Sorry I missed this question although I think we've sorted it out via email, for anyone else searching..
1)
The Cart extension class is applied to Page_Controller so you should be able to access $Cart on all your pages (in this case some pages were directly inheriting from MultiLingualPage iirc which meant $Cart was not accessible on those page types). $Cart returns an object of type Order so $Cart.Items and $Cart.Products can be used in the template.
<ul class="shop-links">
<% if CurrentMember %>
<li><a href="$CartLink(Logout)" class="rev">log out</a></li>
<li><a href="$CartLink(Account)" class="rev">your account</a></li>
<% else %>
<li><a href="$CartLink(Login)" class="rev">log in</a></li>
<% end_if %>
<li><a href="$CartLink">
<i class="icon-shopping-cart icon-white"></i>
$Cart.Products.Count
</a></li>
</ul>
2)
Multiple currency support is a seperate module/extension for SwipeStripe: http://swipestripe.com/products/extensions/currency/. There is an extension class that is also applied to Page_Controller so to get the currency select form you just need to add: $CurrencyForm to a template.
The $CurrencyForm uses a select field that submits the form using javascript when the selected option changes.
