Exchanging Dollars In Amsterdam: Best Rate?

To answer your last question, if you need more money for your apartment at first than you can withdraw from the ATM, a bank WILL give you a better rate than the office at the airport.

You might ask your credit union about raising your withdrawal limit for the period while you are traveling. ATMs do give you the best rate overall, but your credit union may charge a foreign ATM fee (mine doesn't), so you should ask them about that so you know what to expect. In general, you should make large withdrawals so that you can make fewer of them to save fees. Of course, if there are no added fees, it's better not to carry any more cash than you have to.

While the best rate will be had at an ATM, you'll want to use a debit or ATM card at the machines, not a credit card. Credit card companies hit you with high cash advance fees.

The best rate you can get is with a debit card at an ATM.

Gregorio - You haven't mentioned if you have ruled out other options, so here's what we do if we need cash up front in a new currency.

We have contacted the proprietor of the accomodation and have asked if they will take installments over a few days. Some have held our Credit Card number as a 'deposit' (even though they don't take credit cards) and let us pay as we could withdraw money.

We have also recently taken ATM cards for different accounts to get more money - such as 3 separate accounts at different institutions with $500 daily ATM limit each. There are online banks such as Captial One Direct banking and other credit unions that have really low or no ATM fees. Even taking an ATM card from a bank with higher fees can be cheaper than exchanging cash at a bank. Now, our Capital One and Wells Fargo ATM cards are only used if needed in Europe. I just test them once before we go and notify them of what countries they will be used in.

I have also found, specifically in Amsterdam and Bruges a couple of years ago, that even though I had a $500 daily limit the ATMs wouldn't let me take the full amount. I had to make multiple withdrawals at different ATMs to hit the Euro equivalent of $500.

Thanks for all the replies.

I think that at this relatively late date (we leave for Amsterdam Oct. 8) that I will exchange sufficient cash for our first apartment at a bank and then withdraw money from ATMs before we move to the second apartment.