During our visit to Brazil, we carried a currency called ‘real’ (/reɪˈɑːl/; Brazilian Portuguese: [ʁeˈaw]; pl. reais) for use during our travels.

To convert these funds from USD (which we were advised has a better exchange in most of the currency conversion centers) to reais, a currency rate of 2,05 was used, minus the ‘tarifa’.

(Note the comma versus a decimal point used in currency and general numeration – which caused some confusion in our documentation provide and required me to correct an earlier post on this blog after I noted the error.)

It was interesting to note that not all bills of similar value were the same size – indicated to assist the visually impaired – although I found the same bills often in two sized.  This is potentially due to the relative infancy of the introduction of the currency (the real was introduced…