HOW MUCH DOES A TRIP TO ALGARVE COST? 7-DAY BUDGET

Since the pandemic, flight prices have been sky-high, especially in the high season like summer. But you may find some bargains if you book well in advance, if you book to travel during the week, etc. The best thing to do is to compare a lot and book as soon as possible, to avoid the price going up too much. The closest airport to the Algarve is Faro airport, and you can find good prices with Easy Jet or Ryanair, but remember that these airlines DON'T allow pets.

In our case, we are travelling by car, so we are not going to add anything in this section. We have included it so that you have a complete budget, or if you are travelling by plane, so that you have complete information with ALL the steps you have to follow when preparing your trip.

✈️ We pay 0 euros for flights to Algarve.

As we always tell you, travel insurance is ESSENTIAL, especially when travelling with a dog because if something happens to it, going to a vet outside the country and in an emergency can be very expensive and can make your trip more difficult.

In this case, if you're european, you can use the European Health Insurance Card, but you have to take into account that there are things that this card doesn't cover. On a trip you may have an infinite number of unforeseen events that may not be directly related to health, such as lost luggage, cancellation of the trip, expenses arising from hospitalisation for accompanying persons, and many other examples.

We work with IATI Seguroswe work with iati insurance, because they offer the best coverage not only for us, but also for our pets with the modality IATI Escapadas. Plus, you get a 5% discount just for being a reader of travelling with a dog.

We paid €42 for the travel insurance. €21 per person, Snow included in the insurance.

In our case, we did not rent a car, but travelled in our own car. But if you are going to travel by plane, and you want to move around the different cities of the Algarve, our recommendation is to rent a car, because you will save a lot of time, and there are no trains to go to each city.

Therefore, in this section we will only include what we spent on petrol and tolls, which was not little, even though we used the electronic tolls. Although it is true that as we went to several cities, in each city you were charged tolls to enter and exit (Lagos and Sagres).

We paid €150 for petrol and €120 for tolls. Total: €270. €135/person.

Now comes the key moment: accommodation. As we mentioned in the post on where to stay in the Algarve with a dog, hotels are expensive, especially in high season. It is a place that is in fashion, so prices have skyrocketed in recent years. Also the pandemic has made everything very expensive and travel is becoming more and more something for the privileged. In the post we only include hotels, but there are flats, Airbnb, but we don't trust this company at all for several reasons that some people have experienced, so we will NEVER recommend you things we haven't tried before.

We stayed at Tivoli Lagos Hotel, a 4-star resort of the NH Hoteles chain. We were lucky enough to have a discount voucher for being registered in their points programme, so it was a lot cheaper than it should have been, that's why we went. But to be more realistic, we are going to give you the price of what it would have cost us WITHOUT the discount. We have to highlight that this option included breakfast and dinner, as it was more convenient for us to have dinner at the hotel, without having to look for a place to dine.

🏨 We paid €1500 for accommodation for 6 nights. €750/person including Snow.

Whenever we travel, we always try to eat as cheaply as possible to compensate for other expenses, such as hotel, flights, etc. We are not very fussy about food, so we don't mind cutting back a bit on this as long as the food is good. The first day we paid a lot in a pokes place in Lagos because we were used to paying €12 per poke in Vigo, and here the joke was €40 for 2 pokes. But we learnt our lesson.

🥣 We paid €170 for food and drinks. €85/person.

For this section, we always have a fixed budget because we contract everything before we travel on Civitatis, but for this trip we improvised a lot because we didn't know if Snow was going to be very tired or not. And thank goodness, because most of the activities didn't allow dogs. Here is a summary of what we spent:

• Boat trip on Ponte da Piedade: €40, Snow did not pay.
• Visit to Sagres Fortress: €6, Snow did not pay.
• Visit to Albufeira: €0, only the petrol, which we have already included in the corresponding section.
• Meia Praia: we rented two sun beds on one of the days: €10.

🚤 We paid €56 for leisure and activities. €28/person.

After this breakdown, let's have a look at how much a trip to the Algarve really costs, budget for 7 days:

Total budget of our trip to the Algarve 💰 €2038 in total 💰

€1019 per person.