How much will a European vacation cost, approximately?

You are probably looking at a fairly expensive trip unless you plan on staying in hostels and backpacking a lot. One week in Florence, Paris, Dublin, or London will cost about 400 euro pp (not including air or ground transportation)...translated to USD that's about $530pp. Factor in food & transportation and you could be looking at $800pp per week. I've been to all those cities I listed, staying in moderately priced hotels. We also fly from Washington DC which has a major International airport. We've never spent less than $2000pp per for a week. Also, traveling in Russia requires careful planning since you will need a visa for your visit. You can't go to Russia unless you are invited (the hotel you're staying at will take care of "inviting" you). It would be difficult and fruitless to plan such an extravagant trip for less than a month, so based on that I would estimate that your trip would cost 4000 - 5000 euros per person (again, assuming you stay in hostels or budget hotels). I wouldn't attempt such a trip in less than 2 months so you could stay at each location 4 days and spend 1-2 days traveling to each destination. Of the cities I've visited, Dublin was the most expensive, followed by Paris.

Where are you starting from? How long do you intend to stay? I'm guessing about $5000US, if that is where you are from. How about you get online, check the prices for airfare, then find the prices for the things you want to do, countries-places you want to see, figure out how LONG this is going to take...and plan on about a day of travel between cities...some will only be about an hour or two, depending on where you want to go...make up an itinerary. Figure out about how much each place will be...Remember, Sweden is much more expensive than, say, Russia or Romania (Romania is REALLY cheap...Sweden...not!) Add everything up, and add about 20% for inflation and changing money, and start saving!

Your cost for your trip depends on 1) exchange rate into euros which is not great 2) I would suggest to stay in pensions then hotels as you save money and they are usually family run and include breakfast or HI hostels which are cheap and have a lot of amenities and family friendly.Check out www.hi.com or www.hostelworld.com 3) Buy all train passes online as this will save you lots of money as they are 80 - 90% cheaper then buying in Europe.check out www.ricksteves.com 4) Cars are very expensive in Europe to rent as your are paying for gas or diesel in euros and they go by litres not gallons and there are a lot of tolls on highways in Europe. Also in some places like Czech Republic for example you need to buy a decal to go on the highway or face a 100 euro fine and all fines for foreigners have to be paid on site, but they give you a receipt or ticket to show it is not a bribe. Also you only need 1 good europe guidebook as whatever city you go to has a visitor centre or hotel, pensions, hostels with great detailed maps for free. Hopes this helps you out

Yikes. All of your answers are intense and wayy detailed. Nice! Anyway, if you want to hit up a bunch of places, but cheaply while it still resembles a vacation- like R&R, stressless, and just a good time in general you might want to start out with a tour or something, and then after the tour go and hit the other places on your list. I was looking at a trip called "the grand tour"(of europe) last year, but just went to greece instead. Its 30 days, and goes to six of the countries you want to go to, and then some. It will cost you somewhere around 4000 for airfare, hotels, transportation, and breakfasts, but its a good deal, I think. Then you can just "stay behind" with your friends and go to the other places you want to go. Their discount code is West2009 if you want to use them, and it gets you $50 off any trip each. Whatever you choose- have an amazing time. It sounds like a great trip.

As great as this sounds - and you may in fact love it - I'd recommend making your first European trip a little more limited in scope. You're going to be somewhere where you're an outsider, don't speak the language and be challenged by simple tasks like getting around and feeding yourself. Pick one country that everyone's interested in and you should be able to plan a great trip for under $2k per person. If you're positive everyone would have the fortitude for a multi-country several week trip and money's no object, go for it. However, if $5k / head sounds steep and you're not sure how everyone's going to travel, it may pay to settle on a somewhat less ambitious goal and do it right for less cash.