Background
I spent a bit under two weeks in October bouncing between New York, Washington DC and Toronto (with a day trip to Niagara Falls). I pay for almost everything with a Wise card, so every purchase is sitting in a CSV, and I thought it would be fun to see where the money went.
A caveat before the numbers: this is card spending only, in GBP. It does not include the transatlantic flights, most of my accommodation, or anything I paid for in cash. Think of it as "what it cost to be a tourist on the ground", not the all-in price of the trip.
The Headline
Across 12 days (14 to 25 October), I spent £849 on the card, or roughly £71 a day.
| City | Spend | Share |
|---|---|---|
| New York (incl. New Haven) | £448 | 53% |
| Toronto (incl. Niagara) | £279 | 33% |
| Washington DC | £122 | 14% |
New York was the most expensive, and unsurprisingly so: I was there the longest, and it is where I had my two priciest meals.
Where It Went
Roughly, by category:
| Category | Spend |
|---|---|
| Food and drink | ~£456 |
| Sights and activities | ~£158 |
| Local transport | ~£102 |
| Flights, in-flight wifi and duty free | ~£88 |
| Everything else (Yotel DC, pharmacy, groceries) | ~£45 |
Without the flights and duty free, I spent about £761 on the ground, or roughly £63 a day. Food was over half of that, which is probably not a surprise to anyone who has read the rest of this blog.
Food
The big tickets:
- Waverly Diner, New York: £89 (US$118), the single biggest meal of the trip.
- St Tropez, West Village: £45 (US$60).
- The Diner, Washington DC: £25.
- Khao San Road, Toronto: £25, and Thai Room: £21.
Everything else was small: bagels, pizza slices (Joe's, twice), gelato in three different cities, and a lot of coffee. My cheapest meals were bagels and slices at £3 to £7.
Transport
New York's OMNY system is charged as individual US$3 taps (about £2.26), and I tapped a lot. Nearly 15 of those were on the card alone, plus PATH trains to and from New Jersey and a NJ Transit ride. All in, public transport in New York cost me less than the single Waverly dinner.
The other transport costs worth mentioning:
- A GO Transit ticket for the Niagara day trip: £23.
- Air Canada (a flight booked on the card): £68.
- A handful of Ubers, mostly £7 to £12 each.
Sights
I did very few paid attractions.
- Hornblower Niagara Cruise: £29, the one big-ticket sight at the Falls.
- MoMA: £23.
- Alamo Drafthouse (cinema, New York): £34.
- The Village Underground, New York: £61.
Everything else I did was free: walking, parks, and watching the city.
The Interactive Map
I plotted every payment and every walk onto the streets I covered. Press replay and the routes draw themselves in order while the expenses pop in at the moment I paid.
If you only care about the running and walking, there is also a replay of each individual activity, with pace, speed, heart rate and elevation, and a trail that gets brighter the faster I go.
What It Cost Per Kilometre
Strava recorded about 73 km on foot across the trip: 42 km in New York, 14 km in DC, 9 km in Toronto and 6 km around Niagara Falls. That includes three runs (a Lower East Side run, a 5k in Manhattan, and a morning run from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial). Spread over the £761 I spent on the ground, that works out to roughly £10 per kilometre walked, which is a strange metric but a fun one.
Plotting every payment on top of my GPS tracks, the pattern is obvious: the money piles up in a few places (Greenwich Village dinners, Midtown museums, the Financial District for pizza and coffee), while the walking covers everything in between for free.
A Note on the Data
Statements are never as clean as you'd like, and a few things in mine are worth flagging:
- Yotel DC shows up as a £101 charge on the 20th and a £75 refund on the 21st. The real cost was about £26, which is the figure I used.
- A couple of New York card charges show as tiny GBP amounts (e.g. £3.78 for a US$85 item). My guess is that part of those were covered from my USD balance, so my GBP total is likely a slight undercount.
- Payments were placed on the map by looking up each merchant and, where that failed, matching the time of the payment to my Strava track. About a third (mostly subway taps and Ubers) have no location at all.
- Wise's conversion fees were very small (pennies per transaction), which is why I use it abroad.
Takeaways
- Food is the budget. Cheap transport and mostly-free sightseeing meant dinner was the swing factor.
- Per-tap transit adds up quietly, but is still far cheaper than any alternative.
- About £71 a day on the card (£63 without flights and duty free), with accommodation mostly paid elsewhere.