This is the view we enjoyed from our window at the Bailey’s Hotel each morning. It looks like a movie set.
What follows is some kinda nerdy detail that folks who read my credit card blog will be into:
Probably the most striking change from the last time I visited the UK was the ease of converting dollars to pounds. When I was in school, I probably spent a chunk of time each week at the MoneyGram desk or at the Bureau de Change converting cash from my American bank account into legal tender.
On this trip, we set up a free checking account at Bank of America with a debit card pre-approved for European travel. We used that debit card at the Barclays Bank branch one block up the road, where we enjoyed no ATM fee. At retailers, we used the debit card and got an exchange rate that was far better than I expected. The only time we got hosed was on the first purchase I made at Harrod’s. The cashier suggested that she ring up my purchase in U.S. dollars, and it didn’t occur to me that they used a conversion rate that was about 10% higher than my bank’s.
Although we didn’t encounter any issues paying with plastic during the trip, many of the cashiers I met showered pity on me because the security features on American credit cards are so far behind those in Europe. Here, merchants rely just on the magnetic strip and a little hologram to ensure that our cards are legitimate. Retailers in the UK use a “chip and pin” system that reminds me of the PennCard I used to use in the 90s: you leave it inserted in the payment device while the system analyzes security and recent usage data stored on the card.
I had my CapitalOne card in the hotel safe just in case my debit card got skimmed. From previous experience, I knew that Bank of America would be able to lock down my debit card if the cashiers’ omens came to pass.
Fortunately, we didn’t need to worry about that. It was fun, however, to see my balance printed out on the ATM receipts in Pounds Sterling.
