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Italy is apparently one of europe's most popular and most beautiful travel destinations but how much fun and adventure can you have here on a travel budget of just 1.000 euros? We are The Budgeteers, we're friends who love doing crazy travel challenges! Our goal is to explore, taste and experience as much of italy as possible until our budget is all spent. So how far will we get? And what strangers will we meet along the way? This series we're making the challenge even harder because we're gonna try and buy ourselves some cheap bicycles. Just to show you all the different and crazy ways to discover Italy.
So join us here in Milan as we prepare to start off on our first ever European epic adventure! Making an adventure series like this is only possible thanks to these amazing travel brands: Ortlieb, Komoot and TropicFeel. So here we are I'm in the airport and I'm going to Italy i must say I'm quite anxious actually. This is gonna be probably the craziest series we've ever done. We're going to Italy with almost
no plan at all, and we're gonna do it on the budget. We're gonna do it in a thousand euros. It's gonna be insane! I'm excited and also really scared because I have no idea what's gonna happen, where we're gonna sleep, what we're gonna do. Let's get on this flight. Let's get this series going. Let's do it yeah. -While I'm boarding the cheapest flight towards Milan Lina was already hours into her journey and both of us were just realizing how crazy our plan was of just arriving in italy with nothing planned or pre-booked. Totally winging it from the moment we land.
We don't even have a place to sleep tonight but since Lina arrived first she was gonna look into that. so I just landed and I'm gonna jump on a bus to get to the center of Milan, because I'm in Bergamo at the moment and I will find Thys at the central station tonight when he lands so I got on a bus towards Milan which cost eight euros and I got a sim card for 15. Now with the first money spent I looked online hoping that anyone in Milan had responded to my post on Couchsurfing. And luckily a total stranger responded and was willing to let a sleepover. So I met up with him outside the metro station.
Alright, So I made it. This is Marco, our Couchsurfing host Thank you so much for hosting us. -you're very welcome. I'm really excited so hopefully we get to spend some time with you. -You can leave your mask off now. -This is Lina and now you can recognize her:) Marco seems really friendly and funny. He even offered to help me with my bags up to his apartment. Which he was kind of nervous to show me. This is amazing. -No its not. wow this is so cool you did all this? -yeah Did you steal that sign? -yeah While I'm checking out Marco's cozy apartment with its cool and let's say "borrowed" décor Thys is getting off the plane and setting foot on Italian soil for the very first time.
And we've made it to Italy. This is where it starts guys! Here we are i just got off the train from the airport and now I'm gonna find Lina, she's a really bad ass traveler and i haven't seen her in such a long time. I'm looking for a tall lanky Belgian. Can't be that difficult right? Like how many giraffes come into the train station?:) Unfortunately our third budgeteer, Paddy, who's British and who lives in Thailand couldn't make it this trip, which is pretty sad. But we'll talk more about that. What an impressive train station, it is huge. It's always hard to find people in such a huge train station. it's crazy huge!
I just saw him and he hasn't seen me yet. I'm gonna sneak up on him. Finally we're not meeting each other on a videocall. Oh my god seriously I'm happy I'm in Milan. We're gonna do Italy on a thousand euros! Yeah it's gonna be crazy challenge. -It's gonna be the hardest budget series yet! -I think so yeah! For sure!
First things first when The Budgeteers meet up a midnight snack and beers. This massive pizza I was not expecting. how much does it cost? -five euros five euros! This is a pizza for two people. Two people or one Lina:) "With full bellies our exhaustion kicked in since we hadn't slept much in anticipation for this trip and we needed all the sleep we could get for our first official day in Italy tomorrow." Good morning our host is still sleeping so we're quiet. Marco, our host was actually quite like nervous if his apartment was going to be too small. But it's really all right!
That's exactly what we needed after a flight and a stressful time like getting here. -yeah The challenge starts today you guys. This is our first day in Milan. This is our first day counting Euros. It's the first day in italy. We're excited and we have a really busy day ahead. Let's get our stuff together. -Yeah okay let's go. oh but look at this place! Looks gorgeous. yeah the first impressions of Milan were amazing.
The city looked really cool but exploring all the beautiful sights and the city's nightlife needed to wait for tomorrow. Because today we needed to take care of something really important. Something to make exploring milan and the rest of italy even more fun. okay, today's challenge is: we're gonna try and get bikes. Cheap bikes, here in milan. -yeah i have a feeling it's gonna be a bigger challenge. I'm not even gonna say then we think. Because i don't think it's gonna be easy! it's really gonna be difficult.
i've looked online for the past days on this website called Subito, which is like the ebay of italy. -right. and i found bikes which are within our budget. whether they'll fall apart down on them that's another question. -yeah that's for another episode but today we're just going to try to buy them. Everything depends on this! We want to cycle italy so fingers crossed we get a good bike. "Yeah we're making our travels across italy even crazier by having our own bikes. And with the help of trains try and see as much of italy until our budget is gone.
But that does mean we need to find two appropriate fitting and cheap bikes as fast as possible. Unfortunately we had trouble communicating with the bike sellers since none of us speak italian. So switching to french actually worked out after trying english and spanish, which didn't work at all. But after a metro and a bus ride we made it to the other side of Milan. nervous. yeah if we can actually buy a cheap bike. because that was the point i was stressing about before this trip: How are we going to find bikes? We looked at renting options, which were expensive. We looked at buying bikes. lBut we're only here for a couple of days so we need to buy them now!
fingers crossed. Come on. Very anxious and with no other options available we went to meet up with a bike seller, who has a yellow mountainbike for Lina. "yeah the guy took us to his apartment building, where he had the bike all the way down in a creepy basement." "This was a weird way to spend your first day in milan." "But we took a look at the bike and both gave it a test ride around the block. The bike was old and clearly not in the best shape but it was one of our only affordable options." that's why we were not in the best position to haggle down for the best price.
bueno we don't know how good it is yet but for the most part how we say in spanish: "Bueno, Bonito y Barrato" which means good, beautiful bueno pretty and cheap -like me yeah this mission on this series is to do italy on a thousand euros and also get Lina a boyfriend. imagine! okay now we need to find me a bike. yeah we're having another appointment actually in an hour. we have to like go for my bike. right what time is it? So we were pressed for time and rushed to make it to the nearest metro. Luckily we were allowed to take the bike on. we have a yellow bike on the metro. and we stored the bike back at Marco's place and kept rushing to make it in time for the next bike.
when we get these two bikes we'll have seen the entire city of milan. - this is crazy i think we've passed by garibaldi metro station and station like 100 times today. we got another metro and train all the way outside of milan where we met the other seller. Do you speak English? French? Spanish? Nothing. this is the bike. it's very nice it looks way nicer than mine. I was quite jealous of the look of Thys's bike. but for him looks didn't matter. the only thing he wanted was a bike that was tall enough for him to sit on. and since this was the only one we could find online with such short notice it had to do. so for the price 80? 80 euros is that okay for you? -yes
We now own our own bikes for about 75 euros each, which is less than half of the normal rental price. So a good deal worth the effort. I'm so tired. But we managed to find we did two bikes. we did, but it feels too easy. it feels like something to go wrong. Oh no, foreshadowing. no i'm over the moon. today has been uh quite a roller coaster. we've been out and about the entire day. we didn't think it was really impossible to like find bikes this fast. i think that deserves a beer.
but before celebrating we needed to make it back to milan. so we jumped on the train and made it back to marco's place just before it started pouring rain. we're preparing ourselves. i put on a shirt because we're going to a fancy dinner. we have been invited so uh one of our subscribers Andrea reached out to us and he's here in Milan, visiting his parents at the moment. But we have never met Andrea before so. i'm really excited i'd like to meet him and meet one of you guys subscribers. actually we noticed that a lot of people who watch this aren't subscribers, like the vast majority!:(
If you are not subscribed.so if you're watching this please subscribe it helps us and our channel. it really helps out the channel so thank you. And it gives us opportunities to connect with you guys like tonight. exactly so. we're in milan. he's in milan So we got onto what must have been our 20th metro ride of the day. and got to a part of milan where we haven't been before. suddenly we realized we were in the fancy part of milan. these houses look amazing. impressive. this is like a castle. oh yeah it's here. wow! i feel underdressed suddenly. i know where's my tuxedo? don't invite us to your house because this is what we'll come looking like: wet, smelly, not well rested and very hungry.
Should we ring the doorbell? wow this is beautiful. this is like a lesson in architecture! It's here. You're in the wrong part. how are you? nice to meet you bro. where is Paddy? thanks for inviting us. Paddy is stuck in thailand. no way you're kidding? no it's crazy
he only seen a couple of videos of us and now he trusts us in his house and we're invited for dinner. I'm really amazed. Andrea and his aunt treated us to a real italian feast, with the best mozzarella you've ever tasted! which is just another tribute to italy's great hospitality we've experienced so far these first 24 hours. and after a long evening and lots of wine, we did manage to find our way back to our host's place. Lina is gonna brush her teeth and then we're gonna sleep back in our cozy beds. good night see you tomorrow!
*coffee noise* good morning. hello yesterday was heavy. mm-hmm but we're here and we're finally gonna get to see milan today which i we saw the underground yesterday but we also have our first italian espresso. cheers oh that's so good. that's delicious. like bitter but so strong. let's go discover milan today. yeah
okay Lina are you ready for your first biking adventure? I hope so. let's get going. okay we're off straight ahead! apparently in italy they don't follow the traffic rules. this is the fortress I saw on the bike. look at this church. wow okay a lot of people oh yeah here we are we're in the middle of milan and we met Andrea again from last night so it's called cathedral of duomo. basically it's like the symbol of milan.
In the city center. yeah i've never seen such a meticulously detailed church. yeah it's just the basic church, look at the details how built it is in fact: they have to you know maintain and keep doing work all the time. now you're very lucky because as you can see here in the front there's no work. yeah it's all restorated i can tell you it's all like white marble? it's like of course it's it's an old church this is also the beauty of italy after all. now it's crowd of course it's 1pm and also people working nearby they come forward a lot of people taking instagram
oh yeah this is also very instagram friendly so you see girls posing like this and stuff like that but after i want to show you a place like it's wonderful it's called the gallery of victoria manuel the crazy thing is in the second world war it was completely destroyed now of course it's fine. it's wonderful. okay let's go the place that we're gonna have lunch is that way. we're gonna follow andrea now we're going to have some typical food from here. and it's very famous milan. it's called panzerotti which is kinda fried pizza. there's a queue outside!
so this is called panzerotto, here all the ingredients are inside the classic of course with tomato sauce and mozzarella but people can put salami, ham,. whatever you want it's really your personal taste. nina your first panzerotto. this is the classic panzerotto. of course there's melted cheese. So have a try. so i went for a kind of special one. I went for like the classics of the tomato and the mozzarella but also have ham. the special hamburger right? prosciutto. and actuallyit's very affordable. The overall price was 80 euros approximately about like between two and three euros. yeah exactly for two pounds at. all for lunch man we're gonna get fat this series!
yeah you will get fat because it is italian food is very fatty. but it was cool to meet you guys. thank you so much for showing us around milan and for hosting us last night, for dinner. awesome yeah wishes luck with these bikes it's gonna be a big challenge! i will follow your journey. thank you guys. thanks man for your journey! okay we're now on a what seems to be the picnic spot of milan. right at the Sforza castle. so this is the park right next to it or inside of it. it's really nice. we're in need of some shade. oh my god we couldn't even think anymore
we're asking each other questions and we're like what?! so we're chilling. time had passed so quickly and we did not realize the sun was setting already so to avoid cycling without any lights in the city traffic we had to hurry to get back before it got dark! we're back. just before dark. riding in milan is stressful. the traffic is crazy. it's very stressful and then there's bike lanes, suddenly there's no bike lanes. there's pedestrians everywhere!
we'll leave you there we'll leave you hanging: what are we gonna do? will we leave tomorrow? will we leave the next day? i don't know but yeah we have something to look forward to tonight. yeah for sure we're gonna get ready we're gonna try to pack a little bit. yeah and we're gonna head out to meet up with marco and some of his friends at a pizzeria and see where the night takes us. we've arrived at the pizzeria which our host marco said we needed to be at. and uh let's see where he is? are we at the right place?
what's up! hi how are you guys doing? good, how are you? i'm Lina. i'm emiliano. nice to meet you. hey bro what's your name? emiliano My name is Lucia yeah this part is the most fun thing about travel: you're going places only locals go, meeting new people and within 15 minutes you become good friends! oh thank you. like the mexico thing: Freestyle in spanish "to my people in mexico."
which is like this canal that was built actually by Leonardo Da Vinci and he told me to come, told us to come, all of us, even you at home. where are we going? To find out things that we didn't know before. okay we parked the car. we have no idea where we're going. We go where the locals go. it's friday night so this is what happens. "When in Rome - do as the Romans do."
and so ended a really fun night out. good food, great company and amazing atmosphere. we couldn't have wished for a better time in milan. a few hours later though we got woken up by the banging sounds of church bells. so we didn't get to sleep much but it's better to get up early anyway because we have a ton of stuff to do today and that also means we could call our missing budgeteer who couldn't leave thailand at the moment.
it's so weird to be on a series without you man. -yeah i know it must be weird. Lina couldnt go to the toilet Now finally after 48 hours. we were getting worried:) yeah when you've traveled together for so long you're used to sharing all these crazy details:) but during the call Paddy was especially concerned about our budget challenge so how is the budget? how much have you spent already? because italy is expensive. so total group spending is 247 euros. -that's okay because are you gonna sell all your bikes at the end? yeah that money goes back into the budget. yeah so guys all right. well listen have an amazing time i'm so gutted i can't be there but i'msure you'll have a lot of fun without me.
yeah well we try but we miss you man. yeah thanks guys and good luck. - thanks thank you love you, love you more afterwards we realized we still had a lot to take care of before we could start traveling, like sorting out our baggage. so this is the suitcase that i brought. we need to put all this stuff on our bikes so all that needs to go into these. Ortlieb bike bags, they're our official sponsor of this series. very quality bike bags, which are completely waterproof. perfect for bike packing adventures. but we have lot of stuff. So we need to like decide what we're going to take and how we're going to fit it all. this is it! this is what's going on the trip with us. i'm impressed with us
yeah but there is still a lot of work to be done because all our stuff needed to be mounted onto our bikes, which was a puzzle at first but once we got it we started to feel like real Bikepackers. it just comes off that's so cool - Cheers Ortlieb. for the rest of the day we cycled around milan fixing important things, getting everything in order so we can properly start exploring the rest of italy bright and early the next morning. good morning milan and we're off i know if you could tell but slowly the sun's rising it's just a wee early morning this is so much fun. we got the city all to ourselves. it's beautiful to see the sunrise and we're on our own bikes. we got our own bikes.
yeah the adventure begins now. okay we've made it here at the central station here in milan. this is where we're gonna take the train what were your thoughts on milan? -milan was chaotic but the people here were amazing i think they made our experience really wonderful i really love milan actually. it's a big city but at the same time it's cozy there's a lot to see i see myself coming back here maybe someday living here. this is a really nice compliment for a city. but unfortunately we have to leave our time here is up but we have our bikes sorted. which means it starts now so you gotta come with us.
The adventure starts now so join us in the next episode. let's go, we gotta get the train, we gotta get the train. first the bikes if you're wondering where we will go next. we're going east this morning to the famous garda lake, before going all the way to venice to try and Budgeteer one of the most touristy cities in the world, Venice, and afterwards make our way down italy so lots still to come this is how much we've spent this episode: over a period of three days and four nights. including bikes so we still have 858 euros left to see as much of italy as we can so join us in the next episode where the challenge continues
*thanks for watching* please subscribe and watch the next episode:)
