Credit Card Transactions--Paying in Euro or dollars.

Always pay in the currency of the country you are in, not your home country. So, in this case, pay in euros.

When you choose to pay in Euro, the credit card network will handle the exchange and it will piggyback on the millions of transactions that are occurring all the time, thus the best possible rate. When you choose to pay in USD, the owner of the clearing bank is selling you EUR and choosing the exchange rate, and they are making some extra money on the transaction.

I deserve a dope slap! I've traveled enough to know the easy answers. I'm just not thinking as departure date nears. Thanks for your patience.

What you will be dealing with is DCC. Back 20 years ago, there was no choice, you always "charged" a transaction in the local currency.. But, someone saw an opportunity to make a buck, so they offer to do the transaction in your home currency, and charge you for the effort. Unfortunately, instead of the less than one percent the network would charge, they charge anywhere from a few percent up to 10% or more.

So when you see it (which will be very often in Spain) always choose euros, and decline any conversion.

In my experience, even the person helping you will tell you to choose euros, on a rare occasion, a clerk might hit USD, but probably because they figure you're from the US, so Dollars.

The default for most transactions on my current trip is Euros, but a surprising number of the hand held transaction machines still ask whether you want it charged in Euros or Dollars. Euros every time.