Best ATM rates?

Lots of them. Just need to check around. If you have a Schwab account you can get a debit card, the Capital One money market account doesn't charge. Technically speaking it is a currency conversion fee. ALL FEEs are determine by the card issuer. There are no fees charge by European banks for using their ATMs. However, some US banks will charge BOTH an ATM usage fee and a currency conversion fee. It pays to show around.

Check small local banks and credit unions. Neither of mine charge a cent.

If you have an account with Bank of America, you can withdraw cash from BNP Paribas in France, Deutsche Bank in Germany, and Barclays in the UK without being charged any fees. No International ATM fee, and no 3% ATM fee.

I sometimes shop e-bay (as do many people) and so have a PayPal account. On a recent trip to London I decided to withdraw money from my PayPal balance using their debit card rather than from my Big American Bank checking account. The local bank charged a typical ATM fee for a non-customer. I was delighted to see that there was no foreign transaction fee charged by PayPal and that the exchange rate was very nearly the FOREX dollar for pound exchange rate for that day. (The Big American Bank charges a 5% foreign transaction fee and an additional fee for using another banks ATM).

Capitol One is a good one to use and avoid fees. However, we had a big problem with our Bank of America and Paribbas. We could not access our account during our 8 days in Paris. People at Paribbas Bank in Paris could not explain it. We basically set aside a decent amount of $$$ in B of A account and never could withdraw any $$$. So we call B of A when we got back and they said they did not know why we had the problem and were sorry but there was nothing they could do--have done business with this megabank for many years. The first thing we did was transfer the bulk of the account to our other user friendly bank--however, it has no connections to any banks in Europe. Thank goodness for Capitol One.