Why We Can’t Wait To Get Back To Europe

We love traveling and we love getting great value for our dollar. Of course, we haven’t done much of either over the past few months. We’ve been back here in Canada waiting for our second COVID vaccination and paying sky-high Toronto rents. 

With summer coming, we thought “let’s get out of the city.” Surely small town living would be a lot less expensive. We thought we could get a little place in the country, maybe by a lake. Enjoy a little nature. And the whole time we would be saving so much money. After all, this is the lifestyle we’ve been enjoying in Europe for the past year. We’d spend a little more to stay in a place like Athens and get all the buzz and excitement and great food of the big city. Then we’d head off to more remote areas for a taste of small town living, which was always much less expensive. 

Well, here in Canada it doesn’t really work that way. As we’ll show, you can spend a lot to stay in the big city or you can spend even more for a getaway out of town. 

We actually scored a great deal on our first place in Toronto back in March by booking at the last minute during the off season. It’s a studio apartment in the trendy west end that usually goes for $2,100 USD or more for a month. We managed to snag it for just $1,600 USD. Still it was a pretty tiny space for two full-sized people.

Our second place was a lot roomier. It was a one-bedroom apartment right beside the biggest park in the city. This one came in at $1,800 USD a month, which was a pretty decent price for the neighbourhood. We still have a couple more months to go in Canada while we wait for our second vaccinations. Hence our thinking to relocate ourselves out of the city and capitalize on those small town prices. Of course, we couldn’t have been more wrong.  

Our first scans of the out of town rentals told us it wasn’t going to be as easy or cheap as we thought. We’re entering prime cottage season here in Canada. There are only a few really warm months of the year and everyone’s competing for their summer getaway experience at exactly the same time. Prices are through the roof. 

We normally book a month at a time but we quickly discovered that our usual approach would be totally unaffordable. Our budget for renting an Airbnb in Europe is $1,400 a month. Here in Toronto we were already splurging at $1,800. If we wanted a month in cottage country, that was an easy $4,000 or more.

We did end up finding a place with many of the attributes we were looking for. It’s in Blue Mountain, with lots of provincial parks and hiking nearby. The Airbnb is really nice: spacious, well decorated and very comfortable. There’s a fireplace and a patio with a barbecue. Of course, none of this came cheap. The monthly amount was far outside our usual budget. 

So our big plans quickly shrunk down.

Instead of planning for a totally unaffordable month, we had to plan for a somewhat unaffordable week.

And our idea of being on a lake became a short drive from a lake. 

Honestly, handing over that much money for just a week kind of hurt. We know from our travels that we could get so much more for a lot less money in a low-cost destination. When we were in Turkey back in 2020, we stayed in the beautiful little town of Kas. This is a fishing village on the Mediterranean with great access to the sea and hiking trails. We stayed in a brand new apartment with great views and enjoyed delicious local food. We stayed there during the offseason so it was ridiculously affordable at $160 USD for a week. If we stayed there during peak season, like this time of year, the price would skyrocket all the way to $300 for a week.

Another small town experience with an equally small price was our stay in Kalambaka in northern Greece. This is a town that brings you as close as possible to the amazing rock formations and historic monasteries of Meteora. We stayed in a charming little Airbnb that goes for a very affordable $400 per week during this time of year. 

Now let’s compare those prices to what we paid for a vacation here in Canada. We’re getting a quintessential small town Ontario getaway. We’re close to hiking and beautiful Georgian Bay is only a short drive away. For all this we’re paying a very hefty price of $1,156 USD for a week. That’s almost our entire monthly apartment rental budget for just one week. 

This place is definitely more luxurious than our little condo in Kas or our apartment in Kalambaka. It’s decorated really nicely; it’s in a great location. But we could have gotten a lot more luxury in those other places and still be paying less than we are here in Canada. 

Of course, we’re loving this little slice of Canada in the summer; it’s beautiful and we’re grateful to have a getaway. But this experience has really reinforced that we would rather be overseas and get so much more for our money. That’s why we love spending our early retirement in low cost of living countries. It’s geoarbitrage at its best. We get everything we look for in a travel experience and it all comes in at a much lower price tag.

In fact, we’ve discovered that a monthly budget of just $2,500 USD can go pretty far in Europe. At that amount, we can get a nice apartment in a central location and enjoy great local food and entertainment. If you want to see what kind of lifestyle $2,500 buys in popular European cities, check out this next post.