The cost of seeing the sites
Comparing prices for a day in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Dubai and Buenos Aires yields surprises.
It was $82 for a cab from Haneda Airport in Tokyo into town and more than triple that from Narita. The good news: It’s not that expensive to eat in Japan.
Or really any of the four other places we tried. The Associated Press sent reporters on a typical tourist’s itinerary one weekday in June in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Dubai and Buenos Aires to compare prices.
There were some pleasant surprises. One was just how affordable it is to be a tourist in Dubai, which is perceived as one of the world’s most expensive cities. A day in Dubai ran about $80, including three meals, a $14 taxi ride from the airport that took just 10 minutes, a museum visit and a ticket to see the view from the towering Burj Khalifa.
High and low
Only Buenos Aires was cheaper for the day’s itinerary, at a little more than $60 for the day. New York and Tokyo were both just under $135; Paris proved most expensive at $164.
Dubai and Buenos Aires proved cheapest for hotel prices as well, with three-star hotels found through Priceline.com for a weeknight in June charging $39 to $181 in Dubai and $58 to $210 in Buenos Aires.
Tokyo’s three-star hotels priced through Priceline.com for a weeknight in June also turned out to be cheaper than one might expect, at $80 to $295. New York and Paris tied for most expensive hotels, $145 to $409 for Manhattan and $118 to $705 for Paris.
Other good news: Decent food could be had for reasonable prices in all five cities, with breakfast at about $5 and dinner for less than $30, even in places tourists frequent.
There were frustrations too. In New York, the promised flat fare of a $45 cab ride from the airport turned out to be more like $58 with tolls and a15% tip.
Buenos Aires did well when it came to inexpensive, authentic, easily procured food. Breakfast was cafe con leche with medialunas (crescent rolls). Lunch was a choripan sausage with lettuce and tomato in a baguette, with a soft drink, $7, followed by a second afternoon indulgence of apparently irresistible empanadas, three for $2.25. Dinner took two hours in keeping with the Argentine tradition of a late, leisurely meal and was $17 for red wine, soup and prime beef.
In Dubai, the ticket for the Burj Khalifa was the most expensive item on that city’s itinerary, at $29 ($6 more than the Empire State Building and $10 more than the Eiffel Tower). But with a ticket bought in advance, the wait to get to the top of the Burj was a mere 12 minutes, compared with an hour at the Empire State Building and three hours at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, where the elevator was broken the day our reporter went. Tokyo finds
The Tokyo tourist experience also seemed more affordable than the perception of an expensive city might suggest, if you subtract the astronomical cab fare from the airport. Our reporter paid $82 for a cab from Haneda Airport, which serves a growing number of international tourists. That’s a bargain compared with the fare from Narita International, which was $300.
That cab ride from the airport might have been pricey, but it took only 20 minutes; there was no wait to get up to the top of the Tokyo Tower, and the ticket was $10; admission to Sensoji Temple, an important cultural site, was free. Lunch, an eel bowl with rice plus tea, was $8, and dinner at a popular sushi chain just outside Japan’s biggest fish market in Tsukiji, one of Tokyo’s most popular tourist destinations, was $25.