Picking up from yesterday –
Literally AS I was boarding the plane from the States to Paris (my layover), I got a call from my bank that there had been fraud on my card.
I had hoped it was just going to be buying international plane tickets, and that I could say “oh that’s me!”
But no. Somehow someone did get my number and spent it on like android stuff (which obviously this iPhone girl would never use) in a state I’ve never spent any time in.
I don’t generally take cash with me to foreign countries, because it seems much easier, and like you lose less money if you just take it out of the ATMs when you get there, rather than trying to exchange.
So, I have NO cash on me. And they have to close my card. And I can’t even ask them to keep it open long enough for me to get American dollars at some ATM in the airport, because I am like boarding the plane as this is happening. There’s no running around LAX for me.
What they were able to do was put the info for my new one in my Apple Wallet. So, at my layover in Paris, I was able to get some cash out of an ATM. (Tbh, looking back, I wish I would’ve taken a little more out just to be totally sure I could cover every single thing I did in that country, if I wanted… I guess I just wasn’t thinking of the number of things that wouldn’t take cards, or that there would be no ATMs (in any of the places I went) that had the touch thing.)
So, anyway, I had practically only Euros, is basically what I’m saying with all this.
(I say practically, because you do have to get a little sticker thing for your passport when you get there. It costs something like $25. I paid in Euros and got change in Egyptian pounds.)
So, I had a LITTLE money in Egyptian currency, but like… not a lot.
Granted, many things in Egypt don’t cost much at all. But, still. I wanted to have more money.
So, we went to a few small museum-y type things that I had enough cash to get through. And I’m trying so hard to explain to him through like a google translate app or something that I want to go to a place that can exchange my money into local currency, but apparently he still doesn’t get it, because maybe that’s a hard concept to explain.
So, I’m getting more stressed and exhausted with every place we go because I’m running into less and less cash and I don’t know what’s next or if I’ll have enough to get in. (Also, it’s lonely, but I’ll get to that in another part).
And I’ll pick up here tomorrow.