More bits from the backpack
She did find a great bargain for visitors to Madrid. Ms Budget Travel is often leery of hop on/ hop off tourist bus finding them a tad pricey and believing that she can get where she wants to go using cheaper public transport. Wrong again! The Tourist Bus in Madrid is a budget traveler's dream, for around 8 or 9 USDs (depending on the current exchange rate) you can hop on and off the bus that travels three separate routes with interchanges between them as often as you like. The bus runs year round and taped tourist information in a variety of languages is available through headphones at your seat. If you start early, you can ride through one circuit and choose which sights you want to hop off at during your next go round.
Money Alert! (yet another error on the part of our foolish but intrepid heroine When Ms Budget Travel passed through Heathrow recently she found (much to her dismay) that is was impossible for her to exchange pesetas in coins for pounds sterling. Alas! She had waited beyond the December 1 deadline before attempting to exchange her Spanish coin currency. If you, like Ms Budget Travel does, often hang onto to foreign currency because after-all-I'll-be-back-there-sometime-no-point-in-paying-multiple-exchange-fees, get your piggy bank in hand and run down to your bank. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain began a transition to the Eurodollar in 1999, the next phase of the process is underway. The individual currencies of these countries will be phased out by February 28, 2002. It will be difficult or impossible to exchange bills and coins in these legacy currencies soon. Take care of your cash stash now. You will be able to use legacies currencies in some of their home countries until July 1, 2002, but it really is best to go ahead and convert.
In the area of taking care of things: If you are planning on a Christmas car rental, go ahead a book today. Travel experts, whoever they might be, are filling Ms Budget Travel's mailbox with reports that as air travel decreases the demand for car rentals is escalating.
And, before Ms Budget Travel roams off, she'd like to point out that she is very grateful to J for catching an error that was a direct result of Ms Budget Travel's lust for frequent flyer miles --- a few
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