Travel Costs & Trip Breakdown: Lagos, Nigeria to New York, USA

[June 2019] Mark and I embarked on a three week holiday across the US. We spent four days in New York, one in New Jersey, a total of four days between Maryland, Alexandria (Virginia) and DC and about eleven days in the State of California. I’ve decided to put up a cost breakdown for our time in New York and California.

This New York Budget breakdown is based solely on our experience and is only intended for the purpose of trip planning and to present a fair idea of how much to budget. All prices stated here are either approximate values or exact values at the time of this writing.

New York Budget Breakdown – Transportation

Our first port of entry into the US was New York. We booked our onward ticket to New York (via Paris) and return ticket from Los Angeles back to Lagos (via Amsterdam). The flights cost us a total of $1,625 each (₦585,000). Flights may be slightly cheaper if you book in advance or use a different airline.

In New York, we mainly made use of the public transport system to get around. We got subway passes and each ride costs us $2.75 each. We typically took about 4 rides per day, bringing us to $44 (₦15,840) each for a total of 4 days.

(An overview is further down this post)

New York Budget Breakdown – Accommodation, Feeding & Entertainment

We booked our accommodation using Airbnb and stayed in a cosy apartment in the Bronx Area for 4 days. This cost us $169 (₦60,840). For feeding, I’d say we each spent a daily average of $15 for breakfast, $40 for lunch and $80 for dinner, bringing us to about $540 (₦194,400) for 4 days.

As for activities, most of what we got up to was free. The only exception was the Museum of Natural History where we paid $28 (₦10,080) each for the general admission and one special exhibition.

Here’s an overview of everything we spent. Again, this breakdown is based solely on our experience and is only intended for the purpose of trip planning and to present a fair idea of how much to budget. All prices stated here are either approximate values or exact values at the time of this writing.

I hope you find this breakdown very useful. Please leave me a comment to let me know what you think! And don’t forget to share and subscribe 

Cover Image by Photo by Katie Harp on Unsplash, All other photos by Mark H.

Other articles in this series:

• The Beginning – East Coast, West Coast Holiday
• New York, New York, A Taste of the Big Apple

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