andreah3

Hello!

My fiance and I will be traveling to Italy for our honeymoon. We have booked two wine tours through Tuscan Escapes and the balance of the tours is about $700 US dollars, they said we need to pay in cash on the day of.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how we should go about this? I am not sure where in Italy I would be able to pull out $700 at one time, and also don't really want to pull $2000 in euros out and be carrying that around. Please let me know what you think! This is our first time in Europe, we are very green and would appreciate all your advice!

Thanks,

Andrea

adrienne

The amount of money you withdraw per day depends on your bank and your ATM card. You can always do multiple transactions in an ATM machine and since there are two of you, you will have two ATM cards. Contact your bank to ensure you can withdraw an adequate amount per day.

You're paying $700+ for a day wine tour?

Carlux

And $700 is nowhere near 2000 Euros.

longhorn55

Depending on the amount that you bank will allow you to withdraw daily and depending how soon your tours are after arrival in Italy, it may not even be possible for you to withdraw enough euros in time.

If you know that your hotel will have a room safe, I'd be inclined to bring the money with you from the U.S. and keep it in the safe until the day of the tour. Will the company accept U.S. dollars for the tour? If you have to take euros, it will be a bit pricey to convert $700 to euros in the U.S.

Gordon_R

>> Will the company accept U.S. dollars for the tour? If you have to take euros, it will be a bit pricey to convert $700 to euros in the U.S.<<

And why on earth would they accept USD in Italy, what possible use would this be to them? The only circumstances under which they might is if they offered an massively worse exchange rate than you could get using an ATM (to compensate them for the inconvenience and currency exchange costs they would face), so this suggestion makes no sense at all.

andreah3

Adrienne - No it's $700 total for both of us for two tours, they last about 5-6 hours each. Include lunch, dinner, etc. I will look into what my bank will allow us to take out.

Carlux: I know that $700 is no where near 2000 euros, but I want to have cash on me for something other then just payment of tours. Thanks for your input.

Longhorn - thanks for your suggestion, it is appreciated.

I will check with my bank, thanks for the positivity everyone!

kayd

Unless you need the cash on your first day in Europe, just withdraw your limit from Italian ATMs on each of several days leading up to the tour dates. Two days (four transactions total) should be all you need.

LowCountryIslander

"You can always do multiple transactions in an ATM machine ...."

This was mentioned above and I just wanted to give you a heads-up from my experience. DO NOT "double-dip" at the same ATM (bancomat in Italian).

I did this several years ago in order to pay a security deposit on an apartment rental, which was 400 Euro. My daily USD withdrawal limit was something like $700, so I knew I could take out the amount I needed but many ATMs have per transaction withdrawal limits. I've found they can be anywhere from 200 Euro to 400 Euro per transaction.

The machine I selected had a 200 Euro limit. So, I withdrew 200 Euro and then immediately withdrew another 200 Euro from the same machine. That was my mistake.

By doing that, my bank (Bank of America) put a stop on all ATM transactions because of "questionable activity" on my card. I spent time and money on a long phone call to BofA in the states to straighten this out and all they would do was allow me a one hour window to access a limited amount of cash and then they completely shut down access to my account until they resolved the issue.

Lesson learned, don't use the same ATM in rapid succession. If I had only walked around the corner to another ATM and withdrawn the second 200 Euros I would not have had that problem.

StCirq

I can't imagine paying that amount of money for a "wine tour" anywhere, whether a meal was included or not, but I guess I'm not Generation Y. I could drink great wine for a year in St-Cirq on that kind of budget.

Just go to a couple of ATMs in a row and withdraw what you need. Let your bank know you'll be making foreign transactions.

thursdaysd

@LowCountryIslander - sorry you had that experience, but I have made back-to-back withdrawals from the same machine on multiple occasions with no problems. Which bank? (Mine was Capital One - bank account, not CC.)

november_moon

I don't think the choice of this tour has anything to do with generations, just different priorities and travel styles.

I would definitely just take the money out of the ATM in separate transactions (multiple days if needed) to get the cash.

That said, I would actually be quite wary of a tour that required a large payment like that in cash. Not to say that there is necessarily something wrong with it, just that I would investigate it more closely than I would for most tours that I would consider.

LowCountryIslander

thursdaysd...it was Bank of America, not a credit card. In my instance it turned out their fraud department was actually monitoring my account, which I guess I can consider a good thing, but it was a pain to deal with, especially since it was the first day of my trip.