stevepcb

This is interesting. Did you both spend all of the money? Wondering if the conversion back to Euro or US on the back end would have improved your position?

 

I spent all of mine. My friend exchanged back about 100 CUC with a 3% charge to exchange it back to US.

Just back from Cuba on the Carnival Paradise. I did a fair amount of research about currency exchange before we departed with mixed results so I hope this helps. We traveled with another couple on this cruise. I went to Florida Currency Exchange in Tampa and was told that Canadian or Euro's would be my best option. They ran the exchange numbers on both and they where very close to being the same. I exchanged $400 US for Euro's. I think I ended up with 331 Euro's with the current exchange rate. I exchanged those at the port of Havana and received 354 CUC's. My friend exchanged $400 US at the same time at the port and received 348 CUC's. So I ended up with a whopping 6 extra CUC's or about $5.22 US. Probably not worth the trouble of exchanging to Euro's. I hope this real life experience helps some of you make the decision.

Awesome glad to have someone confirm.

Has anyone heard what time you can actually board? I know the posted time is 2:30. Does anyone know if you can drop off your checked luggage earlier? We have to check out of our hotel at noon I think and I would at least like to dump my luggage even if I can't board that early.