Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Places’ Category

Since we’d to go back to the Halifax in Spain, we thought that we’d stay in a hotel in Barcelona rather than doing a round trip of about six hours driving.

Good idea in principle as the hotel would have cost around the same as the petrol and tolls and we’d have had a full day in Barcelona too which would have been nice.

However, we didn’t allow for the combination of somewhat elevated prices (despite the hotel being almost empty) and the very poor signposting in the city. Anyway, we tried the Ibis which used to be around EUR 60 but is now EUR 90 so we thought we’d try the Campanile near Baricentro instead.

We’ve been planning on staying in that Campanile for ages as it’s just beside a shopping centre which needs a full day to do it properly plus the Campanile are brilliant for families. Not so this one. Despite their child policy allowing children under 12 to stay free, they said that they’d only rooms for two and we’d have to take an extra one for the kids. Actually, now that we’ve looked at their website in fact they DO have rooms for three. They were available too as the carpark was virtually empty but that in itself is no real surprise as it took us nearly an hour of driving past the place on the motorways which surround it before we happened across the single (unmarked) exit required to get into the hotel.

They must make a fortune on no-shows! If I could buy a small house in that estate I’d be tempted to list it as a 300 bedroom hotel on the basis that virtually nobody is able to get to it.

Thanks to dreadful flight times, I decided to stay a day in Manchester on the way back here.

Manchester aiport is a brilliant place for flight connections as all three terminals are within the one complex which includes access to the city via bus and train services too. The airport is so close to the city that you’ll often find it takes you longer to walk to the bus/train station than it does to get into the city itself. That closeness makes the price quite low too so it’s under a fiver for the return trip.

We were lucky enough to have timed our trip to coincide with the Manchester Pride events which, as you can see, include a very colourful parade through the streets. As usual with parades, the traffic before and afterwards is something of a nightmare but the small size of the city meant that we could easily walk back to the train station.

Also very pleasant is the free bus services which cover the Manchester city centre area.

We’ve just added Manchester to our Whole Earth Guide where you’ll find more information on the attractions of the city.

Clearly it’s normally cheaper buying stuff online where no delivery is involved so, yes, buy your software online if it can be delivered via download. However, for big stuff it’s not necessarily the case that buying online is really cheaper.

Take our planned new car for instance….

The list price is EUR 13,000, the online price is EUR 12,000. However, few people pay the list price and in fact we have already gotten the offered price down to EUR 12,600 and hope to get that down a good deal more.

Even at that price though there’s little real difference from the online price. For one thing, if we get the online car delivered, they add EUR 600 ie the price would be the same. Even if we collect it ourselves that costs a fair bit as it’s in Paris and we’re in the south of France so if we drive up to get it that’s EUR 50 each way in tolls, plus EUR 50 in petrol each way, plus at least three hotel nights at around EUR 50 each: total, a minimum of EUR 350 and more than likely over EUR 400 but even that is before you count at least three days worth of meals which could easily add another EUR 200.

OK, so a car is a pretty big item to deliver and therefore it’s none too likely that you’ll find them on Amazon anytime soon but even for relatively light things the postage charge can exceed the savings that you make online unless the discount is very substantial.

As you may recall, GAN insurance announced that our car was considered a write-off at the end of May.

Just this morning we have received the bill plus reminder that we’ve not paid the insurance for this year yet.

No, we don’t have a car at the moment but in France that doesn’t mean that you can get out of paying the insurance unless you’ve notified the insurance two months prior to the renewal that you don’t want it anymore. Yes, that is two months before they’ve told you how much it’s going to cost so the net effect is that it’s impossible to shop around for insurance in France.

In fact, if we don’t tell them by recorded delivery letter, in about two or three weeks we will receive notice that they are taking us to court for not renewing the insurance. A few weeks after that the letter giving us the court date will arrive. You might think that “obviously” they can’t win in court but in fact they can under French law. However, should it get that far, we won’t be using French law but rather European law which over-rides many French laws including this particular area of French insurance.

In that this appears to show that they haven’t acknowledged our claim, I’m tempted to ask them for a document saying that and insure our new car elsewhere.

By far the vast majority of our guests enjoy staying here but in the French holiday season we always get a few who go out of their way to find fault and always save up those faults to report them to us in the morning.

They’re always French because that’s how the French seem to go about demanding a reduction in the bill as they don’t believe that they should pay the extra required in the summer.

It’s easy to pick these ones out as they barely speak to you as you’re checking them in and showing them to the room. Whilst the French almost always take breakfast, these ones don’t as that’s another thing which makes the room too expensive.

Then, in the morning, they pick on one or two things which weren’t 100% right for them, demand a reduction and then threaten to report you to all and sundry. It’s always in that sequence too: they demand the reduction THEN they say they’ll report you to all in sundry ie it’s very much blackmail.

Thankfully they’re few and far between but we just received a particularly obnoxious variety of the species a few days ago. He actually found one thing that really was wrong with the room although as it was something which could be fixed in under 5 seconds he clearly couldn’t tell us about it when he arrived or he’d not have anything to complain about so instead he let a dripping cistern keep him awake all night.

He had a particularly interesting line of argument with the cistern. Seemingly he thought that a dripping cistern was enough to have the Prefecture close us down. That certainly would have an interesting effect if they did that because they’d need to close down just about every hotel in the world if that was enough reason to close a place.

As usual, he was rude and offensive, becoming more and more so as he realised that we weren’t going to give him a reduction in the price and he even continued in this vein as he left with assorted rude and offensive gestures as he left (narrowly missing a tree as he was steering with one hand).

Oh well, at least the summer season is pretty much over so that should be the last such example of the species we get until next year.