[f300]

Both paypal and amazon conversions are usually worse than 1-1.5% charged by the bank. If you have a card that doesn't have those % for foreign charges (even if is a card from some small online-only bank, but of course without any other recurrent fee) it is worth having it handy just for such things.

There's also the issue with the ATMs - more and more are offering you their echange rate, i.e. you take for example 100 EUR cash and they charge your bank 150$ (I'm exagerating, just for simplicity). It doesn't matter if you have a good bank because they don't see your cash amount, they only see the 150$. For most ATMs you can chose to have it either the "normal" (ok) way or the above way (which is bad and usually default). Make sure you chose not to have the exchange or walk away (if you have the option because in some countries you might not - I mean all ATMs dispense local currency and take USD directly from your bank).