Most Unexpected, Cheapest & Priciest Trips From Our 60-Day, 10-Country Adventure

We just wrapped up 60 days, 10 countries, and a whole lot of receipts as a family of six… and in Morocco we actually had seven of us. I went into this trip thinking I knew what would be cheap, what would be pricey, and what would land in the middle, and I was wrong more than once.

In this post, I’m breaking down our most unexpected favorite, the cheapest stop, the most expensive country, and the places we rushed through so fast that it wouldn’t be fair to rank them yet. I’ll share real numbers where I can, how we handled housing and food with a big crew, and what I’d actually repeat (or skip) if we did this same route again.

If you’re planning something similar, having a good system for moving money between currencies helps a ton; tools like Wise International Bank made it way easier for us to pay for things in local currencies without getting crushed by fees.

Key Takeaways:

Lake Ohrid in North Macedonia was the most unexpected favorite, offering affordable dining and lodging, with meals for a family of six averaging around $45 and Airbnb prices between $40-$80 per night.
English was widely spoken in hospitality, making it easy for first-time visitors to navigate and enjoy the area without language barriers.
The trip included family-friendly activities like boat trips and swimming lessons, creating a relaxed and enjoyable experience away from a packed itinerary.

Our Most Unexpected Favorite: Why Lake Ohrid in North Macedonia Belongs on Your Family Travel List

The place we almost didn’t go that ended up being the one we can’t stop talking about? Lake Ohrid in North Macedonia.

We only went because we have friends from there. North Macedonia wasn’t on our original plan at all, and Lake Ohrid ended up being our most unexpected favorite of the entire 60-day trip.

Costs that made it easy to relax

Money goes really far there. Going out to eat, ordering three appetizers, a plate for everyone, plus dessert for around $45 for a family of six was normal for us that week. We spent a full week on Lake Ohrid and would happily go back, and a big part of that was how reasonable the day-to-day costs were compared to a lot of other places on this trip.

Housing was the same story:

One Airbnb was about $40/night
The other was around $80/night and it was lakefront, facing the sunset

That mix of $40–$80 per night for housing and $45 restaurant meals for all six of us made Lake Ohrid feel very different from a lot of the “cheapest countries for family travel Europe” lists we’d been looking at. It also made it easy to actually relax and say yes to things instead of constantly doing the mental math.

Language and logistics

Most people in hospitality spoke English, which mattered a lot as first-time visitors. We were coming in cold, with North Macedonia not originally on the plan at all, and it still felt straightforward to order food, book things, and ask questions around Lake Ohrid. If you’re wondering about North Macedonia with kids or just “is North Macedonia worth visiting,” that English piece took a lot of the friction out for a first Lake Ohrid family vacation.

Getting there was simple. We flew into Tirana, Albania’s capital, then drove across the border to Lake Ohrid in about two hours (maybe 1.5 hours with a better car). If you’re already comparing Lake Ohrid North Macedonia travel costs and Airbnb prices to other spots in the region, this is one of those places where the numbers and the actual experience lined up way better than we expected.

What a week with kids actually looked like

With kids, a week in Lake Ohrid looked like:

A boat trip on the lake
Visiting monasteries
A random kids’ swimming lesson we just kind of fell into

It wasn’t a packed, city-style itinerary. It was more of a slow, repeatable rhythm that actually worked for a family of six.

Food we kept going back to

Food-wise, we basically found our favorites and stuck with them. Two things we ordered on repeat:

Shopska salad
A meat pie (I cannot remember the name) that we kept reordering because it was so good

That was the pattern all week, order the same things again because they worked for everyone and fit right into the “family travel costs North Macedonia” budget we were seeing on the ground for Lake Ohrid with kids.

For a Lake Ohrid family vacation, especially with kids, it checked more boxes than almost anywhere else we went and firmly answered “is North Macedonia worth visiting?” for us.

Our Cheapest Destination: Real Costs for a Family Trip to Marrakech, Morocco

Marrakech was, by far, our most affordable destination of the entire 60 days. Even compared to places that already felt really cheap for us, like North Macedonia, Morocco still came out on top.

We did three nights, four days in Marrakech with seven people total, our family of six plus his mom, and we spent under $1,000 USD for everything. For all seven of us.

What that under-$1,000 actually included

We stayed at a 4-star all-inclusive resort in two rooms for the seven of us. Not the fanciest place on earth, but it was genuinely nice and we had a great time. Because it was all-inclusive:

Our food and drinks were included
The food was actually good
The people were so kind
Everything was really clean

All of that made it feel kind of wild when we looked back at what we paid.

On top of that, our flights were about $30 round trip per person from Valencia directly into Marrakech with Ryanair, so we spent roughly $200 total on flights for all of us. That $200 for seven round-trip tickets is what you might pay for a single domestic U.S. Ticket, and that’s before you even think about a hotel or food.

We didn’t just stay at the resort

While we were there, we didn’t just park ourselves at the resort. We:

Went to the markets
Hired a private guide who picked us up and took us through

Even with that added in, we still kept the total for the whole trip under $1,000 USD for those three nights, four days. That number, under a thousand dollars for seven people, including a 4-star all-inclusive resort, flights, and a private guide, is why when people ask about the cheapest countries for family travel in Europe or nearby, we point to Marrakech.

Compared to budget travel in the U.S., where going cheaper usually means you’re sacrificing food quality and kind of expecting the food to be mediocre, Marrakech felt totally different. We felt like we got both: low prices and really good food.

So if you’re wondering “How much does Marrakech cost for a family?” or “Is Morocco cheap?” for a Marrakech all inclusive family trip, for us, with kids, a 4-star all-inclusive, flights from Valencia, markets, and a private guide, three nights, four days came in under $1,000 total for seven people.

Our Most Expensive Country: What a Week in Iceland Really Costs a Family (Iceland Family Trip Cost Breakdown)

Iceland was hands-down the most expensive stop of our entire 60-day trip. The second most expensive would be the U.S., but even with the extra time we spent there, Iceland still came out on top for cost.

We were there for one week, and tours were a big reason the total jumped so fast.

Tours and activities

We did three all-day tours and they ranged from:

€80 per person on the lower end
Up to €150 per person depending on the tour

We picked some of the pricier, bucket-list type things, like ice cave tours, because Iceland was one of my top two lifetime dream trips and we wanted a clear Iceland family trip cost breakdown for future planning. We went into it knowing we were going to spend more there than in places like North Macedonia or Marrakech.

Restaurant prices vs groceries

Food was another big line item. The food was very good… and very expensive. At restaurants, you were looking at about $20 a plate as a baseline. Just a basic, nothing-fancy meal. Multiply that by a family, plus drinks, plus doing that more than once a day, and it adds up fast.

To keep that from blowing the budget completely, we had a plan from day one:

We ate one meal a day from the grocery store (lunch or dinner) and cooked at home
Grocery store prices felt comparable to, or a little cheaper than, Portland, Oregon prices, similar to West Coast prices, a bit pricier than Ohio, but not more than California grocery stores

So groceries weren’t cheap, but they also weren’t wildly higher than what we were used to on the U.S. West Coast, which made them a lot more manageable than eating out twice a day.

Snacks and small hacks

We also came in prepared on the snack front because we knew we had those three all-day tours:

We brought a backpack full of granola bars from Spain to avoid paying Iceland prices for snacks
We brought Costco Jif peanut butter from Spain because we can’t find good peanut butter there
We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every morning for the kids

That covered a big chunk of their food for the day and kept us from having to buy extra meals or random snacks when everyone got hungry halfway through a glacier.

The one food splurge that was worth it

Our one big food splurge that felt completely worth the money was the Reykjavik food tour (Reykjavik Flavors / Reykjavik Flavor Food Tour). On that tour we:

Tried fermented shark (we thought it was disgusting)
Ate hot dogs at the famous stand Bill Clinton visited
Tried a bunch of other dishes and left very full

Even though it wasn’t cheap, it felt like a full meal plus a crash course in Icelandic food, and we didn’t need to buy another big meal after. If you’re the type who likes to repurpose trip notes into blogs or newsletters later, tools like ContentFold can actually help you turn those kinds of detailed experiences into content without starting from scratch.

How other travelers were saving

While we were there, we also noticed how other people were handling the high prices. We saw a lot of travelers:

Bringing canned goods and rations from home
Renting camper vans
Driving around Iceland for two weeks to save on food and accommodation

We did the opposite. We chose to splurge on things like ice cave tours and the Reykjavik food tour because Iceland was one of my top two lifetime dream trips, and we were okay with this being the place where our daily costs were higher than everywhere else, even higher than the U.S.

Countries We Rushed: Northern Spain, Southern France and Munich We Can’t Fairly Rate Yet

Not every place on a long trip gets a fair shot. We had three spots on this 60‑day run that we technically visited but don’t feel comfortable ranking at all: a slice of northern Spain, a bit of southern France, and Munich. These were true “least time spent” destinations where we had maybe half a day to a day, and we just don’t think it’s fair to rate them based on that.

Northern Spain (this specific slice)

For northern Spain, the specific stop I’m talking about here is that region below Andorra and above Zaragoza. We were there for roughly half a day to a day, which is why I’m holding off on any strong opinions.

We have spent more time in other northern Spain cities like Oviedo, Bilbao, and Gijón and loved them, and we’ll have future content on those. Northern Spain in general looks so different from other parts of Spain that it almost feels like a different country, both visually and culturally, but this particular quick stop just wasn’t enough time to judge fairly.

If you’re curious about this broader region and want more detail, I go deeper into nearby Innsbruck and how we handled cards, Sundays, and safety in posts like my Innsbruck travel tips and Innsbruck Card review, which pair really well with this 60-day route.

Southern France

Southern France was similar. We were there long enough to do one beautiful hike that really was breathtaking, and we’ll share pictures and videos from that, but beyond that hike we didn’t do enough to talk about the region in any real depth.

Munich

Same story with Munich: we flew into Munich, had a quick pit stop, and then drove on to Innsbruck (which will be in part two), so we didn’t actually get to spend time in the city itself.

Across all three, this slice of northern Spain, southern France, and Munich, the main takeaway was that they all looked very different than we expected, in a good way. But compared to places like Lake Ohrid, Marrakech, and Iceland, where we had about a week or at least several days and feel comfortable ranking them and talking about things like family travel costs in North Macedonia, how much Marrakech costs for a family, or an Iceland family trip cost breakdown, these rushed stops just don’t qualify.

For northern Spain family travel, southern France hiking with kids, or how long to spend in Munich and using it as a Munich stopover with family, we need a lot more time on the ground before we start comparing northern Spain vs the rest of Spain or putting any of these in a ranked list.

Quick Recap: Our Most Unexpected, Cheapest and Most Expensive Countries in 60 Days

Here’s the quick recap of part one of our 10 countries in 60 days: our most unexpected favorite, our cheapest overall trip, our most expensive stop, and the places we’re not ranking yet because we didn’t see enough.

Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia, Most Unexpected Favorite

When I talk about North Macedonia here, I’m specifically talking about Lake Ohrid, not Skopje or other parts of the country, because we didn’t visit those. We paid about $40–$80 per night for an Airbnb and around $45 for a full restaurant meal for six. It’s a calm lakeside town with great food, very affordable Airbnbs, English-speaking hospitality staff, and plenty of family-friendly activities like boat trips, monasteries, and swimming lessons. We never would’ve put North Macedonia on our list if we didn’t have friends from there, and it completely shocked us in the best way. We stayed a week and would absolutely go back.

Marrakech, Morocco, Most Affordable Trip

For 3 nights / 4 days for 7 people, we spent under $1,000 total, including:

A 4-star all-inclusive resort with two rooms
A private guide
About $30 round-trip flights per person from Valencia

The resort had great food, a clean property, and kind people, and we added markets and a private guide on top of that while still keeping the total spend under $1,000. For what we got, resort, food, markets, guide, flights, for seven people, it felt kind of mind-blowing. We’ll definitely go back and probably explore more of Morocco beyond Marrakech. Out of the whole 60 days, Marrakech was our cheapest overall trip when you factor in resort, food, markets, guide, and flights.

Iceland, Most Expensive Country

Iceland is by far our most expensive country. We spent one week there, and the costs added up quickly with six people:

€80–€150 per person for each all-day tour
About $20 per plate at restaurants
Grocery prices that felt similar to the U.S. West Coast

In that week we did three all-day tours, a Reykjavik food tour, and ice cave experiences, and that’s where the budget really went. We used groceries, snacks from Spain, and PB&J sandwiches to keep costs from getting even higher. We knew going in that Iceland was one of my top two dream trips, so we leaned into the splurges. Even so, we’d still recommend the food tour as 100% worth it and would go back in a heartbeat.

The “not ranking yet” group

Then there are the spots we’re not ranking yet: a specific part of northern Spain (below Andorra, above Zaragoza), southern France (where we did a single hike), and Munich (which we mainly used as a fly-in/fly-out city). All three looked beautiful and pretty different than we expected, but because our time in each one was so short, we don’t feel good about putting them into the “cheapest vs most expensive” or “best vs worst” categories yet. We’ll wait to rate them until we’ve spent more time there.

When I zoom out on the whole 60-day loop, the pattern that shows up is that price didn’t always match how much we loved a place. Lake Ohrid surprised us, Marrakech stretched our money the furthest, Iceland stretched it the most, and a few spots are still in the “need a redo” category. Use this as a rough map for your own planning, layer in your family’s pace and priorities, and you’ll have a much clearer sense of where your budget will go the furthest and what’s worth saving up for, whether you’re eyeing Lake Ohrid Airbnb prices, a Marrakech with kids cost estimate, or a splurgey Iceland week.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the most unexpected favorite destination from your trip?

Lake Ohrid in North Macedonia turned out to be our most unexpected favorite. Initially not on our itinerary, it offered affordable dining and lodging, making it a delightful surprise for our family.

How did you manage costs while traveling with a large family?

We found that Lake Ohrid had very reasonable costs, with meals for our family of six averaging around $45. Additionally, Airbnb prices ranged from $40 to $80 per night, allowing us to relax without constantly worrying about expenses.

What made Lake Ohrid easy to navigate for first-time visitors?

Most people in hospitality spoke English, which simplified ordering food and booking activities. This language accessibility made our experience much smoother, especially since North Macedonia wasn't originally on our travel plan.

How did you spend your week in Lake Ohrid with kids?

Our week included a relaxed itinerary with activities like a boat trip on the lake, visits to monasteries, and even a spontaneous swimming lesson for the kids. It was more about enjoying the surroundings than rushing through a packed schedule.

What was the cheapest destination during your trip?

Marrakech, Morocco was our cheapest destination, costing us under $1,000 for three nights and four days for all seven of us. This affordability made it stand out even compared to other budget-friendly locations like North Macedonia.