Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder.

It's Wednesday the 24th of January and I am in one of my favourite buildings anywhere.

If you've been to London Waterloo, Fast Station, kind of opposite the main platforms, you will find really quite a handsome

building. And there's an entrance just to the left. And if you go in there, well, you'll find

that it's a shared space, lots of different offices from lots of different organisations, lots of

very trendy hipster types. So as you can imagine, I fit in very

well. Anyway, the reason I'm here is because this is where I get my foreign currency from.

There's a company called Currency Online Group, and they have an operation here where you,

unlike sort of queuing up outside of Bureau de

Chezsche, you are actually given effectively a seat, a cup of tea and then somebody will come

and find you and having pre-ordered your money, you will collect it. You pre-order it and

prepay for it. I was a little surprised the first time I tried

it, but now I am a regular customer, as long as the rates are right. Anyway, I am with Lee Davy,

who works here. He's just got me a modest number of dollars for my impending trip. Lee, thank you very much

indeed for joining us. This is an extraordinary location. Yeah, thank you. We've been running

this service here at Scott House for about two and a half years now. We really enjoy giving

the service in this way, a lot more private and discreet. People come here for all sorts of amounts.

A lot of people surprisingly come on their own as well. So being discrete is very important.

As you would have seen, there's no sign saying you're walking out of a bureau. No one's on your

shoulder watching and listening what you're up to. So yeah, we get lots of people here on

recommendations, people returning like yourself.

And yeah, we have great rates, which sort of keeps everyone flowing here and being happy with

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