Packing List--#4 in a series

In a word--money.

I've told the old saying about packing for an overseas trip before--that if you take out half the clothes in your suitcase and add twice the money in your wallet, your trip will go beautifully. It's kind of true. I've returned from plenty of trips with clothes I never wore in my suitcase, but I've never come back with gobs of extra cash. It just doesn't work out that way somehow.

In this case, you'll need Euros. Many places around the world are more than happy to accept US Dollars, and may in fact prefer them over their own currency. France is not one of those places--you need the local stuff. You can get Euros in advance from your local bank (but they may have to special order them for you, so plan this a bit in advance of the trip), or you can just use your ATM card at any ATM machine once you get over there. No matter what you do, you're going to pay for the privilege of turning Dollars to Euros in the form of fees and exchange rate hanky panky, so don't get way more than you plan to spend.

The last couple of weeks, the dollar has been sliding fast against the euro, which is not good news for us. The current rate of exchange is $1.36 per Euro. Hopefully things won't get much worse in the next month.

One reminder--the last night of the cruise we'll be expected to tip the crew. This is voluntary, but the customary amount is between 5 and 10 percent of the cost of the cruise, payable in Euros to the captain. So, doing the math, and at the current rate of exchange, that comes to between 140 and 280 euros per person--that of course assumes that you are satisfied with the service provided, and I expect you will be. So we'll need to plan to have a fair amount of cash on hand on the last night.

Let me know if this presents a problem for anyone in the group.

Oh, you will probably want to bring along a few US Dollars in your pocket (maybe a $20 bill) for buying munchies at the airport, but you won't need much in the way of US currency on this trip.