How to organize a vacation in the United States?
During my travels, I have already been to the United States 3 times for a total of 5 months.
During my previous trip around the world, I organized a 2-week trip that cost me less than 1500 euros. So I will explain how I managed to organize this trip or I will offer you step by step a cheap trip to the United States.
I traveled in the low season in October which explained cheaper plane ticket prices and lower hotel prices. The first thing to know, if you want to pay less, do not go in the high season, it could cost you twice as much.
Choosing a cheap plane ticket to the United States:
During my stay in the United States, I chose to visit 3 destinations, they were Chicago (Illinois), San Francisco (California) and Portland (Oregon). The plane ticket cost me less than 900 euros.
I could have paid a cheaper ticket if I had not chosen certain departure dates but I had specific dates to see friends.
The advice I can give if you want to visit several destinations is to travel with round trips. For example, in my case, I left from Paris to Chicago and returned through Chicago. So, my ticket is cheaper.
Example of ticket choice:
Let’s take a more concrete case: if you want to go to the United States for the same period for a single destination.
Take any flight comparison site, if you don’t know any, type “flight comparison” on Google :D.
Flight to the American East Coast:
I decided to go to Chicago:
570€ for a flight with a stopover. Add the booking fees so otherwise 600€.
For New York:
507 euros for a flight with a stopover. Add the booking fees so otherwise 530 euros.
You can find plane tickets for less than 600 euros for the east coast of the United States.
Flight to the American West Coast.
Paris – San Francisco for 625 euros, let’s say 650 with booking fees.
Paris – Los Angeles for 684 euros, let’s say 710 with booking fees.
Conclusion of this first part:
You can get a ticket for each of the United States destinations for about 700 euros.
Choosing cheap accommodation in the United States:
If you want an all-inclusive package like this one on: les voyageurs du monde, it is quite possible but I chose a cheap trip to the United States, it is something simple if you really want to stick to a certain budget, you will have to live in youth hostels.
Knowing that I took the example of major American cities for flights, I will do the same for accommodations, type youth hostel USA or United States on Google, choose any site. For optimization purposes, you will need to compare the different prices offered by the various sites, but I will not do it in this article, it is a task you must do yourself.
In this particular case, we have accommodations between 20 and 25 euros for dormitory rooms.
Prices vary depending on the cities:
New York remains an expensive city, accommodations range from 25 euros to more than 50 euros.
For San Francisco, between 15 and 30 euros.
If we generalize, you can manage with 25 euros per night by taking the low end in New York and the high end in Chicago or San Francisco, so if you leave for 3 weeks. You will spend: 25 * 21 euros or 525 euros.
If you use couchsurfing, you will not have to pay for accommodation.
Conclusion on accommodation
You can find even cheaper but count between 25 and 30 euros for a night in the major cities of the United States. For my trip, I was lucky to have friends in each of the cities who hosted me.
Conclusion on the tips for a trip to the United States.
The flight is at most 700 euros.
Accommodation is at most 525 euros (Based on 3 weeks).
If you take a base of 10 euros per day for food, that makes 210 euros (Based on 3 weeks).
With a budget of 100 euros for getting around the city which is huge for 3 weeks but sometimes you will have to think about walking.
You can reach a budget of less than 1500 euros for 3 weeks of travel in the United States if you use couchsurfing, you could use less than 1000 euros.
In my case, I used less than 1000 euros for my 2-week stay in the United States.
