Bill adores France. If price was no object, a life in Paris would be his dream. We didn't go to Paris this time, but we did spend just under a month in Normandy, in the lovely town of Rouen. Rouen is on the Seine, 90 minutes from Paris. It is a beautiful old city of 120,000 people. The historic center is full of restaurants, bars, little shops and dripping with gorgeous medieval architecture.
The plan was to use Rouen as a base, and then, thanks to the wonderful French rail system, visit towns along the Normandy coast. We did day trips to Giverny, Etretat, Dieppe and Bayeux. Everywhere we went was lovely. The food was excellent, the wine and cider top notch. People were friendly. And we could walk everywhere, without worrying about our safety. We liked it enough to find out what it would cost to live there, and were suprised to find out that it would be quite budget friendly. Apartments in Rouen are plentiful in the 800-1100 euro per month range for year long leases.
Our budget was $3,400 USD for 25 days and we spent $4068 -- $668 over budget. While renting a place for year is budget friendly, renting a short term rental is not. We spent $1915 for a lovely studio apartment with a view of the Seine.(https://www.booking.com/hotel/fr/40-quai-du-havre.html) We didn't have a lot of rentals to choose from in high season. We wanted a washe and dryer and an equipped kitchen and that jacked up the price quite a bit. We loved the apartment and the location was great, but we definitely spent too much of our budget on housing. Our day trips were a highlight of our stay, but our transportation cost for the month ended up being quite high ($541) Overall, we thought the overspend was well worth it. We also think we may go back for a lengthy stay (a year if we can work out getting a long stay visa).
We ate out a LOT - we were in France, after all. I'm sure the patisseries wept when we left. We spent almost twice at restaurants as we did on groceries.
Accommodation: 1915.00
Restaurants: 1010.00
Groceries: 365.00
Sightseeing: 238.00
Transportation: 541.00
All we would need to do to live withiin a reasonable budget in Rouen would be to rent an apartment with a longer lease, restrict our sightseeing day trips to 2-3 a month and we'd be fine. We should probably cut back on the cider, wine and pastries too, but that's another issue entirely.
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