We bring a fair amount of cash, and generally carry only a couple hundred on us at any one time. We find that most of the places we frequent don't offer 1:1 for cash, so we just use our Visa card for everything. The only reason we carry that much cash is in case the cc connection is down, which does happen, or in the case of a place that doesn't take cash. We prefer to use a credit card because there is absolutely no risk of loss if the card is compromised, while cash can be stolen or lost.