If you know that you will be spending money with the relatively few vendors (particularly on the french side) who publish or have prices in both US Dollars and Euros and who have an effective exchange rate of 1 Euro to 1.2 US Dollars (or higher) between the Euro price and the Dollar price, then you can buy from your home bank and bring Euros because you can do significantly better on the exchange even with the fees. Or, you can just not worry about it because with the fees the savings are not all that much. I have no idea what they are doing now, but I have always felt that CO gives a decent exchange rate related to the actual forex number - but they do not (at least did not) adjust the rate but every so often.