Eruope trip

[Jammrock]

What ship are you cruising on? Have a great time, T.

Norwegian Cruise Lines, we're sailing on the Spirit out of Venice.

https://www.ncl.com/cruises/12-day-grand-mediterranean-from-venice-SPIRIT12VCEKOTDBVPIRJMKNAPCIVLIVTLNBCN?numberOfGuests=4294953449&ships=Norwegian_Spirit&state=null&&itineraryCode=SPIRIT12VCEKOTDBVPIRJMKNAPCIVLIVTLNBCN

Thanks for the tip about being charged in EUR.

[Fat Tone]

Cool. We've been on the NCL Epic. We really liked the style - not as restrained as P&O but a lot classier than the Carnival Splendour we did out of LA. If the Spirit is a similar style to the Epic (although the Epic is a lot bigger) you'll love it.

Of your Ports, we have done:

Venice
Dubrovnik - walk the walls or just the walled city itself, gorgeous
Piraeus (I've worked there briefly a long time ago, its a classy harbour, a short distance from Athens itself, good public transport)
Naples - awful. Skip the city and take a tour to Herculaneum or Pompeii. Pompeii is a lot bigger, depends how energetic you are feeling. Or go up the volcano.
Barcelona - nice city. Most people see the Gaudi properties and park, and the Sagrada Familia. We used a specialist tour company to collect us from the boat, take us to Montserrat (amazing) then tour Barcelona, and drop us at the airport. it was about €80 each.

Cheers, T.

[Wulfman]

Roughly what the others are saying. Weswap is a great suggestion, otherwise use the ATMs in one big transaction with a debit card.

Be prepared that credit cards are not as widely accepted (better chances with Visa/Mastercard than with Amex/Discovery). And yes, check your foreign transaction fees - my Amex charge 3%, but certain UK cards have 0% foreign transaction charges (except when getting cash) - I'm sure there are similar things in the US.

I wouldn't say tipping is entirely optional - rounding up is always appreciated, but definitely don't go to 15 or 20%. 5 to 10 % is considered generous. I might have picked this one up in the UK - tipping at the bar is not common in the UK (leads to confusion), but in most other places people appreciate it if you round up your bar bill. Plus you avoid all those coins.

Coins: enjoy lugging loads of metal around in your wallet. If you have a coin-unfriendly wallet, get something that can take coins.

Montenegro is going to be great. Looks similar to Croatia, but only a fraction of the tourists. Plus the bay around Kotor is really impressive.
Enjoy,
W

[dZeus]

The rates for WeSwap look amazing. An extra 8 Euro per $100 USD versus TravelEx. Are there kiosk, or banks, or something that offer WeSwap or just sign up online and and they ship you a card?

Looking forward to Venice. I hope I'm not too jet lagged to enjoy it. That's the big pitfall of starting there.

Has anyone been to Mykonos, Greece before? We don't have a lot of time there so we can't wander far from port.

just had a conversation with an American colleague that works on the same project at my current client, and he explained that most US banks/credit cards don't charge any foreign currency transaction fees at all.
If any of your cards don't charges for foreign currency transactions and ATM withdrawal fees, it probably would make most sense to do as Utwig suggested, and pull out a bunch of cash from an ATM and use that. As a bonus, it seems that a reasonable number of countries that you visit use EUR, and you can keep using the same cash between visits.
Just make sure your cards have Chip & PIN, because I haven't seen any payment terminals accepting swipe here in Europe for the past 5+ years. Maybe ATMs are different in this, but I have my doubts... fellow Americans that have visited Europe in recent years may be able to give advice on this?

[VJ]

Not sure which countries you are traveling to, but check to make sure you can withdraw money.

A colleague from the US had a problem in Lviv (Ukraine) about 4 years ago, when his card refused to work. He notified his wife in US, who went to the bank. There, they told her "Great that you are here! Someone tried to use your husband's card in Ukraine, but we blocked it!". She replied: "My husband is in Ukraine..." - "O... So we shouldn't have blocked it?"
Most likely it will not be an issue in European countries, but it never hurts to double check...

[dZeus]

Not sure which countries you are traveling to, but check to make sure you can withdraw money.

A colleague from the US had a problem in Lviv (Ukraine) about 4 years ago, when his card refused to work. He notified his wife in US, who went to the bank. There, they told her "Great that you are here! Someone tried to use your husband's card in Ukraine, but we blocked it!". She replied: "My husband is in Ukraine..." - "O... So we shouldn't have blocked it?"
Most likely it will not be an issue in European countries, but it never hurts to double check...

This holds true for any bank anywhere, especially when travelling large distances. Most banks uses analytics based on past behaviour, to check whether a transaction is normal or potentially suspicious. If you know you're travelling large distances, it helps to notify your bank in advance, so they take this into account in their analysis.
My bank has a 'travel abroad' section in the online banking interface that allows you to enter travel plans, that are then used in the transaction data analysis. Not that I always use it (have had to call them to unblock my card on a few occasions).

[Jammrock]

All the US cards have chips now. The laws changed a couple of years back and all the banks were required to release chip-based cards. We had problems with some chip cards in a few places in Ireland so we learned that US citizens should carry a few options.

I have an Amex with no foreign transaction fees. I think that's my only one. We'll use that on bigger purchases when we can. I think we'll convert some US cash to Euro at the airport to avoid ATM fees on top of the conversion rate.

Yes, we learned about Euro coins the hard way when we went to Ireland last year. We are more prepared this time.

We are going to Pompeii at the Naples port. Have a couple of tours in Barecelona setup. The only places we don't have anything planned in Mykonos and Provence. Mykonos because we aren't there long. Will likely shop and walk the beaches. And Provence because we are there on Sunday and heard that most things are closed.

[UtwigMU]

This holds true for any bank anywhere, especially when travelling large distances. Most banks uses analytics based on past behaviour, to check whether a transaction is normal or potentially suspicious. If you know you're travelling large distances, it helps to notify your bank in advance, so they take this into account in their analysis.
My bank has a 'travel abroad' section in the online banking interface that allows you to enter travel plans, that are then used in the transaction data analysis. Not that I always use it (have had to call them to unblock my card on a few occasions).

A fellow Slovenian told me her card had been blocked like that by her bank when she was in Las Vegas, USA and wanted to treat friends. Have your bank phone number stored in phone before you go.

[MultimediaMan]

Not to take this off-topic: The implementation of Chip and Pin cards in the USA is ~very~ incomplete. The cards were in full circulation by May-June of this year. However, it will take the card reading devices a very long time to catch up. These new Chip and Pin Readers are also very slow to process transactions as compared to swipe-only card readers; because of how they have designed the system, and there are few ways to speed up the transaction (no local caching - full authentication at each step of the transaction).

[Jammrock]

Not to take this off-topic: The implementation of Chip and Pin cards in the USA is ~very~ incomplete. The cards were in full circulation by May-June of this year. However, it will take the card reading devices a very long time to catch up. These new Chip and Pin Readers are also very slow to process transactions as compared to swipe-only card readers; because of how they have designed the system, and there are few ways to speed up the transaction (no local caching - full authentication at each step of the transaction).

This is true for the US, but chip and pin has been in Europe for so long that many places won't/can't swipe cards. And the reason for the slowness is because it's actually safe and secure.

Your banking information is in plain text on the magnetic strip. It's encrypted on the chip, the connection to the bank is encrypted, and the store cannot hold or cache any of your information. This does require stores to have a better internet connection, but it's a small price to pay for litigation and class action lawsuits when a hacker breaks into your database.

Had the chip system been in place faster many of the large scale breaches at Target, Home Depot, etc. would have been pointless because the stores would not have access to any banking information unless the users signed up for online ordering. And even then there are a number of ways to keep your banking info safe.

There is a company currently testing a CC with what amounts to an RSA FOB built into it. The security code is on an LCD display and the number changes hourly based on a mathematical algorithm. Thus invalidating any stored CC information shortly after use.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a23186/credit-card-number-change/

[dZeus]

Not to take this off-topic: The implementation of Chip and Pin cards in the USA is ~very~ incomplete. The cards were in full circulation by May-June of this year. However, it will take the card reading devices a very long time to catch up. These new Chip and Pin Readers are also very slow to process transactions as compared to swipe-only card readers; because of how they have designed the system, and there are few ways to speed up the transaction (no local caching - full authentication at each step of the transaction).

in the US, my European payment cards (all have magnetic strip, chip&pin and contactless) give very varying experiences when trying to pay with them:
- swipe & sign
- swipe only (maybe when the transaction is less than a certain amount?)
- chip & sign
- chip & pin
- chip only
- contactless & sign

In Europe, we don't do the swipe and/or sign thing, so back home I only have:
- chip & pin
- contactless only (no further interaction needed, and only works for a certain amount set by my bank, usually under 50 pound sterling)

One thing I noticed is that some US shops only accept swipe, even when their terminals are capable of chip/contactless. Apparently the fee that the merchant gets charged for swipe is lower than for chip and contactless ?

When I talk about contactless with american colleagues, they only seem to know it for use with smartphones. In Europe, most bank and credit cards have it nowadays (and mine seem to get accepted by US terminals that accept contactless just fine).

Finally, I noticed something weird when tipping for a restaurant meal in the US when using chip to pay. I authorized the transaction for the amount on the receipt (amount without tip, it just asks to confirm with 'yes'). I then received a bill where I could sign and add a tip (which I did).

A couple of days later, when I looked at the transaction history for the card, it showed the transaction for the original amount without tip, another transaction where the amount is reimburst, followed by a transaction for the amount including tip. Surely three transactions are a lot more costly than doing it in one go?

In Europe, when a restaurant accepts tips, there's an additional dialog on the payment terminal that asks the customer to enter an amount to tip, before they authorize the transaction.
I was wondering if it is the unfamiliarity with the chip & pin that causes this restaurant to perform three transactions to get the proper amount from my card?