Post Office Travel Money: Europe's Cheap City Breaks

Mr E,
Yes you can do over the counter money exchange in any main post office branch (not a little village one).
So bring your $ , forints, whatever and you can exchange them for £ notes. Just bring your passport with you. Probably a slightly worse rate of exchange than at an ATM.
So if you're in Keswick for instance, go to the Post Office, not an ATM..
The same applies for a High Street Travel agent (not sure if they are a thing in the US) and some high street stores or bigger branches of food stores.
So go from Keswick to Carlisle for the day and you can change your money at the Bureau de Change upstairs in Marks and Spencer department store.
I'm not sure many people in the UK would get overseas currency from their banks these days.
My own town on the edge of the Lake District, which gets plenty of American (and other overseas) tourists, just no RS ones, has at least 4 high street places to change currency.

Too funny :)

For those who DIDN'T read the link, it compares the basics for folks visiting those cities for a weekend jaunt. What's interesting, as an American, is how cheap most things are across the board. Travel is and can be affordable - it's the cost of flights and getting enough time off to enjoy it that are tough bits (for me). IOW, we don't really get to capitalize on the weekend jaunts to Europe.

• Cup of coffee (regular filter) - café/bar
• Bottle of beer/lager (330ml local brand) - café/bar
• Coca-Cola/Pepsi (330ml bottle/can) - café/bar
• Glass of wine (175ml house) - café/bar
• 3-course evening meal for 2 inc. house wine
• Return airport bus or train transfer
• 48-hour travel card
• Sightseeing city bus tour
• Top tourist heritage attraction
• Top museum
• Top art gallery
• 2 nights’ 3* accommodation (weekend) for 2

And Europeans dont get to capitalize on weekend jaunts in the US.

Barcelona is more expensive than London?! Now I understand why the locals are up in arms about over-tourism. In 2018, I found all of Spain, including Barcelona, to be much more affordable than other countries.
I appreciate that they separate the cost of accommodation from the other costs. It's interesting to see the places with high accommodation cost and low other costs--Dublin, my god!

Barcelona is more expensive than London?!

Depends :-) Barcelona @ £180.90 vs London @ £223.40 for everything but accommodations makes Barcelona the "bargain". Add in the hotels, though, and it might flip the other direction. Find a great hotel deal, and Barcelona will likely consistently be less expensive.

Since the big difference in the price is the hotels, it makes sense to see what they used for that metric. The article uses: Two-night accommodation prices were sourced from Hotels.com and based on an average of the 10 cheapest available three-star city centre accommodation for two adults sharing a double/twin ensuite room between 6-8 June 2025.

Is that a great measurement? Is there more/less hotel stock in the cities? Is June a busier season in on city vs the other? Do taxes make up a bigger chunk of one but not the other and thus influence the "cheapest" but not "average" three-star costs? And other things, for sure, could make either city (any city) look better or worse.

For me, another wrinkle for Americans is airfare to London vs Barcelona. London flights (direct especially) are relatively convenient and plentiful for me, but Barcelona flights are much less so. Flights are not part of this survey as Brits have access to a lot of inexpensive airlines we don't.

Good to see that Lille, France stands at # 6. I was there this trip and last trip 2024 too, both times as day trips from Paris.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/best-value-holidays-2025-b2713586.html

This is another one the Post Office did looking a wider range of destinations.

This explains why I’ve been to the Costa del Sol and the Algarve so many times!

No Nick, dont think this organization is the government office that delivers the mail.

No, Post Office Travel Money is not a government office. While the Post Office itself is owned by the UK government, Post Office Travel Money is a financial service brand offered by Post Office Ltd, which is a separate commercial entity. Many of the financial products under the Post Office Money umbrella, including travel money, are provided in partnership with other financial institutions like Bank of Ireland.

And for the postal service being an English invention. No, wasn't. But would have been my first guess too. Well, English or Texans.

Post Office Money is operated from the same desk as other Post Office functions like posting a letter or parcel. There are different things behind the scenes but to the consumer it is all just ‘the Post Office’.

The Post Office has always operated some kinds of financial services. It used to be where state pensions and other social security benefits were paid. You had to go and collect them weekly in cash.

Helen, it's an interesting arrangment. I was trying to understand why the post office would be dealing with tourism ... so assumed maybe it wasn't "the" post office; and i was sort of wrong and sort of correct.

"This is another one the Post Office did looking a wider range of destinations." - I find this one strange - yes you can eat and drink in Cape Town very well for reasonable money, mostly because the Rand is so weak. That said, the cost of the air fare from the UK alone will buy you a week in Europe with everything paid.

These surveys are just a form of promotion for the Post Office’s foreign exchange service. As they’re on your local high street it can be a convenient way of getting holiday money. A lot of people still like to take cash just like the old days, especially young people it seems. They save up for a week in Zante and take €1000 to blow on partying. I’m not going to delve into to why they might need cash specifically for their partying needs.

"I find these from time to time and when I post them, I get ripped. So, time to get ripped again. "

Ripped? What? I love this kind of thing!

According to stuff I read on the Dawg Pound Daily (which is where I find the latest Cleveland Browns news, rumors, trades, free agency updates and more from the insider fans and analysts of folks who go to Cleveland Browns games and sit in the dawg pound which is the home field section of the end zone seats), the Post Office Travel Money ranking of Europe’s Cheap City Breaks is the best ranking of travel deals they have ever seen re-posted by a Rick Steves poster who has posted more than 20,000 times. No other frequent poster has come close to posting such an excellent ranking. It is the sine qua non, writ large, of travel posting in which European cities are rated in their budget friendliness for weekend breaks for British Travelers.

Thanks again Mr E! I enjoyed it! But could you also post numbers 11, 13, 14? I'd like to know the full list of cities that beat Budapest. Thanks!

Happy travels!

David, i filled it in for you. What the list demonstrates is that cheap isn't always interesting. Some of those cities might be a good weekend city break, but that might be the extent of how long they hold your interest.

David, Let’s look at this. Podgorica got 4th place with no top tourist attraction, no museum and no art gallery. So, why go. Eliminate it from the list. After the obvious need to adjust costs for the average RS tourist, the cost for Prague drops to 317.93 and for Budapest it drops to 321.50. I think those are the only two that qualify for the adjustment. So now Prague is at 11 and Budapest moves up from 15 to 12.

Thank you sir! Now the list is complete.

Happy travels!

Just because something has no cost doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The museums are free in Podgorica. And the top tourist attractions all seem to be churches, mosques, bridges and a waterfall, so all are free to visit. I'm not getting on a plane to go there. I'm just saying that government-run museums can be free, as they are in, say, Dublin.

Good points G3rryCee!

I asked a subset of the yodeling club and the auxiliary choir of the DawgPound Daily (specifically the intersection of the two on a Venn diagram) to re-rate the list by their favorite destinations rather than the cheapest and they provided the following (the lower the number on the left, the higher the ranking):

15-Riga, Latvia (1 cheapest)

18-Vilnius, Lithuania

12-Warsaw, Poland 

20-Podgorica, Montenegro

8-Lisbon, Portugal 

13-Lille, France

16-Gdansk, Poland

10-Krakow, Poland 

11-Porto, Portugal

14-Zagreb, Croatia (10)

19-Bratislava (11)

5-Prague (12)

6-Athens (13)

17-Tallinn (14)

7-Budapest (15)

3-Rome (21)

1-Paris (23)

9-Vienna (24)

2-London (27)

4-Barcelona (31)

No surprise I suppose that Dawgpounders would love Paris! Also unsurprising that Podgorica, Montenegro came in last since nary a one of them could find Podgorica (much less Montenegro) on a map.

Happy travels!

G3rryCee, to begin my comment was mostly in jest. But now I am curious, where did you find the museums are free in Podgorica? I cant find that. I did find that on certain days of the month the principal museum in town, The Museum of Podgorica is free on certain days of the month; but as a rule, no, there is charge to enter. I am sure there are other smaller museums in town but they dont show up much on google searches. But maybe its old information and you found somthing different.

I coud say more but it begins to sound like I am speaking badly of a city that I sort of like and I dont want to do that. While you may not want to hop a plane there, I have done that a number of times; and spent several nights there as well. Very nice laidback quiet place full of wonderful people. But so is San Marcos, Texas. A very good chance I will be back there in the Fall. Its great for a day on the first trip and its the gateway to what I think is the most interesting and beautiful country in Central Europe (blows Croatia away for my interests). Just pointing out, that the scoring was giving credit for a lack of attributes. If the "city" of Páty, Hungary had been reviewed by the Post Office folks it would have come in number 1 because it didnt have costs in two thirds of the catagories .... they just dont exist.

So I stand by advancing Prague and Budapest a few places by eliminating Podgorica from the list and incorporating the cost credit for the average Rick Steves tourist. (I am still talking in jest).

Nick,

your post about Post Offices reminds me of a joke:

An elephant went to the post office to get a PO Box.

The clerk was happy to address the elephant in the room.

Happy travels!

Ba.....DING!