Spare a thought for the Australian traveller when comparing prices in England. We were there a couple of years ago visiting our daughter who was on a working holiday. Two instances that stand out in my mind were a very average meal for four of us at a "family style" Italian restaurant in Birmingham which cost the equivalent of $500 (Australian) and three coffees in a shopping mall for $30 AUD. Our dollar was worth approximately 31 GB pence so if we were to convert the price of anything back to AUD it meant virtually tripling it (so that even cheap "pub" food became expensive). After the first couple of days my husband said I was to forget about converting prices back to AUD's and worrying about how expensive everything was and just think of the pound as a dollar. We tend to be old fashioned in that we prefer to have travellers' cheques in the currency of the country we are visiting rather than using our credit cards all the time so we can budget and know exactly how much we are spending.

On that trip we spent a ten days in the USA on our way home and with the Australian dollar worth only 51 US cents even holidaying there was expensive.

We plan to visit Mexico and the USA this November so we're hoping the dollar gains some ground in the next few months (it's currently 70 US cents which isn't too bad).

Regards Josie Figtree, Australia