Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Monday the 26th of June,

the very last week of June indeed. So I thought it would be a good idea for each day this week

to take a different, important travel topic ahead of the main holiday months of July and August.

And I'm delighted to say that my colleague Charlotte Hindle is back to put the key questions

that you've been asking, starting with holiday money. Go ahead, Charlotte.

Yes, hi. So just in terms of holiday money, we have a lot of people writing in, emailing in, asking about do they take cash abroad?

Do they change some money beforehand?

What debit cards or credit card should they take away?

And it's just that I know that when you travel abroad, you have some really set rules.

And the rules are around saving money, basically.

So if we just start off with, you're going to go abroad, should you change some money in the UK, you know, ahead of your trip?

It all depends where you are going.

So certainly for the Eurozone, which of course extends all the way from Ireland to Greece

and takes in our favourite holiday destinations of Spain, of France, of Italy, of Portugal and so on, I would take some cash in euros.

Now, a lot of people listening, perhaps younger people, will say, oh, cash, come on, get over it.

But actually, in a number of circumstances, it is really important.

I've lost counter the number of restaurants on Greek

islands, for instance, where the card machine suddenly isn't working. So having a good

backup of euros is important. Also in the US, which is pretty far down the road towards

credit cards, again, always worth having cash, not least if you are going to be

tipping people and it's very difficult not to so I always get US and you and

euros before I go there and I have a kind of float at home so how do you get them well

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