Been a few years since I´ve done any longer tours with a bike in Europe. Last year, me & my girlfriend went to ride the western coast of the US, and parts of the southwest as well. We stayed for 6 weeks, rode (2-up) a DL650, similar to what we have back home, stayed in roadside motels mostly (boy, was I tired of the faceless chain motels after our trip!!) Anyway, she kept a pretty thorough list of all our spendings there, including food, accommodation, fuel (that´s cheap compared to Europe!), tickets to the attractions, national parks, etc. We ate about 50% at the roadside places, another 50% bought from the big supermarkets. Her calculations ended up so that including the both of us, we had spend around 115 USD (about 85 euros by todays exchange rate) per day. This does not include our flights, or other costs (than fuel) related to the bike, like rental, insurance, etc.

This year we plan to do another tour in Europe with our own bike. The plan at this moment is 100% under construction, but it looks like we may spend some 5-6 weeks, preferably after the high season (we would start off early September) and we may head from Sweden and Denmark to Germany, then to North Italy, then Corsica, Sardinia & Sicily, then return via Italy and to Austria, Czech, Poland and maybe the Baltic states (or if it gets cold already, we take a ferry from Gdynia). I´ve been to those Italian islands with a bike in 1997, but never to Corsica. I´m estimating some 10000-12000 kms total on the trip.

We´re a bit short on space, so probably will not take a tent with us. Remains to be seen, if we´ll take our cooking equipment (didnt have it in the US). So we´ll eat in the cheapish places while on the road, and usually buy something from the supermarkets for the evening and next morning.

The ferry costs will naturally be significant, but I´d leave them out of this (as I may be able to get some nice deals with the operators here, and they may possibly be able to help me in the Mediterranean, too).

I´ve done many similar trips in the past, but they were a long time ago, when there was still the Deutsche mark, the French franc, and the Italian lira.... a lot has probably changed during this time. Now I´m wondering, what would be the rough figure per day, that I should use, when budgeting this for 2 people on 1 bike (basically including just food, accommodation & fuel) for 2010? I know the spendings will depend a lot on ourselves, too. What kind of accommodation we will get, how early we´ll start to look up for one, where do we eat, etc (we probably won´t spend many nights in big cities, didnt do that in the US either). And sometimes, when it rains and we´re tired, we will pay extra because we dont want to keep searching for a cheaper option... And some areas in Europe are cheaper than others of course, but we´re likely to travel across both western and eastern parts of the continent, as well as some parts of the south.

So, if we plan to do this in a similar manner as we did our 2009 tour in the States, any educated guesses of the average costs per day, even for some specific regions, or your own experiences of trips into those areas would be welcome!