minute walk and Carrie wanted to go to each one of them just to make sure that we were going to the right one I was satisfied in the very beginning with the first one which was like a convenience store had everything I needed every carb and every gluten thing that I needed to have so we did find some great grocery stores um now the price we spent on groceries um I would say for the as often as we eat in wasn't too bad no we spent $473 for a month worth of groceries for two people and that includes um my beer that includes everything in there that we buy at a grocery store so anything to maintain your household so if you need laundry detergent or anything uh I didn't think that was bad at all we also one thing I'd say is we we were coming off of traveling for just about a month where we were eating out almost every day and so we did this includes a lot of eating in yeah yeah we took we we took a break some of you that have been following us for a while now knew that we did some fast travel through Central Europe which we'll never do again um so we did take a take some time off and and ate indoors we ate in uh great yeah so great grocer stores great markets next we have our entent mment cost this includes eating out drinking out and then it also includes anything that we go to do which we actually did one thing about Florence that I'll say is it's a great Central Point to put yourself if you want to do day trips from there and so we did go to chinat and we went to uh tesany we went on a day trip through tesany which we would highly recommend you can check out both of those videos as well um and so our cost for that which I think is incredibly affordable yeah was $182 now the $182 I challenge you to do that or less I just I think we did a great job there uh we're very budgeted you can spend a lot more money while I'm Florence doing all the museums and everything else there is to do the Stak Florentine you might want to do we didn't just too expensive for us but you should probably do it amazing sounds we're not knocking it we just didn't want to pay the money for it our transportation costs in Florence now we walked just about everywhere so we didn't do the Ubers we didn't do the city buses we didn't do anything like that you can rent those uh scooters you got the big fat tires for the Cobblestone which looks like a lot of fun I know for sure carry could do it I would get hurt so we didn't we didn't touch those but we did take a train out to laspia we did the coast and those train tickets cost us $68 yeah really not bad uh one thing we do look for when we are finding a place to stay is how close it's going to going to be to that main transportation source and because in Florence we knew we wanted to do a lot of day trips we knew we didn't want to constantly have that Transportation go budget go up because we were having to get a taxi or find transportation to get to the train station so it was a quick walk it was maybe a 15minute walk from where we were at to get train station now on to our miscellaneous expenses now this is anything extra that we have to get that month uh I needed to do a little bit of shopping for just miscellaneous stuff that I needed makeup or hair supply or whatever uh and that was $50 $50 now that sounds expensive but I got a haircut and I've gotten haircuts all over the place for anywhere between $2 to $8 I thought $15 in bufa was expensive I spent $30 to get a haircut in Florence and I'll tell you what it didn't look any different from any of those other haircuts I got now the guy did a great job he's very friendly he got a $2 tip but $30 for a haircut yeah that's a lot so our miscellaneous for that month came to $80 which is a lot but we don't typically have a lot of miscellaneous expenses so our phone data plan now we did mention that on the trains they have Wi-Fi uh if you have a data plan we didn't um I think moving forward we may start paying extra for that data plan but while we were in Italy we did not so the grand total for our phones in Italy was 0 it's pretty good yeah we had some um honestly kind of bad experiences of not having data plan uh we had a point where we got blocked out of our Airbnb and the key broke off and uh we had a situation where you needed Wi-Fi or needed phone coverage to actually get into the building and then get into the door which is you had to download an app and unlock the door from an app it was not not a good experience and it would have been a much better experience had we had phone coverage so anyway uh going forward we have decided that is something we are probably just going to bite the bullet and do uh but we did not have it during that next we have our monthly reoccurring expenses uh in this category we have our health insurance uh Brian goes with signag global we actually both used to I have since switched over to where I have safety Wing uh the other thing that we have in there is Netflix because you got to have Netflix and then the other one that we do have is a VPN which if you travel all the time we highly suggest you have a VPN they're very affordable it's just another safety element to have in place to protect you when you're in either an Airbnb a hotel or an airport trying to get online uh and it also is what we have available so that we can access all those shows on Netflix that we enjoy watching that are from the states cuz without that B can we can't do that right now we have gotten several comments when we do these cost of living type videos when we include those things that we shouldn't include those things well yes we should because if you're traveling and you don't have insurance you need to have insurance and you also need a VPN so that's why those are included if you want to subtract the price of the Netflix go right ahead but you should always have insurance and you should always have a VPN so if you are interested in checking out of those the links are down below uh and you can go ahead and take a look at them like I said it's an affordable way to just protect yourself so our costs for our reoccurring monthly fees uh that month was $274 so again I don't think $274 is too bad for insurance VP and Netflix for us it's a necessity now our grand total for Florence for 28 nights was $2,835 yeah you know that's it that's just a high month for us we knew that was going to be the case we don't have any regrets because it really centralized us to everything and I think that when we look back at that month and how much we saw and experienced it was totally work you can't put a price on memories Carrie yeah you can now after leaving Florence we headed to pulia this had come so highly recommended us and boy we do not regret our time we spent there we were there for four nights we stayed in B and it was a great landing point to just get yourself to all the little towns right around there uh now one thing that you will notice if you do follow our channel is there was not a video on this area or the area right after this there's a reason behind that now if we had done a video they would have been really fantastic videos so cool no we took a vacation uh we we spent um the time in Central Europe and and then we we shot what 15 videos in uh 7 weeks they all had to be edited and taken care of so we got all that done so we got down there put the cameras away and we just enjoyed our time yeah and it was a nice break um so we do highly recommend that area uh and so what we had was a Airbnb it was a great location we were right next to the train we didn't necessarily explore the re at all we went into the town a little bit it's not our favorite location necessarily but we were there to go to all the outlying towns around there so we spent a total of $418 on our accommodation yeah and that's again four nights that's that's not bad you do have to have an app to open the door but other than that it was a nice place now only spending four nights in beree exploring pulia our grocery bill was minimal we did eat in a couple nights uh we did go to the grocery store and grabb some cold beers because some of those day trips were long days so we didn't dulge with that but that bill only came to $46 MH and because we were moving around a bit and seeing things during the day and doing these day trips we ate out more than we probably normally do and we drank out more than we normally do and so that was $110 which for us for entertainment because that wasn't paying to get into things or anything like that it really was just eating and drinking out and so 110 in 4 days is quite a bit but the drinking out part if you've never had white wine from the Pula region in Italy find yourself a bottle because it is I'm going to say it fantastic yeah we enjoyed the wine out a lot more than we were getting beers we were getting wine he had his beers in the house yes now our transportation while we were there sounds like it's expensive but it's really not came to $164 but 133 of that was just to get there from Florence and $133 for a fast train from Florence to Bri sounds like a bargain yeah it was a long train ride and uh you did we did pay just a little bit more to De up the fast train not a lot more uh it was totally worth it it was totally worth it it cut off like quite a few hours so and then $31 of that was our transportation to get around to all the different cuz we did three different day trips and so I just kind of feel like $31 for both of us to do three days of moving around is really affordable it sound like a great deal it sounds High to begin with but once you break it down it was it was very affordable so our grand total for exploring pulia for four nights was $738 I would do that over again in a heartbeat yeah I would too but this is starting to add up I'll be honest I'm starting to sweat a little bit all these numbers okay from there we went West and ended up in tropea probably the highlight of my trip I really enjoyed tropea I thought it was a cool little place great beaches great Community I really really liked it a lot we had a really cool hotel we stayed in right in the center of everything and and for me uh whatever we spent was worth it how much did we spend $32 uh for two nights is that right so a little bit more but we were right in the heart of everything which we don't normally put ourselves right in the center like that so it was super convenient to just be able to walk right out the door go get something to eat uh and take it included breakfast it did include breakfast with a really cool view so that was a lot of fun uh yeah beautiful area and we kind of found that that would be an area we would go back to and spend a little bit more time cuz it is there's not a lot there to do but it had a beautiful beach yeah we had a great time okay so for 2 days we didn't need any groceries cuz we were in a hotel and they provided breakfast like we said so uh our we had zero on groceries but we did have in our entertainment budget we did spend $74 we ate out we had some great pizza and we had a place where you could get some shuder and wine it was really affordable was like $20 if you kind of search a little bit you can find the places that are either a little bit out of town or even right in the center that are affordable just don't immediately hop into that most touristy place because we did that and we actually got up from our seat and walked out because the prices were so high you walked out on them we did now Transportation uh from beree straight across pretty much to the West Side to Tropa um again it's a slower train we didn't take a fast train this time that train cost us $87 that was another very very long day uh fortunately when you do get into tropia the train station is pretty much right there at the center of town so you just kind of walk down the hill right into the center so it was easy especially their roller bags going downhill it's a little more difficult going back up going back not so much later yeah the total cost for two nights in tropea was $463 uh you know worth it it totally worth it yeah we really loved both of this we really did we had a great time next we move to to pmo now pmo we were supposed to be there for 28 days we ended up having to cut our time short if you watched one of our past videos we talked about how we needed to save some time for in the shenen because of a cruise that we're going to be taking uh that we that we didn't originally plan on and so we ended up only being in PLO for 23 of those days and uh but this is for the full amount that we paid which was $1,162 yeah we had to eat a couple days a few days yeah cuz we left ear but even uh we had looked at booking something different to not be paying for days we weren't going to be there but it was still going to cost us a lot more because we got that month-long discount now you're also not going to see a video on poo not because we're still on vacation uh but because you know we we don't bring you the negative video we just don't like to do that if we're not big on a place we won't bring you a video at all and we decided not to bring you a video on pelo now I'm sure as I am sitting here that we're going to get a negative comment on that as well and again that's fine we gave it a chance we did not give all of Sicily a chance so we will be back in sisly at some point but palmo um we just didn't care for it we didn't care for it and you know honestly there were times we walked uh two areas thinking okay are we missing something what are we what are we not seen because you know we had watched enough videos where people were always so positive about poo um we didn't see it we honestly could not see what people saw as a draw to come there because the rest of Italy was so beautiful to us and poo did not have that uh it's very rough around the edges and we can see past Rough Around the Edges but it was more than that I'm Rough Around the Edges it was more than that so uh yeah we just sat down one day decided it was not a video we wanted to bring you but we are going to share our cost with you because we did stay there now there was one positive thing about poo and that was the grocery store was only a block and a half away and it was a great grocery store so we did eat in a lot cuz we didn't go out a lot no um and we did drink quite a bit of beer and wine while we were there we did take our last moments to enjoy the Italian wine at a really affordable price so uh thankfully we our Airbnb there was really great as far as the interior was great and spacious so we didn't mind being home and we got a lot of work done so that was a lot of work done which needed to get done um so our grocery bill um that we carried up six Flats of stairs every time uh was $290 yeah so not not terribly bad now our entertainment costs uh this included because we honestly didn't really go out in poo uh very much and so but we did do a day trip to a town called chef which is just up the coastline and in hindsight we do wish that we would have probably just stayed there because it was a really adorable town and we really enjoyed it uh so while we were on that day trip we did eat out there and we enjoyed some wine and uh some beers so our entertainment budget was $58 $58 um for 20 3 days three days including the day trip if you haven't seen that video by the way it's a Dandy check that one out it's that's an old it's a good one I think my grandpa used to say prob so now getting from trapa to Palo uh by train again and again it wasn't a bad day at all there was a transfer and a ferry ride we had to take that all cost what that cost $46 um which again with the ferry the trains and everything yeah didn't seem like that much it seems like kind of a headache to do that trip because you are getting off of the train you have to then walk to the ferry take the ferry across and get on another train but the train station is right where the fairies at uh and so it's actually pretty there's actually people there helping you um at least there was somebody there helping us yeah to figure it all that it was really easy um so then there was also the day trip cost the train from pelo to shuo was $30 and that train was about an hour and a half long there about 3 hours back because for whatever reason and the train stopped in the tracks for about an hour a really long time once again on a really hot long day so that was a total of $76 for our transportation cost for poo Okay so once again because it's a new month a new full month we had our reoccurring monthly expenses so same things covered again and that was $274 $274 uh in addition to that was our accommodations uh for the 23 nights M but paid for 28 in pelo was $860 $1,860 so the total cost for traveling through Italy for just under two months and we feel like we saw a lot of Italy was $ 5,896 pretty steep yeah pretty steep that's $2,948 each for us that's quite a bit of money um but uh we're in Italy and it was worth it yeah like I said earlier you can't put a price on memories so you actually can and uh so those if you have been following you know that this is now three months in a row where we have definitely gone beyond what our comfortable budget is we did know that and we planned on it and that is why we have now exited that area to an area we are saving some money we're saving some money now we saved money in the front end by being in Southeast Asia so we've got this year balanced out we think we'll know at the end of the year when we do that video it's been a long one all right cheers' had to learn being from the United States being Americans being [Music] American

Channel: Brian and Carrie

Views: 25,380

Keywords: Brian and Carrie, is italy safe to visit, Watch before traveling to italy, italy watch before you visit, Italy 2023, Travel italy, How to travel italy, Italy travel guide, Italy 2024 travel guide, travel guide for italy, cost to travel italy, What does italy cost to travel, what does italy cost to travel, italy 2024, interesting things about italy, cost of living italy, Things to know about italy before visiting

Id: GMxhnVuP3-k

Length: 35min 47sec (2147 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2023