Just came back from a wonderful RCCL Baltic and Russia with stops in Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Russia, Sweden and my continuing on to Norway. 6 countries and 4 different currencies (Finland and Estonia are euro countries). I worried about money. How much was I going to spend? Didn't want to change too much, didn't want to not have enough?

Almost everything and everywhere people were using credit cards. So unless you wanted to stop and buy one bottle of water or one postcard you could still do it with a credit card but probably getting $10-20US in local currency would be enough.

Remember, converting foreign currency back to euros or US$ can only be done EASILY with paper currency. A airport exchange might do coins but probably not worth converting for what they will charge.

That is what ATMs are for. Preferably using a bank account with no foreign transaction fees.

Used ATM card but even for a single bus ticket, people were using their credit card and not cash. Just a surprise that's all.

Yep. I use my Chase Sapphire card for nearly everything. No foreign fees and 2 for 1 miles for travel and restaurant purchases. I even use it at McD's and Starbucks.

Compared to yrs. ago we take a small amt. of cash when we travel. Just not necessary.

FYI. I just returned from British Isles and used my new cc with a chip. Never was a pin required as some people have warned.

Cash is king, and you can't tip with a credit card on a personal service such as valet or cabin steward. With that said, I have chip card for quite some time now and never have an issue, but I still carry a fair amount of cash.

For security reasons, I do not use my credit card at what I deemed unreliable or small locales for fear of card being compromised due to fraud or whatever. The smaller places tends to have less safe guards.

I don't know of any countries that have more than one official currency, ... Several independent countries (Pacific islands) use the Australian (or US or NZ) dollar ...

Around Europe, most merchants around tourist areas will take local currency and Euros, sometimes even USD.

On our Baltic cruise, we went to the bank exchanged for a few currency just in case. Not too much, just a couple hundred USD equivalence.

While we were in Copenhagen, we went to a restaurants by the Tivoli Garden and their menu shows both Euros and Danish Krones. The Vasa museum accepted Euros when we don't have enough Swedish Krona to pay for the purchases. We did not exhange for Russian Ruble as we've told they take small denomination USD.

We did have to pay the cab driver in Krones and Krona while we were in Denmark and Swedish. The joke was on us when we got the money mixed up and the driver gave us the look.

Hey J,

I guess you don't remember when the whole world was like that and there were no ATMs.