The Trip to France
- Tocane

Money

This was the first time we went on a trip outside the country in which we didn't bring traveller's checks (or do you say "cheques"?). Why pay the middle man for them and have to go the extra step of finding a place to change them that doesn't charge an arm and a leg? It just didn't seem modern. We figured that at worst case we'd end up drawing money against the credit card, which at least would give us a good exchange rate.

We needn't have worried about the worst case. In Tocane we became acquainted with the local ATM of Crédit Agricole, which worked like a charm. It accepted our normal ATM cards without complaint, producing the local currency with no overhead except the $2.00 fee from our bank back home.

	Although all transactions in France are officially in the new European currency, the Euro, they haven't yet started using Euro bills and coins. Thus the ATMs still dispense Francs. $100 U.S. was around 750 Francs at the time, so we had the minor thrill of making ATM requests for four-digit amounts.
Francs			Euros