How Much Does It Cost to Spend a Month in Toledo, Spain?

Welcome back to my budget series, in which I give you my real baseline budgets for life all over Europe (and sometimes elsewhere).

This spring, I spent a month in the hilltop town of Toledo, Spain, where I finished and then published my Switzerland guide, started to relax a little more after a year+ of working myself into the ground, and took a lot of walks on the pathways the weave through and around the city.

Here’s my baseline budget:

Notes on my spending:

As usual, I found my apartment through Airbnb. It was one of the cheapest options and, to my surprise and delight, was also wonderful—comfortable, sunny, and with birds and tree branches just outside the window.

As for transportation, the big ticket item was my train ticket from Malaga to Toledo. My ride from Nerja to Malaga (via car service) was free, but if you were traveling by bus between the two, I believe the ticket is less than $10 (it wasn’t an option for me because the buses don’t allow dogs except as baggage).

This month I had a pretty hectic work schedule, so I’ve omitted any entertainment budget (since that money went into books, movies, and finally giving in and purchasing myself a Kindle—all things you probably won’t be spending much money on while you’re visiting Toledo). In my free time, I mostly just wandered the pretty pathways around Toledo, near the river, through town, and up the hill outside town where the view of Toledo is spectacular.

When I did eat out (which wasn’t often), I found Toledo quite a bit more expensive than southern Spain. In the south, I could pay 5 euros for tapas and drinks. Here a light lunch with no drink ran me over 10. Cheap compared to Switzerland; expensive compared to southern Spain.

Luna had about four vet visits this month because she’s apparently allergic to central Spain in a big way. The good news is that the vet only charged us for two of the four visits. Luna’s budget also includes a new stuffed toy I bought her.

As usual, I haven’t included some larger overall items, like my yearly health insurance or my monthly business expenses (which were high this month as I ordered promotional books and a variety of supplies for my return to Switzerland). The reason I don’t include these is because your business expenses, healthcare costs, etc. are unlikely to mirror mine, so including those numbers feels less than helpful. So don’t think of the above as my total monthly budget, but rather the baseline of what it costs to live in Toledo for a month. That said, if you’d like to know more about things like worldwide health insurance, I broke down my yearly expenses here.

Interested in seeing more travel budgets? You’ll find them all here.

Going to Spain? Grab a copy of my Barcelona guide: Barcelona: 10 Locals Tell You Where to Go, What to Eat, & How to Fit In.

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