Yelpir

More great advice. Thanks everyone
pepper: I had my card swallowed by an ATM here in Cape Town and my sister-in-law had the same experience in London. It is not as easy as asking someone from the bank to retrieve it for you; especially when your home bank does not have a presence in the country that you are in. In both cases, the bank refused to retrieve the card. In both cases we had to wait three days for a new card to be issued in South Africa and mailed to a reliable address. That is not an experience you want to have when you are moving from town to town on a daily basis.
hez: I have never tried asking my bank for a duplicate card. I must try that. It sounds like an excellent idea.
easytraveler: Making one's own sandwiches is certainly a viable option. I usually do that when travelling in a hire car but I have never tried it on a coach. I always take a plastic fork, knife and spoon with me from home. No problem with airport security. The plastic baggies and the multivitamins are an excellent idea.
FoFoBT: I have never tried a prepaid Visa/MC but my bank usually tries to sell me what they call a 'wallet', which is a card with a prepaid amount of foreign currency on it. I presume that must be pretty much the same thing. I invariably carry cash but I know that is very dangerous. I guess it's time I considered plastic
Thank you all for your input and ideas

kybourbon

>>>It is not as easy as asking someone from the bank to retrieve it for you; especially when your home bank does not have a presence in the country that you are in.<<<

You don't ask your home bank to retrieve it. You ask the bank where you just inserted your card to retrieve it. What would be the point of asking your home bank?

Yelpir

kybourbon: I'm sorry that I did not make myself clear. What I meant was that, if your home banking company had branches in the foreign country that you were visiting (like HSBC, for example) you could use one of their ATMs and, if there was a problem, that bank might be more sympathetic because you are a customer in your home country. As I said, with both my sister-in-law and myself, the bank that owned the ATM refused to retrieve the card from the ATM. In fact, the cards were cancelled and we had to phone our own bank and get new cards issued.

Pepper_von_snoot

ok/

i understand/

but that is like stating/

i had a flat tyre once/

so i am not going to drive my car/

because i am afraid of getting another flat tyre/

you will be spending so much more money exchanging at cambios/

i couldn't imagine eating packaged soup in my hotel room/

to save money/

only to throw it away at a place like cooks/


razr//

suze

Don't forget the bakeries. I only know the Lac Leman region of Switerland but all the bakeries there also offer really wonderful ready-made sandwiches.

FoFoBT

...and pastries if you want to spend your francs and calories on something decadent and luscious. Along those lines, the bakery/cafe I mentioned at the St. Moritz train station offers a very tasty confection of buttery, twisting, flaky layers of pastry dough filled with a thick vanilla cream (rich but not too sweet) and dark chocolate shavings. It costs about 3 francs (the same price as a mass-produced candy bar). Perfect with their cappuccinos (which are also good).