activities in town l markets & fairs l money spending l usefull information l worship

Where to change it - Where to spend it - Presents

Bank opening hours :
8:30 / 9 am - noon / 2 pm 4:30 / 5 pm Some on Saturday

The counter marked "change" >shahnszch< will change Travellers’ checks or foreign currency at the going rate. Banks buy low and sell high. Most banks in Aix-en-Provence are strategically located on the cours Mirabeau and the cours Sextius. The Banque de France, place des quatre Dauphins, 18 rue du quatre septembre, merits special mention. Dollars and Sterlings are exchangeable there at the going rate, no commission charged !

Money exchange offices :

N.B. Exchange offices "bureaux de change" tend to be open longer hours than banks :

N.B. In an emergency you will find telephones in cafés, bars, and telephone booths, often on street corners. Emergency numbers - two digits - do not require payment. Except for two-digit emergency numbers, most public phones require telecards "télécartes" >tellehcarht< rather than coins. The former may be purchased at most newspaper stands and tobacconists "bars tabac".

When leaving France, pending the advent of "euro-coinage", you are advised to get rid of loose change. If this is a problem, the "s.d.f."* >ess deh eff< will be happy to help.

*s.d.f. = sans domicile fixe = "homeless" some having settled on (in) Aix-en-Provence for their homelessness. Generally polite, and chatty, they are not to be confused with highly trained gipsies, "gitanes" >szcheetann< and the, occasionally superb, street musicians, "here for the week in June-July", for their personal "Festival A l'euros" The less docile "routards", tend to stick together with their dogs, and are not to be trifled with. The law, and their dogs protect them from arrest for vagrancy, there being no suitable accommodation for dogs, no creche for gipsy babies, and no obvious solution to what is not always a problerm. Understandably, perhaps, an appreciable proportion of Aix’s floating population comes from northern Europe.