Amalfi Coast on a budget + What I wore

By Francesca Felix | July 9, 2018

John and I decided to head to the Amalfi Coast for our 2-year anniversary trip. We tried to keep it low budget (which is super hard considering how expensive everything is! We did manage to save some money for a few things while we had to cut corners on other aspects of the trip. After years of traveling, we have figured out where it is important to splurge a bit and where to cut corners.

How we saved:

1. IF THE TICKET’S RIGHT, BOOK THE FLIGHT:

Sorry for the stupid rhyme but it makes it easier to remember haha. If you see a cheap ticket JUST BOOK IT and figure out details later! We kept our eyes peeled for low tickets and jumped the moment we saw a round trip ticket for $700 straight into Rome out of LA. We had originally wanted to fly into another part of Italy, but decided that $700 was too good to pass up and just planned our trip around this flight. We used this app called Sky Scanner which is AMAZING. You type in where you want to go, set your filters (like how long you want the flight to be, direct, layover..etc) and it will calculate all the fares for you of every airline. You can even set up alarms to let you know if there is a deal happening. Thank god we got the ticket when we did. The next week tickets jumped back up to 1,400 roundtrip. No way we would have spent on that. YIKES!!!

2.HALF HOTEL/HALF AIRBNB.

The reason I say “half hotel and half Airbnb” is because sometimes it’s nice to arrive at a 100% clean and safe place with an extra cozy bed and plush robes after traveling a 12 hour flight. This is especially crucial if there is a time difference and a red eye involved. Having to search for your Airbnb and get any unexpected surprises when you are jet lagged is horrible. However, hotels are overpriced and force you to eat out. Which forces you to spend that tourist money on overpriced restaurants. We love to arrive on the first day to a hotel (if its a long trip) then spend the middle chunk at an Airbnb. Switching to an Airbnb helps you save money on stay and on the food. You can cook from “home” if you want instead of going out. I also love how it helps you get a better feel of what it would be like to live as a local. While in Positano, we walked to the local market and cooked breakfast a few days and saved by making cheap (and not to mention, healthy) dinners. Of course, we made sure to splurge on a few restaurant meals to get that culinary experience and not feel like we didn’t do it up at least once or twice. It’s all about moderation.

3. Find the underrated and less touristy areas.

Staying in less touristy areas is almost half the price of the more popular places. We found out that Ravello was the perfect town in the Amalfi Coast to stay in. Still close enough to all the other little towns to do day trips and beautiful enough to explore for a few days. It’s beautiful, less touristy and by proxy, a bit cheaper to stay in and eat in. We did two days in Ravello and a few in Positano. By far Positano was more expensive and far more crowded. We had planned to check out Capri, but in the end decided it would cost us too much money for the day of boat rental, ferry rental, food on the island..etc. Instead we decided to just rent an umbrella on the beach all day and drink rose, relax, and collect sea glass from the black sand. Really you cant go wrong doing that. After all, it was too beautiful to not just sit and enjoy.