I’m leaving on Saturday for a 10 day excursion through the UK and France. What should I do with my currency, aside from lamenting that my first trip outside of the US is when the dollar is going down the toilet?
Should I bother with Travelers Checks? Or just use my debit/ATM/credit cards?
Don’t bother with traveller’s checks. They will just become a nuisance. (If you feel you must, take only a couple hundred dollars in traveller’s checks).
I have travelled in both the UK and France, and got by just fine with ATMs and credit cards. You also get a better conversion rate when using credit cards (when the bill finally shows up).
ATMs are not quite as abundant in smaller towns. So you may opt to load up on cash when you can. In the UK, most gas stations along the freeways (Ms) had ATMs. And also at the airport and train stations.
I stayed at B&Bs throughout england, and with only a few exceptions, most took credit cards. But if you’re going this route, you might keep extra cash just in case.
Be prepared for some sticker shock, though. England is very expensive. And the larger cities (like Paris) in France are also expensive. Particularly now that the dollar is so weak.
Have a great trip.
No idea about France, but for Britain, you’d be better to use debit/ATM/credit cards, I think. Or keep a traveller’s cheque for “unforeseen dreadful emergency backup” money, perhaps, although that would only help if your unforeseen emergency was somewhere near a bank, of course. 
For France, perhaps you could ask Angua (English Doper now living in Paris)
However, I hope there is no unforeseen emergency and I hope you will have a **really **good time. Where do you plan to visit in Britain? No reason for asking - just nosiness.
Britain is having some windy stormy weather just now, so you might have to expect some breezes. Ah, hang about, I just looked at your location. Chicago. A city not unfamiliar with wind, then?
Again, all best wishes for a great trip.
ATM cards, all the way.
Not only can you use them at the ATM and get a much better rate than to exchange money, but most stores will accept Visa payment which, as cormac262 mentioned, gives you the best rate. About nowhere other than hotels takes Traveller’s Cheques, and you have to pay for them twice… once to get them, once to exchange them.
If your PIN isn’t 4 numbers and you can make it that way, do. Some ATM chains in Europe don’t accept longer formats.
The most commonly-accepted cards for payment are Visa, Visa electron, Master Card. Dinner’s Club is not usually accepted by stores; many small hotels have heard of it but don’t take it. Discover, nope.
Be careful of some ATMs in Britain, especially those in filling stations and convenience stores. These will charge you a couple of pounds for using them. Instead use the ones located outside banks, they are free.
Also, make sure your bank knows you’re going abroad: foreign use of a card is a sign of fraud and they might disable your card.
And it may be a good idea to tell them specifically which countries you are going to. That may sound like overkill, but I use my cards when travelling to Europe, and my bank charmingly decided to block my cards while I was in Vienna.
Their explanation? “We’ve never seen a charge from Vienna on your cards before.”
Yep, its definitely easier to use credit/ATM cards in France too. The conversion rate is better and your card should be accepted over here no problems. You’ll find ATMs all over the place here too – there’re 3 within 10 minutes walk of me and I’m about 20km outside Paris. The distribution in the cities is far greater. You may want to have a couple of hundred Euros with you just in case you’re worried that your cards might not work, and your card provider may charge a handling fee, in which case taking out 100-200€ at a time will be a better bet than 20 or 50€.
That is for account holders of UK banks only, isn’t it? I would be very surprised if Link were generous enough to provide free processing for US banks.
I’d expect Link machines to charge a fee, and the rest to charge a bigger fee. Still good advice though.
I think it goes through as a VISA or Mastercard transaction, in these cases, rather than a link/debit thing - any fees are likely to happen at the credit card company. For the standalone ATMs in shops etc, the fee is charged right at the machine - so you withdraw £20 and it actually debits £21.75, or some such.
I’ll add to the advice to immediately check with the issuing bank of your debit card. My credit union recently informed me “for my protection” my card won’t work abroad, period.
Fantastic, that’s what I was hoping for. Thanks to everyone for their advice. I have a VISA and my pin is formatted the right way, so I’ll just use that. Just in case, though, I’ll contact my bank ahead of time so that they don’t disable me!
I will be flying to London, spending the day there, the next day in Bath, then a couple more days in London. We will then head down to Dover, take a ferry across the channel and go to Paris for about four days. Somewhere in the there, we’ve also set up a day trip to Mont St Michel that I’m really excited about.
You fool, you know better than that, that you can’t expect to predict the weather that easily at this time of year! I’m currently drying my laundry outside for the first time this year.
If you’re travelling by train, you may find it more convenient to go from London to Paris via Eurostar.
Probably too late to suggest an inclusion in your itinerary, but right opposite across the channel from Mont St Michel is St Michael’s Mount
Bring a few cards.
When we were in France a couple years ago, we contacted three of our credit card companies, verified they would work in ATMs in France, set up our PINS, and informed them we would be in France during the dates we were there.
None of them worked in ATMs in France.
We called the card companies repeatedly, and they assured us that yes, they work in ATMs in France! We’d say “no, they don’t” and they’d say “Yes, they do!”
Luckily, we had one other card - one we had not informed we were going to France - that worked up to $500/day. Which was fine, most days, except that one day that the place we were staying told us that they only took cash and we owed them $600. But that’s another story…
One piece of advice related to your cell phone…if you have a phone that transmits data, be careful. I just heard from a college kid I know that a friend of hers was in Europe on a semester abroad, and didn’t know she was going to get some kind of weird roaming surcharge for e-mail and text messages (even incoming ones)…she ended up with an astronomical bill.
Have fun! I am jealouse!
Roaming charges are high for all of us if we are out of our own country. The EU have forced the phone companies to lower the cost of “ordinary” voice calls, but the companies then raised the prices of data and text messages. The EU are now on to this scam ,and have ordered the companies to lower these tariffs as well.
Yeah, that would have been my ideal, as well, but we’re on a tour so we’re kind of stuck with that. Either way, I figured it would be cool to see Dover.
Wow, that does look really cool! I wish I could.
Yeah, I was worried about stuff like this just from horror stories I’ve heard. I just figured I’d try not to use my cell at all, if possible.
I talked to my bank today about notifying them of my travels and they said “Yeah, I can’t really do anything about that.” Wish me luck 
True, but I predict bad stuff just as a superstitious way of making sure it doesn’t happen.