Black Road to Capri

Like some 70,000 other Americans, a West Coast advertising executive wanted to go to Europe this year. Like many of the others, he was worried by stories of fantastic prices, poor food, primitive living conditions. But he went anyway, firmly resolved to cut corners, stretch every dollar to its limit. What he found out was that the ubiquitous black market in currency enabled tourists to eat well and travel cheaply, though there was a slight risk in patronizing it.

He started out with $300 in cash and traveler's checks, a $500 letter of credit--and by cutting his first corner. He had a friend in Honduras buy his T.W.A. round-trip plane ticket from San Francisco to Rome and mail it to him. That saved the 15% U.S. tax ($158). Other tourists would not save as much by this trick. The tax is now in effect only on domestic travel. He met the black market in Paris the first time he handed the clerk in his hotel U.S. dollars to exchange. The clerk, who was running his own black exchange, gave him 230 francs to the dollar (official rate: 119).

From then on in Paris, everyone from cab drivers to nightclub operators exchanged dollars at the black-market rate. He found Parisian food mostly good, cheap in second-class restaurants in terms of the black-market exchange. Sample supper menu: vegetable soup (watery); green salad (wonderful); cheese omelet (out of this world); white wine, small coffee, patisserie. Cost for two: $2.50. The hotel bill for four days was 3,003 francs ($13 black market).

Along the French Riviera, most of the war damage was repaired. The famed. white Negresco hotel in Nice was open, A meal with wine at Cagnes-sur-Mer cost 60-c-. All told, in eleven days in France, he exchanged only $52 at the official rate.

In Italy, the black market took on an official tone. When he asked the customs inspector at the Littoria airport to exchange dollars, the inspector regretted that he could give only the official exchange of 220 lire. But he pointed to a bus driver who would give 500. By haggling in Rome the adman got 770.

Day in Capri. At Capri, he found the kind of prewar bargain which expatriates used to brag about. His hotel suite (large bedroom, bathroom, private balcony) looked out over pink stucco villas toward the island of Ischia. The room and meals cost 1,400 lire ($1.75 black market) a day. A day was like this: breakfast (coffee and hot milk, fresh bread, butter, jelly) on the balcony. Then a walk down to the piazza to buy the Paris Herald (for black-market quotations). Lunch at the hotel was usually risotto with meat, salad, wine, pastry, fruit, coffee. After a two-hour siesta, a walk to the Marina Piccolo to swim off the steep rocks, then back to the piazza to drink iced vermouth (70 lire, one dime,). Then dinner at the hotel (veal scaloppine, salad, spaghetti, bread, butter, cheese, wine, coffee, pastry). An evening for two at one of the small nightclubs--and a ride home in a carriage--cost 1,850 ($2.40).

From Capri, he flew to Lisbon and back to the U.S. Last week, he was home again in San Francisco.The five weeks in Europe had cost him exactly $300, plus $1,052 in plane fares. On a vacation that had completely missed Europe's hunger, he had only one bit of financial hard luck: he lost 12,000 black-market francs on roulette at Monte Carlo.

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