Penny-wise advice for your next vacation in Canada

Spending money in Canada has become a hot topic these days with reports of new plastic bills melting, pennies disappearing and the U.S. and Canadian dollars trading within a few cents of each other.

On your next trip across the border to Victoria, Vancouver or Whistler, don't be surprised to find:

 -More merchants accepting U.S. dollars at par, meaning one- for- one, whether or not the Canadian dollar is worth a few cents more or less on any given day.
-ATM machines dispensing $20 bills coated in polymer, making them difficult to counterfeit, but harder to fold and sometimes causing them stick together or even shrivel at high temperatures.
-Stores rounding off cash purchases as Canada phases out the penny.  
  
Whether you're using a credit card, Canadian loonies or U.S. greenbacks to pay for your travels, see my recent Seattle Times Travel Wise column for advice on getting the most for your dollars: 

Paying with U.S. dollars: Shops would rather you pay for cash purchases in Canadian currency, but most will accept U.S. dollars. In the past, most processed charges using the daily exchange rate, sometimes adding a small surcharge. Now, many retailers have been taking U.S. dollars at par.

This can work in their favor or yours, depending on which currency is worth more at the time. Given that the two have been trading within a few cents of each other for months, many retailers are just calling things even.

“It’s up to the store,’’ says Tomarra Walker, executive director of Vancouver’s Robson Street Business Association, “but unless there’s a huge jump in either direction, they’re not going to reprogram their tills to account for it. Some do. Some don’t, but for the most part, the price you see is what you pay.’’

If you pay in U.S. dollars, you’ll get your change back in Canadian currency. If you come up a few cents short, it’s not because anyone’s trying to fleece you. Retailers round prices up or down to the nearest five-cent increment as part of Canada’s gradual move to go penniless.

Using an ATM in Canada is the easiest and generally least costly way to obtain Canadian dollars, assuming you use a low-fee or no-fee debit card.

Aim for a card with a maximum 1 percent foreign currency conversion fee. Cards issued by smaller banks and credit unions are your best bet. Bigger banks usually charge 3 percent plus a withdrawal fee.

Charles Schwab Bank issues a debit card, tied to a checking account, that carries no ATM fees and refunds fees other banks charge for using their machines.

Bank of America waives foreign ATM charges if you use a machine tied to one of its Global Alliance affiliate banks — such as Scotiabank (scotiabank.ca) in Canada.

Canada has been replacing its paper currency with polymer bills over the past two years, starting with $100 and $50 bills and with $20 bills last November. There have been some complaints about bills shriveling, but unless you plan on sitting on a radiator, no real need to worry.

Canadian banks are ahead of the United States in issuing Visa and MasterCard credit cards embedded with microchips designed to prevent counterfeiting.

Unlike some places in Europe, retailers are set up to also accept U.S.-issued credit cards with the traditional magnetic stripes. If you have one of the new Bank of America chip cards that work with a signature rather than a personal identification number (PIN), they take those, too.

Minimize extra costs by using a card that carries a low or no foreign-currency transaction fee.

Virginia-based Capital One waives these fees. Bank of America charges a 2 percent fee for its new AAA Visa with a chip and magnetic stripe.

Note that the new rounding policy only applies to cash transactions. Credit-card purchases are processed for the exact amount ... down to the penny.

Cyprus in the news: A traveler's glimpse inside the capital of Nicosia

Turkish Nicosia 

Imagine a country of 1 million people so small (about the size of Connecticut) that you can drive most distances in less time than it takes to go between Portland and Seattle. Then divide it two-thirds, one-third, each section with its own culture, religion, food, flag, language and traditions.

This is the island of Cyprus which has been in the news recently over the collapse of its banking system and controversial plan for a financial bailout by the European Union. 

Hearing about Cyprus on the radio this morning, I was reminded of a trip I took there in 2005.  Cyprus,  third largest island in the Mediterranean, after Sicily and Sardinia, is 45 miles south of Turkey.

Ruled during various periods by the Greeks, Romans, Ottoman Turks and British, Cyprus was politically and physically split in 1974, when tensions between Greek and Turkish Cypriots came to a head and Turkey intervened to stop a coup led a Greek military junta.

The Greek-dominated Republic of Cyprus, set up in the 1960s after the former British colony gained independence, is the only government recognized internationally, but it controls just the southern two-thirds of the island.

Greek Nicosia

Turkish Cypriots set up their own government, and in 1983, the northern one-third became the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, officially recognized only by Turkey.

Both sides warmly welcome visitors, but until around the time I visited, border crossing regulations required tourists to essentially pick sides. Most Westerners chose to spend their holidays in the wealthier and more developed South.

Those rules were lifted when Cyprus entered the European Union, and visitors can travel back and forth without restrictions.

A local cafe in Turkish Nicosia

A Starbucks in Greek Nicosia

Cyprus is very popular with British tourists who go for the sun and beaches. The London Independent offers this advice for those planning to travel to Cyprus soon. Should you go, I recommend visiting both sides. Nowhere are the contrasts more striking than in the ancient city of Nicosia, Europe's divided capital. Here's a link to a story I wrote for The Seattle Times eight years ago. I'm sure much has changed since then, but the story offers a glimpse inside a complicated country unfamiliar to most Americans.  

Sea-Tac body scanner replacement slated to start in early April

Replacement of the controversial “backscatter’’ full-body scanners installed at Sea-Tac Airport nearly 2½ years ago should begin on April 8 and be completed by May 21, according to the latest timetable supplied to the Port of Seattle by the Transportation Security Administration. 

TSA is working towards a federally-mandated June 1 deadline to replace the scanners with less invasive and safer millimeter-wave machines already installed in many U.S. airports.
Unlike the backscatter machines which use X-ray beams (that give off low levels of ionizing radiation) to scan underneath clothing, the millimeter-wave machines use radio-frequency waves. They also feature privacy software that produces a generic rather than real nude image of passengers’ bodies.

The TSA announced earlier that it would remove the scanners, made by Rapiscan, from U.S. airports in the face of the June deadline from Congress for modifying the nude-imaging pictures.

Timelines could change, according to a staff memo sent to port commissioners on February 28, but once started, the work will take about six weeks to complete. Plans are to replace the scanners at night to avoid passenger disruptions. 

Sea-Tac will get 12 millimeter wave scanners made by L-3 Communications, two fewer than the Rapiscan scanners now in place at five checkpoints throughout the airport.  As I pointed out in my recent Travel Wise column for The Seattle Times,  the decision eliminates most concerns about privacy and safety, but not the hassle factor. Passengers must still remove everything from their pockets, including nonmetallic items such as handkerchiefs and wallets. I was wearing a necklace over a sweater when I walked though one of the L-3 scanners in San Francisco recently. The TSA agent asked me to turn it backwards so that it was positioned over the back of my sweater instead of the front. I'm not sure what that accomplished, but I passed through the scanner in three seconds without a problem. 


Alaska mileage partnership on ice

What put the chill on Alaska Airlines’ mileage-partnership agreement with Icelandair scheduled to end June 1? 

Speculation on the flight blog BoardingArea.com is that the decision likely had to do with bad blood over an Icelandair promotion last August that allowed passengers to buy miles at a discount and redeem them for expensive flights on Alaska to Hawaii or Mexico.

“You could straight up buy miles and redeem them on Alaska for first class to Hawaii for about $350,” the blog reported. “It was cheap to buy miles in part because of weakness in their country’s currency. And if that wasn’t enough they were even running a buy-miles bonus.”

Hundreds of bookings resulted before Icelandair quietly withdrew the deal, then backed off on allowing customers to use its miles, called Saga points, to redeem any award travel on Alaska.

Icelandair regrouped and in January again began allowing customers to use its miles for award travel on Alaska, but at much higher prices.

Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Marianne Lindsey discounted the idea that the promotion had any influence.

“We made this decision purely based on what the partnership added to our program,” she said in a recent email.

Icelandair was one of Alaska’s smallest partnerships. Few customers earned or redeemed miles on the airline, she said, and Alaska’s other partners (American, Delta, British Airways, Air France and KLM) serve the same markets.

Whatever the cause, it’s too bad this partnership is ending because it was the only useful way for people in the Northwest to make use of miles flown on Icelandair. The airline has no partnerships with other U.S. airlines.

Flying the Dreamliner

How confident would you feel about flying on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner once its battery problem has been resolved and it’s been returned to the skies?

Seattleite David Rowell, publisher of the Travel Insider, recently posed that question to his followers.

Thirty-two percent who responded said they would refuse to fly on the plane for at least the next year or two. Another 35 percent said they would prefer to avoid the 787. Surprising, because, as Rowell points out, his subscribers know their planes. Sixty-three percent are elite-level frequent fliers.

“Their opinion” says Rowell, “counts for a lot more than that of a typical ‘man in the street.’ ”