Cash is king always! Typically what I do when I travel overseas is use the traveler's checks at the exchange places every morning. Try to plan out your how much you intend to spend in a day or budget some room for anything extra. Sometimes the rates are not the highest but I find this method the safest.

Hi there. I just came back from a 3 week trip through Europe (London -> France -> Italy -> Switzerland) so I think I may be able to help. First off, currency exchanges should be avoided at all costs. You pay the price for the convenience of being able to switch currencies. I had to do it a couple times (GBP -> EUR and EUR -> CHF) and the comissions they charged were ridiculous but I also had no use for the currency so I didn't have much of a choice. Travelers checks are also bad and not worth the hassles they come with. The best thing to do is to charge as much as you can on credit cards and use ATMs to get cash. Credit cards / debit cards (I tend to avoid debit cards because you don't get your miles/cash back/etc) are great since the surcharge is so small ~%3 in most cases so you pretty much get the going rate of the currency. Don't fall for the, "we'll charge your card in USD" service you'll be offered I found that the exchange rates are not favorable. ATM rates are just as good but I get hit with international withdrawal fees of $5 + ATM fees of a few dollars each time. What I try to do is take out the maximum each time to minimize the number of withdrawals. If you have time, and it sounds like you do, you can probably get some good rates domestically if you search hard enough. I didn't have that luxury of time (well I did, I just procrastinated) and it was hard for me to predict how much I'd need in each country. In short, my advice is to use credit cards as much as possible and use cash only when you need to (from ATMs).

I agree w/last answer, I travel to visit my relatives in Germany frequently and credit card is the way to go.

Credit cards are the best BUT make sure you put it on a card with no balance and pay it off *immediately*. If you end up paying interest and late fees all your savings are out the window.