Where to go in Europe on a budget?

I am with #14 on this one. The vast majority of Eastern Europe is cheaper than the Western part. From accommodation to eating and trains to sightseeing, you should get a lot more for your €

Greece because of the economic problems.

Istanbul.

hello I too am in the same boat as you, except I will be traveling to Europe with my sister. We will be traveling to Paris (which is kind of expensive but filled with history and lots of museums ) and Italy (which is also filled with lots of history). So I am not an experienced traveler as this will be my first trip. however I will also be going in May for two weeks. The first thing I wanted to recommend is statravel.com which has really good rates on plane tickets for people under the age of 26 and for people who are students. so you would qualify for their best rates. I got a one way ticket from Cali to London on virgin atlantic for $395 I haven't bought my return ticket yet but my options were a return ticket from Dublin to cali for 453 (with american) or a return ticket from rome to cali for 601 (with british airways)... I haven't quite planned out my whole stay but so far that is the biggest savings I have found for me. My budget is $1700...

Lennythelion & cobb: Thanks for the suggestions guys! Much appreciated! :)

Traveljazz: Italy was going to be one of my destinations also. However, I figured I'd better leave that for a future trip when I have a little more money saved up, because unfortunately that'd be just a little too expensive for me now, especially with all the things I'd love to see there :) Thanks so much for suggesting statravel.com! I checked it out, and that should save me a lot of money to book through there! Do you know how you are going to get around while you are over there yet? Like by trains or buses? Just curious as to what another shoe string traveler will be doing :)

My cheapest flight went from DFW to Frankfurt. I changed flight to Madrid. Baggage was booked right through.

Jasmyn.. let me share my 2 cents here.. idk where u would be flying from.. but Aerlingus to Dublin or Shannon is your cheapest flight option out of all... then do a lil bit of Dublin, check out Belfast if money allows, take a ferry or a cheap ryanair flight to mainland, u would like Amsterdam great fun city or Arnhem or Eindhoven, not pricy, from there hop on a train or a cheap flight to Dresden east Germany, great historic city, from there check out Prague, if u still got $$ hit up Venice and from there if u still wanna explore, hit up Croatian coast, but with that 1200 euro budget ur kinda limited so dont do sched. just have fun

Hi Jasmyn!

Like people mentioned before, Eastern Europe is the place to go for strecthing your bucks. But I lived in Spain for a summer and I consider it dirt cheap as well, basically it's only Northern Europe and the big famous cities in Europe that are expensive.

Hint: Flights from Scandinavia to USA and vice versa can be as low as 200 dollars one way. From most cities in Scandinavia you can fly on with Ryanair or, even better for Eastern Europe, Wizz Air. I flew from Gothenburg to Budapest for 20 euros last time...

Wherever you go, good luck and all the best!

I am surprised no-one has specifically mentioned Poland and Slovakia yet. Great outdoors, in Krakow and Warsaw, two of the most fascinating cities in Europe, history all over the place (a lot of it pretty grim.....) and one of the best budget places in Europe.

How much more are flights to say Warsaw than anywhere else?

I actually just did a quick search of return flights from NYC (I know I don't know that is where the OP is from but had to start somewhere) to various cities across Europe for 3 weeks landing last week of May and they were all coming in around the £650 mark; Warsaw, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, Belgrade and Lisbon, London was £550 and Krakow £589. All of these were via somewhere, mostly Moscow with Aeroflot, but also via Zurich with Swiss and Dublin with Aer Lingus.

I would be getting straight to Krakow on those prices.

I would imagine it would cost around 40 Euros more to get to Poland (thinking fly into major hub then easyjet/wizzair from there to Krakow). Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine and the entire Balkans are all great destinations and a lot cheaper than Western Europe. I am suprised more people have not suggested them based on the budget of the OP