changing currency for UK travellers

[torty]

We're booked on the Star Princess 23 August and would love to hear from anyone from the UK who's recently returned from a Baltic cruise (yes I know us Brits are in the minority) with any advice on what to do about changing currency. All the information on the message boards seems aimed at the American passengers and refers to changing dollars etc. We're using Denrus for our 2 days in St Petersburg and can pay them in cash (dollars or Euros) so will probably take dollars to pay them but are a bit unsure of what to do for the rest of our spending. I understand the credit card companies add quite a bit in fees so should we take a fair bit of money in dollars and use atm machines to withdraw small amounts of currency at each port rather than using credit cards. As I understand it, even settling the ship's account with a credit card incurs extra charges as it would be a UK based as opposed to an American card.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[pj-atsea]

I am a Canadian who just returned from a Star Princess cruise. About settling your shipboard account: you could give a credit card when you check in but a day or so before disembarking, you can go down to the Purser's desk and pay off your account with Travellers cheques or cash and then either just have a the small balance put on your credit card or go down again the night before you disembark and pay off the remainder with cash or whatever. I paid a lot of attention to the boards before travelling and got some cash in each currency before leaving home. I found that was not necessary. With the exception of one or tow places in Estonia and Gdansk everyone would accept (and seemed to want) US dollars. Next to that they wanted Euros. Unfortunately I found that for example if they wanted $5 US for something, then if you used Euros, they wanted 5 euros( which is a lot more). We only used an ATM in Estonia but they seemed to be in all countries. Credit cards were also acceptable but I know the credit card companies ( at least our companies) charge a fee to change currencies, so mostly we used cash. There are ATM's on board the ship that do exchanges of currencies, very easy but they also charge a fee. Hope this helps. pj

[Bollinge]

Get yourself a Nationwide Building Society (still a mutual society - no shareholders) bank account with a Visa debit card. They charge no commission on foreign currency withdrawals, nor any percentage mark-up on the exchange rate. All other banks charge £1 or £2 fee per transaction, plus up to 2.75% commission!

 

Then you can draw out cash in local currency from ATM's in each country - they are everywhere. Or pay for goods and services with it. Remember, only Finland, Germany and Holland use the Euro. So just draw out enough Swedish Kroner, for example, for the day. If you have any left over, change it into Danish Kroner the next day at one of the many bureaux de change in each city.

 

On the ship you will need no cash, and when you come to pay the onboard account (in US dollars), use the card again. You will save around £100-150 on this trip alone with the Nationwide card, as opposed to using any other rip-off bank's card.

[suron]

Thanks for the information about the Nationwide Account and their Visa Card. We are on the Star on 13th August and are waiting for our Saga Visa Card to come through - no commision charges for purchases in the EU and 1% elsewhere but your recommendation sounds even better. We will be taking some Euros and US Dollars to be safe but anything to avoid the rip off of massive commission/conversion charges would be great. Thanks for the information. Can't wait for our trip - having read the various reports from previous passengers it all sounds great.:)

[torty]

Thank you Bollinge for your very helpful reply. Had contemplated opening a Nationwide account and today, after reading your message, did just that. It should be an asset in all our future foreign travels. Many thanks.

[edinburgher]

Hi, we are Brits and came home 2 weeks ago from our Baltic cruise. With onboard accounts you only really need to think about shore spending. If doing ships excursions, again thats on your onboard account.

 

As far as paying private tours in SPB is concerned, we looked at the rates on the day we bought the currencies. It was cheaper on that day for us to pay the RO account in euros so we bought euros. (They had quoted us both a Euro price and a US£ price) Had it been cheaper that day to buy in $s then we would have bought them.

 

For the others, we bought Kroner for Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Helsinki we had €, and we had US$ and € for Tallinn and SPB. Our driver in SPB supplied any roubles we needed for incidentals such as lunches in exchange for US$ (shhh)

 

In each country, we carried a mix of their own currency, some £, some € and some $. as its often the case that at least one of these currencies is accepted. We have yet to find anywhere which wont take at least one of these three in addition to their own.

 

It mostly worked out OK as we had a rough idea of what we were going to do and see in each port as we were sightseeing independantly everywhere. This gave us an idea of approx costs in each country with a bit extra allowed for souvenirs or whatever. We also had a credit card with us but didnt actually need to use it. Only in Oslo did we buy a more expensive item and we paid in cash, part Norwegian kroner, part UK£. (English notes)

 

 

 

We always keep any left over $ and € for future trips so that wasnt a problem.

 

We had some very small amounts of some currencies at the end, and some larger amounts of 2 others. The 2 larger amounts we changed back when we got home, the bundle of smaller amounts (together with any coins) we left for the cabin steward with the rest of his tip in £. Crew get better rates onboard, can often change them amongst other crew going ashore if they themselves are not, and they often need currency for themselves for sightseeing, phone calls home etc. Anyway, he was going back again a few days later, we were not!

 

Hope that helps.