Just ten years ago vacationing in Europe meant carrying around lots of different currencies - francs for France, lira for Italy, punts for Ireland and deutschmarks for Germany. With the introduction of the single currency, travel to Europe became a whole lot easier. Sixteen countries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain) across the European Union (EU) use the single currency. The only EU countries sticking with their own are the UK, where the pound still reigns, Denmark, which uses the Danish krone and Sweden, which has the Swedish krona. Some retail outlets will accept euros in those countries however.
There are some parts of Europe, that are not part of the EU, that use euros too. These include Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican City in Rome. Other territories of Euro-zone countries, such as the Azores, Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Europa Island, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Juan de Nova, the Madeira Islands, Martinique, Mayotte, Reunion, Saint-Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, all use the euro. Finally, Montenegro, Andorra and Kosovo adopted the euro although they are not members of the EU.
To convert dollars to euros, or any other currency, check out the following top currency converters:
XE.com
This universal currency converter claims to be the world’s favourite currency site (
www.xe.com)
GoCurrency.com
Has the currency converter, offers a historic graph of how the currency has been valued and you can create a Pocket-size converter to take on your trip (
www.gocurrency.com).
Oanda.com
This easy-to-use multilingual currency converter converts more than 164 currencies. Caters for leisure travellers with a cheatsheet and travel measurement guide and business travellers with an expenses calculator (
www.oanda.com).
