Money Trail

Austin woke up this morning feeling fine. He should be fine for the trip. Yea for that.

At lunch today I went bank hopping for a couple of things for the journey. He needs a credit card and native cash so he can load up on cool Aussie stuff that will amaze his friends and parents. The first bank I tried had no trouble providing a MasterCard gift card that can be used by a minor abroad no questions asked. The only downside is that it looks like a wedding gift -- it has a big, gold bow and frilly type. Austin can just tell store clerks that he's on his honeymoon, I guess.

It was surprisingly harder to find foreign cash. You'd think (or at least I'd think) banks all over downtown would have huge piles of cash from every country in the world just sitting out on the counter for anyone to take. I mean, it's pretty worthless here, right? Bank the first said to try one several blocks away, so I made the trek. Bank the second said they could convert cash in several days. No good -- Austin leaves tomorrow. "Try Chase," they said. "Oh, Chase, the bank in the tallest building west of the Mississippi," I though. "Good idea."

Turns out, the bank in the tower is just a branch, so they sent me to the old Chase Bank building several blocks away. It's a cool, old art-deco building with gilded ceilings, lots of marble and stained glass. They had the Australian and New Zealandish money I needed, but I had to use US currency to change -- no debit card transactions. The teller pointed me to an ATM where a Brinks guy was doing a fill-up. So, I went cruising to find another ATM and returned to get the moolah I need. It's pretty cool money; it has little clear windows in it. One from New Zealand has a national hero who looks a lot like Indiana Jones.