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Trip to Europe
By Laetitia Vaval | October 10, 2007
I’ve just come back from a two-week trip to Europe. Needless to say that I sure felt the weakness of the dollar. I usually love to shop when I am in Paris but this time around everything was so expensive that it took away much of the fun.
I also visited London for the first time, and despite having heard many times that London was one of the most expensive cities in the world, I still couldn’t believe how high the cost of living was. It seemed as if everything cost exactly TWICE as much over there than it does in New York. For example, a 1-week subway pass is about 22 pounds over there (which is about US $45 !! — twice as much as what it costs here). A simple subway ride is 4 pounds — US $ 8 !!! Food, clothing, transportation seemed to keep the same numerical value as in the U.S. ( 32 for a basic T-Shirt, 12 for a pizza, etc) except that instead of being expressing in dollars prices were in Pounds (i.e. more than doubled).
Even duty-free over there wasn’t all that worth it given the exchange rate…
It was really interesting going there at this time, right after my stay at FXCM. I never had really paid much attention to exchange rates in the past, but my trip was a first-hand demonstration of the current situation with the US Dollar.
Tags: currency market, dollar, fxcm, laetitia vaval, wall street warrior, wall street warriors
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