But easier doesn't always mean better. A sad flip-side to the European single currency is that it has made countries like Italy, Spain, France and Germany less interesting places to visit. Travel is about discovery, but thanks to the euro there's less to look at now. Some small but important windows of learning have been lost.
Before the euro was introduced in 1999, travellers had micro-museums of European history at their fingertips. Through images and portraits displayed on these banknotes, European currencies taught you about a country's culture, history and heritage. You discovered famous people that these countries deemed important enough to put on display: be it artists, writers, generals or philanthropists.
European banknotes were ready-made miniature history lessons in our wallets and purses. The statesmen, dignitaries and philosophers - even the buildings - portrayed on currencies often sparked interest. When you saw goggled aviators, austere-looking scientists, in-bred royals or pompous-looking generals, you wanted to know more.
Today's euro notes are as uniformly bland as Monopoly money, as indistinguishable as Brussels bureaucrats in dark suits. Travel to Spain now and there are no pictures of its royals to peruse as we pay for our tapas. All we have to ponder now is a boring sketch of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.
And European monetary integration has bid bonne nuit to hazy discoveries in late night Brussels. Tanked up on Trappist beers one night in the mid-1990s I learned through Belgian banknotes that there were other famous Belgians apart from Tintin and Eddy Merckx.
In pre-euro Italy, the lira's high-denomination banknotes meant even the most humble tourist got to feel like a millionaire. You too could afford a Ferrari until you had to settle your hotel bill.
An avuncular portrait of Irish writer James Joyce appeared on the last Irish 10 punt note. Bejeezus, how brilliant was that? Somehow I managed to save one of these "Guinness-tokens" for posterity and it now resides in a copy of Finnegan's Wake on my bookshelves.
I wish I'd held on to other old European banknotes, and one in particular: the old predominantly red French 200-franc note. It was little short of a piece of art. Nowadays, who honestly in their right mind would want to frame anything as ugly as the euro?
And for language lovers, those old European currencies were a treasure-trove of linguistics, too: pesetas, lira, escudos, the drachma, the punt - all gateways to a new language that tested the tongue. It's hard to raise any enthusiasm for the bland homogeneity of the unlovable euro. Even the word itself sounds boring, like the birdcall of a wood pigeon on downers.
We Brits, naturally, consider ourselves a cut above and never signed up for monetary union. Retaining our own currency allows us to keep a distance from the rest of Europe. In addition to Her Majesty the Queen, it means travellers to the UK get to see prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (currently residing on the back of 5 note); Charles Darwin and his ship The Beagle (the 10 note); and superstar chef Jamie Oliver on the 20 (not really, it's the 18th century Scottish economist, Adam Smith).
I'd vote to keep the British pound simply on educational grounds. And yet there's a rather more childish reason.
Simply by folding the current 10 note in a certain way any self-respecting schoolboy, bored banker or suspect vicar can create an image of the Queen's derriere. Proof perhaps that when it comes to sterling at least, the bottom will never fall out of the market.
Try this tenner party trick next time you're visiting Kiwi mates in Blighty. You could attempt something similar in Paris, Madrid or Rome with the euro, but it's a tough shout to make anything amusing, let alone interesting, out of the Brandenburg Gate.
