Currency, USD / Euro / Lira ???

[blindrid]

Good day:

 

Long story short, coming from the Denver CO area -taking cruise starting at Athens, 1 1/2 days in Istanbul, 1/2 day in Kusadasi, 1/2 day in Crete and the balance in Greek isles.

 

I don't want to mess with various currencies if I can avoid it.

 

Do you truly need Lira in Turkey?

 

Do you truly need Euros in Greece?

 

Does anywhere accept USD (which I seriously doubt)?

 

We are hiring a private guide/tour in Istanbul and Kusadasi. The operator is quoting USD$. I'm speculating she is doing that for ease but needs Euros at time of tour.

 

Any suggestions will work as I'm trying to make life as simple as possible :). One of my pet peeves is getting home with foreign currency which is of no value to me in the U.S. - not enough to exhange but enough not to keep.

 

Thanks to all and I've posted the same question in the Greece forum.

[Hoyaheel]

We had a private guide in Istanbul who wanted to be paid in Euros, so that's what we did. If your guide is quoting USD, confirm - maybe s/he actually wants to be paid in that currency.

 

We absolutely used euros in Greece and TL in Turkey for everything else. If you want to go into museums or use public transportation, buy food - you need local currency.

 

We get money from the ATM whereever we are - no fuss, no muss, cheapest way for us to do it with the best exchange rate. We do try to figure out exactly how much we'll need so we don't run out or have too much - some days that works better than others:rolleyes:

[CathyK2]

We just returned from the Vision of the Seas this weekend for our Holyland cruise. On this, we started in Istanbul and had a port call in Kusadasi as well as two Greek Islands. We did have some Turkish Lira with but you can also use Euro and dollars. You just won't get a very good exchange rate. The most obviouse was that we went to use a public rest room and they wanted a Lira but if you used dollars they asked for a full dollar which was a horrid exchange rate. So little things like that may be when you want to have some lira with you.

 

I did find that in all these ports, they are pretty good about taking any of the currencies so you could get by with just dollars. Things may just cost a bit more. We often used a credit card for meals or larger purchases and then you get it converted for you without the bartering.

 

ATM's are everywhere if you just want a little to carry around ...ie for things like the Tram in Istanbul.

 

For us, we brought no foreign currency home since we went light on what we had and then when we knew we were doing our last purchase, whether cab, restaurant, shops...we would barter to use all of our left over money and then had the U.S. dollars to make the difference, so they were better about not giving as bad of an exchange rate when doing that.

 

Good luck and have a wonderful trip.

 

Cathy