220 Voltage in Europe

Look at the small technical print on your white power adapter. On mine (bought in USA) it says 100-240V, which means it already supports European voltage without an additional transformer: only a plug adapter is needed. If your adapter voltage range is not that high, then you will need both a plug adapter and a transformer.

Get yourself the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit: http://store.apple.com/ca/product/M8794G/B

take the appropriate ends with you for Europe/UK.

It is better than the cheap adapters because it fits snugly into the socket. When hanging off of a North American socket, with adapter, the relatively heavy charger tends to fall right out.

I'll offer an alternative opinion on what makes the most sense to buy: a single all-purpose plug adapter for the place you're going to may cost as little as a tenth of the price of Apple's kit. It can be used with the six-foot three-prong cord that came with your MBP, giving you a longer reach than the Apple kit and probably a proper earth/ground connection, which the "duck head" plugs don't provide. It also remedies the problem etresoft mentions of the heavy adapter brick drooping and possibly falling out of the outlet. Unless you're a frequent traveler to places with many different electrical outlet configurations, I don't think the Apple kit is much of a bargain.

I agree that the cheap all-in-one adapters have worked great for me when I went to Europe.

With one exception: the UK. The all-in-one plug adapters I used did not have a proper plug for a UK grounded outlet, only the two-prong non-grounded. Unlike the US, in the UK the socket design prevents you from putting an ungrounded plug into a grounded socket. If you will be in the UK, or even wanting to plug in at Heathrow Airport during a transfer, you may want to add a UK grounded adapter. I don't know if the Apple kit comes with one, but I do think the Apple kit is expensive and I never bought it.

Network 23 wrote:
I don't know if the Apple kit comes with one, but I do think the Apple kit is expensive and I never bought it.

It does. That is why they call it the "World" travel kit 🙂

None of the "duck heads", including the UK version, provide grounding. The cord does appear to have an actual ground connection to the metal post on the AC adapter.

However, it seems to me to be defeating the purpose of the compact travel configuration of the Apple AC adapter by wagging along a cord. It defeats the classy Apple styling to have an ugly adapter plug that doesn't fit well. We buy Apple products for that world-class design and style, not the price. Apple figures that if you can afford international trips, you can afford a classy set of adapters so you don't look like some foreign tourist.

Yeah whatever. My cheap adapter plus UK grounded still cost less than the Apple kit, and if Apple's worried about me being cheap then they've got a big problem because some of the best and most innovative software I use every day is Mac freeware. 🙂