London
Transport
- Central London is pretty accessible by walking. If you have the time and you don't mind walking, you can plan your itinerary such that the attractions are near to each other.
- Get a Oyster Card at the airport. You can use the Oyster card for tube, bus and even rail (Not too sure if it applies for all rail).
There's daily peak and non-peak fare limits for different zones: check out the capping here.
What I did was I planned our itinerary according to distance between attractions and calculate the least traveling cost required. I also took advantage of the cap limit (i.e. plan a day of attraction hopping - Day 2), and got to travel for free halfway through my itinerary.
You can plan your tube journey by visiting Transport for London website. You can also follow their twitter for any live updates (i.e. disrupted services such as tube strike or maintenance)
Food
- London is generally expensive due to the exchange rate (x2). The price tag looks the same but the impact on the wallet is different. You can save money in London by cooking simple meals and buying the grocery from their "provision shop". It is even cheaper than their cheapest supermart. In case you didn't see any "provision shop" around, you can visit their lower end supermarts such as Tesco and Aldi. Do note that the quality of food may be tagged to their price tag, if you want high quality food, you might want to go to more expensive supermart, i.e. waitrose.
- If you fear that you will burn the kitchen, or your itinerary is very packed, you can visit the small cafes along the street (not the franchised stores like Pretz A Manger). I have heard that bars/pubs offer cheap meals int h day time too. One meals at such places cost you only about 4 pounds, and tipping is either not necessary or not as high as restaurants.
For tips of tipping, see here.
Accommodation
- In general, staying in shared rooms in hostels < airbnb < private room in hostels <<< hotels.
But of course it may vary according to the locations you stay. Marylebone is considered a prime location, so we spent more on our airbnb accomodation. But hey, at least i don't need to tip.
Attractions
Please refer to the Visit London website for a list of free attractions you can go to. We went to mostly free attractions, such as museums, landmark sightseeing (without going in to the ones with admission fee), and parks. But when it's time to spend, you have to spend. We really wanted to go to the Harry Potter Studio, even though it was expensive, we feel it's worth it.
Germany
Transport
- We booked our inter-city/regional tickets as soon as it opens, for the best price (the price increases like airfare). And we went for saver fare, which means we have to take a specific train at specific time. At times there might be sales/promotions as well, you might want to look out for it.
You can also refer to Bahn website for their offers if you travel extensively.
- we stayed in Intercityhotel at Berlin, so the transport in Berlin is free.
- In Munich, we normally walked if the destination isn't too far. If you want to travel to the countryside (i.e. for lakes, mountains and castles), Bayern Group tickets can save you a lot of money.
Food
- Everything is pretty affordable as compared to London and Switzerland. We grabbed our food from the supermarkets or small stores at the Hbf on the go.
Accommodation
- We stayed in hotels in Germany as they are (surprisingly) cheaper than Airbnb. Best if they come with offers (i.e. free transport).
Attractions
- Again, parks and museums can be pretty cost-saving, see here. But do note that the museum at Museum Island can cost you a bit. In general, the admission fees to attractions (i.e.Neuschwanstein Castle) is much cheaper than London.
Switzerland
Transport
- If you are planning to take their public transportation, do get some sort of a discount card. See here for their travelcards. For us, the half fare card, even though it cost quite a bit, substantially decreased our traveling fees. It especially helps when we are going up to Jungfrau.
Food
- It.Is.Expensive.To.Eat.Out.In.Switzerland. i can't reiterate more. A Mcdonalds meals can cost you SGD$20? Even their cheapest take-out/eating place Migros is expensive. I ate a small packet of fried rice (not nice) for more than SGD$15. My friend ate some seafood salad (not nice) for more than SGD$30. In generally, the food was too salty for my liking, so I am glad to eat in.
- What we did was to buy the groceries from Co-op and cook our breakfast and dinner. Otherwise, we depended on our cup/packet noodles for the carbs. During the day, we brought along bread with nutella.
Accommodation
- We booked quite late, so Airbnb houses were the cheapest options. Even hostel cost near SGD$1000 for 2 nights at Lauterbraunnen.
Attractions
- It will be a pity if we go to Switzerland but did not see the amazing scenery. So even though the attractions had some sort of admission fee/transport fee, we still went if we really wanted to go (i.e. Jungfrau). But we decided to drop the expensive adventure sports/cable car (truth was, the weather was not to our advantage) and other more expensive attractions i.e. Schynige Platte:Botanical Alpine Garden (CHF 64 per person omg!!!)
All in all, we book our accommodations near attractions/main stations to save on transport fee and time. We also ensure there were supermarkets near our accommodations. Even though we tried to budget, we splurge whereas necessary. You don't fly there on a 13 hours flight to suffer or miss out on places you really want to go.
