GMC in Europe 2008

So far we have had pretty good advice sent our way by John Coghill about notifying credit card companies about your planned travel, finding out which bank ATM’s in Europe will not charge a service fee for use, and info from Casterbridge on how much to budget.

Two more ideas (travel debit card and pre-purchase of Euro’s):

You can go to any AAA store, there is one in Cromwell I use, and purchase a VISA travel debit card (just use it like a credit card abroad and not a debit) that you pre-load money onto before you leave.

In case you need more money, someone at home may load more onto the card. I am leaving the info about my card with my wife, who unfortunately could not take time off for this trip. (But the two of us did final register for the Yahoo Instant Messanger so we can IM in real time.)

The card is handy in that it has local contact info in each country if we lose the card. If you load on more money than you think you will need, you just get to spend it when you get home.

The other option at AAA is to pre-purchase Euros there and avoid a line at an ATM at the European arrival  airport.  The exchange rate is best when you purchase over $500, and I believe competitive with or if not better than the bank which also may take longer to order.

You get about $300 Euros in exchange. Did I just hear “ouch!”?

If folks are going to purchase fewer Euroes than that, they still may be able to get the better ‘over $500 purchase’ rate by going in with other tour members for the purchase.

I am willing to make a purchase there for over $500 if anyone is interested in getting some Euros ahead of time. You can call me or email me but suggest we do it soon as it may take a few days for the order to go through.  Rich Pugliese aka rickpug

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 9:54 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.