Baltic Cruise

[Casspip]

going on a Baltic cruise in August. Any suggestions as to the best currency to take for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia and Russia? Only Finland uses the Euro. Only need about �30 for each country so reluctant to buy Krone etc with commission for each country. Any suggestions welcome.

[Cathyhuns]

if you want to shop any where other than tourist traps you will need the local currency for each location. When we did a Baltic cruise we bought �30 of each local currency on the ship and had quite a lot of fun seeing how far it would take us in the different countries.

[dzug]

Very few places in the UK charge commission as such - they do a percentage load on the exchange rate which means that the charge is entirely pro rata. So the amount you want to buy is irrelevant - it's going to be about 5%.

If you have a debit card that doesn't charge a fee for overseas tarnsactions an ATM when you get there is a possibility. If it does charge a fee then that (on a small sum) is going to far outweigh changing cash here or on the boat.

[auntiebertie]

Just got off exactly same cruise - we used local ATM to get out about �20 in each country - and what we didn't use we converted back to US$ onboard the ship. Estonia - many places took Euro so no need for Kroon - just ask before you go into shop or cafe. Russia took US$ or Euro or Ruble. We got out �100 worth of ruble at the airport and used that for lunches, shopping and left the rest as the tip for our tour guide.
I suggest, if you have not already done so, you check out http://boards.cruisecritic.com/ especially the ports of call section on Europe/Northern Europe. This has loads of useful info on what to do in each port. I also hope you have arranged a private tour in Russia and are not going with the ships tours as you will get so much out of being with a small tour group.
if you have any questions I will happily advise what i did in each port etc