Couple things I learned while traveling that would have been useful to know before going.
Currency Exchange
The dollar hasn’t been doing well against the Euro, but depending on how you change your money things could be more expensive than they need to be.
The days of going to merchants, or relatives to exchange US dollars are done. There’s no benefit to them, and with the weak dollar there’s less incentive to exchange an hold the dollars.
The exchange rate posted on http://finance.google.com for the days I looked at options.
Exchange rate (ref finance.google.com)
5/31 .744103 1.344
6/1 .743937 1.344
6/4 .742942 1.346
6/5 .740302 1.351
6/6 .739919 1.351
6/7 .741510 1.349
6/8 .746826 1.339
Changing money in the US through a bank. This was the least desirable option. You end up carrying around more money than necessary and the exchange rate was about $1.47 for a euro. Exchanging at the airport in Athens, or NY was about the same rate, with other fees tacked on. The only reason to use one of these options is to have some immediate money to be able to leave the airport by rail, or taxi. They won’t take US dollars, so converting some amount of money immediately is recommended.
ATM withdrawls. I signed up for an account at Commerce Bank. They have a feature of refunding any bank atm fees, if you maintain a $2500 minimum balance. The exchange rate was $1.35, which was very good. The other surprising thing was that none of the banks I used charged any ATM fees, so I didn’t need the refund feature. The only negative was the 200 Euro daily limit. If you had to make a large purchase or pay a large hotel bill, this option wouldn’t work.
Changing money in a Greek bank. This required you to have your passport and the rate was $1.36. There seemed to be a $5 euro fee for whatever amount of money you exchanged. This is a reasonable path for a larger purchase where you need to get more than the $200 Euro daily limit of the ATM
Credit Card purchases. I have a mastercard and a couple visa cards. All seemed to have the same costs associated with international transactions. You get the current exchange rate, but they add on a 3% transaction fee. Still useful for large purchases and eliminates the need to carry large sums of cash on your trip.
Tipping
We were never clear on when and how much to tip. Asking if the tip was included on the bill, would always get a response that it wasn’t and was up to you to leave what you wanted. Many restaurant bills had 1-3 Euro table charge for bread and sometimes water. We were using the use custom of 15-20% on most bills, ’til we got to Crete and talked to some relatives. Common practice is to leave some change, and round up your bill, but not anything like 15-20%. Knowing that early would have save us each at least $100.
Structure and formality
Greece is a great place to vacation. in a week we saw many ancient ruins, amazing natural wonders, and great weather. Planning things in advance is a good thing, but not every detail. The Greeks seem to wing most things and normal safety or schedule structure aren’t anywhere near standards you’d see in the US or other countries with such a large dependency on tourism. Two examples were getting tickets for a ferry from Santorinni to Heraklion, and a simple tour of ancient Thira. We booked the Ferry before the trip and paid a 30 Euro courier fee to get the tickets sent to us in the US. When we went to get the ferry, we found the ferry hasn’t been running for about a week, and we had to try to exchange the tickets for another line. They didn’t have any seats for a day and we had to scramble for other options. Travel agent, or ferry company weren’t useful. Others at the port were very helpful and in the end we found a cheap room for 20 Euros in Perisso. All done under the table (no check-in), I think so that the people that run the hotel could avoid some 17% tax. The tour of Ancient Thira was run by a local tour company. The concept is they pick you up near your hotel, take you to the ruins, for a tour, then take you to the beach. After a few hours they take you back to the hotel. All for 18 Euro. We got up to meet the bus at 10am, and unless we went into the office to have them call the bus, it’s pretty clear it woudln’t have come. We get to the ruins, where they drop you off and say they’ll meet you at the same spot at 1pm (2 hours later). no guide, no map, and none of the ruins had signs on them. We got back to the bus and got dropped off at the beach. We tried to get the bus at 7pm and after going into the office, we were told there was no 7pm bus. After showing our tickets they tossed a set of keys to a kid sitting there and told him to drop us back off at the hotel. Again all worked fine, but if you are traveling with someone that needs structure or would stress about things being winged, things could become a challenge.