Prices

So far we have been through 8 countries on our trip. Apart from the UK they have all shared the Euro as a common currency. This makes price comparisons between countries easy. In our opinion by far the most expensive country we have been to so far is Italy. Its not just that Italy is expensive on a  range of goods compared across Europe (see figure 1). Its the fact that for things that are typically free in other countries you have to pay for in Italy. An example of this is some waterfalls we visited in Riva Del Garda which were quite expensive (15 euros) for what they were. Italy also "felt wealthy." This is our opinion and purely anecdotal but there were expensive cars everywhere. This despite Italy having the highest fuel prices in Europe. This contrasted with Portugal where at times the motorways were eerily quiet with no traffic. We asked some locals about this and they said that some people could not afford to buy fuel anymore. The other ominous sign in Portugal was that the service stations had barriers preventing people from driving off without paying. We also spotted many abandoned residential building projects while traveling through Portugal.

We are now heading for the most expensive country in Europe, Switzerland so it will be interesting to compare it to Italy and others.

Figure 1 Cost of living Comparison.
Graph compares a range of goods and converts costs to euros for comparative purposes

Fuel prices across europe April 2013