Travel Tips for Going to Spain

["Bryen M. Yunashko" <suserocks bryen com>]

A couple of travel tips that some of you should be aware of if traveling
aborad to Spain for the GNOME-A11y hackfest.

Credit Cards:
Be sure to contact your bank BEFORE you leave the United States and
inform them where you will be in Europe.  If you don't, their fraud
protection services will suspect it is a stolen card and stop the card
and attempt to call you.  But if your phone doesn't work in Europe, you
won't be called and you'll be marooned without money!  :-)

Getting Cash:
Obviously, first bit of cash you need is your cab fare from the airport.
Most people tend bring cash with them and change it at a currency
exchange in the airport.   This is actually expensive!   The best thing
to do is leave your cash home and go straight to an ATM machine.
Withdraw cash like you do back home.  You usually won't pay any currency
exchange fees.  Just the cost of withdrawing from one bank to another.
(Which is much cheaper!)

Do keep in mind your daily withdrawal limit and the conversion to Euro
dollars.  Currently, the Euro dollar = $1.33 USD.  So $500 USD = 663
Euros.  

Tipping:

I can never get used to the fact that outside of the United States,
tipping is not required or expected.   I still end up tipping out of
some American guilt.  :-)   So, you don't HAVE to tip, but if you do,
generally just round up to the nearest euro dollar seems to be the way
to go.  

Change!
Be prepared!  Euros do a lot of coins!  heavy pockets!!!  So you're gong
to have lots of 1 and 2 dollar euro coins.  You might want to bring a
coin holder to keep track of your coins.  However, since we're planning
to take the bus from hotel to hackfest daily, its probably good that
we'll have lots of change for the week.

I think that's most of the important basic tips I can think of.   See
you all in Sevilla!!

Bryen