The wife and I will be traveling to London and doing a tour through Scotland and Ireland and then over to Paris. My question is should I plan to have cash or can I use a credit card for eating out and buying things. The tour handles a lot of the meals, but we are responsible for some. Also when the tour ends is it a standard practice to tip the driver and your guide and if so what amount is considered ok. This is our first time out of the country and we do not want to offend anyone.

Credit card is best - make sure you have one with no foreign currency transaction fees. Also be sure to decline any offer to have the charge done in dollars - you will be on the losing end of the exchange rate.

You should also get some cash from ATMs - note that London/Scotland/Northern Ireland is british pounds and Ireland and Paris will be Euros. Your ATM card should work just fine anywhere - you'll be on the losing end of the exchange rate again if you exchange currency before you go or while traveling.

It is strongly suggested that you contact your bank and credit card companies to let them know you will be traveling abroad so they don't flag for fraud. When I travel with my husband, we try to each have one credit card that the other is not carrying just in case we lose one or one is flagged for fraud.

Having not been on a tour, I don't know what is customary for tipping.

You can use your credit cards (not Discover) just about everywhere. But you will need some cash now and then. Just get £ and € as you need via ATMs.

>>Also when the tour ends is it a standard practice to tip the driver and your guide and if so what amount is considered ok.<<

If the tour does not include gratuities (some do some don't - read the terms and conditions) then a small tip per day paid at the end is fine. Do not over tip. How long s thetrip? If you have a driver for say 5 days straight, then each of you could tip £5 to £10 (£10-£20 total). Sometimes you will have different drivers/guides in different countries. If so, a couple of £ or € per day.

>>make sure you have one with no foreign currency transaction fees<<

Great if that is what you have -- but I personally would not go out of my way to save just a few $ over a trip. Sometimes there are other benefits (miles, cash back, whatever) so I wouldn't change a credit card or apply for a new one if you are happy with the cc's you already have.

Use your credit card for big purchases. Get cash from an ATM for daily small purchases.


Can't help with the tipping. Never took a tour, but I suppose some sort of tip is customary.

Good advice from above. Your tour company can likely give you suggestions regarding the usual amount for tipping.

We always leave home with about $300 worth of local European currency in our pocket. We were in France once (about 2000) when there was an ATM strike and nobody could get cash. Banks would not exchange dollars for francs because all their francs were "gone". I also hate looking for an ATM at an airport. Sometimes toll roads have trouble with my credit card & I have to pay cash. So if you land at an airport without local currency - and immediately encounter a toll road??? Or an exit to a parking lot where you must pay cash because you have CC problems???


Stu Dudley

Cash is beginning to disappear just about everywhere in Europe. Just be sure to have more than one card that you can use.

ATMs are so ubiquitous in Europe, even villages with only 200 people always have at least one.
We've become so confident in their use that last trip, we arrived in Paris with US$20, no euros, 3 credit cards, and a bankcard. Yes, the CCs would have charged for a cash withdrawal, but they were only a backup to the bankcard.
Don't go to an ATM for just $5 worth of pounds or euro, unless it's your last day in country. Don't get too much, either.
Once we had $20 worth of Slovakian koruna to use up, before going into Poland. After two $4 lunches (most expensive thing on the lunch menu, at a family restaurant), we wound up buying $10 (in koruna) worth of junk (candy, beer, misc. stuff) just to use it up.

Be sure to have a credit card and a bank (ATM) card that has the chip. On one trip a few years ago, I used a bank card that did not have a chip. It worked in Belgium and Germany, but not the Netherlands. Don’t take the chance of not having it work.

Also, a tip about ATM: look for a bank owned ATM. If there is only Travelex or similar ones at the arrival lobby, read the screen very carefully. They will try to give you a horrible rate, but might give you a choice to not accept that rate.

The arrival lobby in Lyon did not have anything but Travelex ATMs. So I reluctantly used theirs. The screen offered 1.31 USD per Euro (when going rates were more like 1.2), and then ask if I accept the rate or if I prefer to let my bank convert. I almost did not even read the 2nd option as its placement is sneakily to the left whereas we defaut the right as where we should be hitting to continue the transaction. I suspect most people don't realize they can decline the offered rate and still be able to withdraw (my brother totally fell for it).

>>Also, a tip about ATM: look for a bank owned ATM. If there is only Travelex or similar ones at the arrival lobby, read the screen very carefully. They will try to give you a horrible rate, but might give you a choice to not accept that rate.<<

Travelex ATM's would have nothing at all to do with what exchange rate one gets . . . UNLESS one makes the mistake of asking for the withdrawal be calculated. in $. Otherwise, you would ask for a certain number of £ or € and that is exactly what you'd receive. How many $ those £/€ cost/are taken out of your checking account is entirely dependent on your own bank/system. But that applies to bank owned machines as well -- they will offer the 'convenience' of calculating in $. As long as you decline that 'favor' it is your bank alone that determines the rate.

NOW -- if you are talking about a Travelex Bureau de Change where you get cash from a window - then yes, the exchange rate won't be good -- but that does not apply to the machines. No reason at all to avoid Travelex cash machines in airports. Many airport authorities have contracts and only have Machines owned by one vendor -- Travelex, or HSBC or Lloyds or whatever.

>>We've become so confident in their use that last trip, we arrived in Paris with US$20, no euros,<<


If you had arrived in June 2000 or maybe 2001 during the ATM strike - you would not have had any cash to pay for autoroute tolls (if your CC did not work), or anyplace else that only took cash. We watched many "mad scrambles" around ATM machines when someone discovered one that actually had cash available. Remember - strikes are one of the most popular sports in France - just behind soccer and tax avoidance. The strike lasted for about 2-3 weeks. Lots of people were in trouble. Luckily for us - the travel forum I participated in at the time (not Fodors) kept everyone updated on the "current situation" with empty ATM machine and banks that did not have francs to exchange. Before we departed, we got about $2,000 worth of francs in San Francisco and purchased "Rick Steves" money belts to carry it on the plane until we arrived at our first Gite where we had to pay about $1,500 in rental and breakage deposit. Folks - this really happened. Look at the train strike that is going on in France now. Lots of people are being left "dangling in the wind" because of a French strike. We also experienced a gasoline strike the very next year - 2001. Lots of people had to alter their travel plans because of the lack of gas. About 3 years ago - there was an Air France strike and we had to stay in Paris for 2 extra nights before we could get a flight home on United. And there have been at least 3 air traffic controller's strikes in France that we've encountered in the past 15 years that caused us to alter our plans. France goes on strike quite frequently - and often it affects the ability to get cash from ATMs (airports were full of people waiting for available flights - and perhaps draining ATM machines). Cash can solve a lot of problems.


Stu Dudley

@janisj... Nope, I never ask for conversion to be done. The Travelex ATM does it to begin with and throws the question back for me to accept or reject their rate. That's the key point. A bank ATM typically doesn't show any converted amount to start with and present their options very clearly. The tip is to read the information carefully if OP uses a nonbank machine as I feel like they are designed to be deceptive.

There was never an ATM strike. There was a strike by the drivers of armoured cars (Brinks, etc.). Some banks were low on cash as were some stores. Paying by card was the way to go.

It should also be noted that almost any large shop accepts cards for amounts starting at one euro. This dates back to the arrival of the euro when a lot of people were confused by the new cash -- most particularly the coins, which they would turn over multiple times until the value finally became apparent. (They would be out of luck in the U.S. which does not put numbers on its coins.)

>>There was never an ATM strike. There was a strike by the drivers of armoured cars (Brinks, etc.).<< Who transported cash to refill the ATM machines. Same thing!!!


Stu Dudley

No, it emptied the banks also.

Yep - my point was - there was no cash available from the "standard" sources in many areas of France.



Stu Dudley

Lots of good advice here. We never get cash ahead of time, always use our bank debit card at ATMs for cash, and carry chipped credit cards with no foreign transaction fees for purchases. It’s well worth it to get a credit card with no annual fee and no foreign transaction fees. We have two: Bank of America Travel and Capital One.

One caveat regarding the the use of your bank debit card in ATMs. Always use a bank ATM, not those stand-alone ones in shops or on the street. We used a stand-alone in Quebec City when we couldn’t find a bank, and after it took our info (passcode) it said it couldn’t complete the transaction and returned our card. Two weeks later at another ATM in Montreal, where we had not even been, there were three transactions totaling $1500, all done over a weekend, when they wouldn’t show up until the following Monday. I realize that’s not Europe, but our bank told us it can happen anywhere ... the crooks got our info from the stand-alone ATM either with a skimmer, or just with the machine. Fortunately, our bank did not choose to make us cover the loss, but because it was a debit card, they could have.

What I do now is move most of our cash into an account that is not linked to our debit card. That way, if the card is somehow compromised, at least there is only a minimum of cash available, and the thief cannot access the other account with the larger amount of cash in it. I can transfer funds between accounts via computer if I should need to get more at an ATM. Also I put a lower limit on how much cash can be taken out via ATM per day ($300). My bank refunds any fees that other banks charge me to use their ATMs, so it is fine for me to have to use the ATMs more often due to the lower daily limit.

>>We never get cash ahead of time, always use our bank debit card at ATMs for cash,<<


For the third time - you would have been "out of luck" in June 2000. I realize that this has not been a problem for you.........yet. In addition to the ATM/armored car strike, our debit card was compromised just before arriving in London in the late 1900s and we had to spend most of a day fixing things before we could use it. Another time, our card did not work in two machines in the same village. We had to drive elsewhere to find one that did work. We actually carry 4 different debit cards now ( 2 with BofA & 2 with Morgan Stanley).


Stu Dudley

I have a no fee debit card and use that and no one has had problems taking cash. I do bring home euro and pounds from previous trips. I always take two debit cards and two credit cards just in case. We had the worse time with one card in France. It worked fine in England but will not let that happen again.