A Digression on Money and on the Internet

 Having internet access while traveling is more and more important.  In Europe last year, we both had Verizon's $100 international service.  This was useful for things such as GPS.  When we were on an OAT tour in Patagonia in March, we decided that we didn't need that much access, so we stuck with Verizon's Travel Plan instead: $10 a day per line, but only on those days that we phone, send texts or use data.  We accidentally activated that a few times, but generally were satisfied with WiFi.

This trip, we also stayed with the Travel Plan, intentionally using it only once, when we wanted GPS to follow a complicated route from Point A to Point B, and not getting to Point B on time would have nasty consequences.  Not only GPS, but QR codes require internet access, as we discovered.  I think next time we will put my phone on the $100 plan, while leaving Mary Joy's to WiFi.

The QR code in question related to paying for a service online, using our Visa card.  When I first went abroad, in 1986, you would buy American Express traveler's checks at your bank, then, when you got to a foreign country, you would go into a bank, during normal banking hours, and change traveler's checks for local cash.

More recently, traveler's checks were made obsolete by ATMs.  You simply withdrew cash, just like you would at home, using the same debit card you would use at home, debiting your checking account.

Since the pandemic, even ATMs are going the way of the dinosaur.  Nearly everyone, even in places like Argentina and Chile, accepts Visa and MasterCard.  Some places now will not accept cash.  On this trip we had many and varied transactions in Icelandic kroner, Norwegian kroner, euros (in Finland and Estonia) and Swedish kroner.  We did not take out any cash at all, didn't use an ATM even once.  Except for using some euros we had left over from last year's trip (and we didn't really need to do that), we didn't touch cash and used Visa for everything, no problem (except for some toilets in Iceland, where signs asked us to pay into a box, but we couldn't and didn't, and used them anyway).