Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Being born at the end of August wasn’t great timing when we were in the accommodation business so, as usual, John’s birthday yesterday was quite hectic and not helped at all by being the first day back to school for James.

School days here have very awkward times if you’re working and need to travel around. Anyway, after dropping off James at 9am, it was off to pick up some presents for John (so far the favourite is a toss-up between the bike and a train set) by which time it was time to race back for James at noon. We dropped him off at 2pm and then it was off again to see about getting a birthday cake which at least let us get back for James at a relatively leisurely pace.

For the evening, the highlight was the meal at the pirate restaurant which was a big hit with the kids as you can see.

Anyway, tomorrow it’s back to the slog of catching up with the admin that just didn’t get done over the Summer…

We’re hoping to buy a property in Spain at some point so have been hunting around for the best bank account as stage one in that process.

It turns out that the best short-term option for us is the Halifax because it offers completely free transfers of money from the UK which will be handy right now as it seems to be the cheapest way to get large chunks of cash from sterling into euros (the Nationwide is just as cheap but only practical for fairly small amounts).

Anyway, we couldn’t get down over the Summer and the first window of opportunity for us was yesterday as we’d nobody staying last night so we went off after the people from the night before had checked out. That looked like being quite a good time as the branch in Barcelona is open until 3pm so we were expecting to arrive around 2pm or so.

Those of you who’ve been reading this will know that we are rubbish at finding our way around Barcelona but unusually we managed to go more or less straight to the Halifax and walked in just a little after 2pm.

As it’s the holiday season, there was only the one guy there with a small queue of people in front of him so we’d to wait maybe 20 mins.

And, guess what? He couldn’t open it because they can’t take cash after 2pm and the only way to fund the account initially is with cash. No, he couldn’t take a card number and do a cash advance. No, he couldn’t open the account and give us the account number to let us transfer the opening balance. No, he couldn’t open it the next day and tell us the account number.

So, despite what the Halifax in the UK said, the simplest way for us to open the account looks like being to open it via Halifax in the UK.

As the next time slot for us is going to be in October we’re going to use the time to look into the options of Barclays and Citibank which both have loads of branches all over Spain and one of which is likely to be our long term banking solution for Spain. Halifax is certainly very convenient for bank transfers but they have very few branches and so probably aren’t a viable day to day bank for anyone living in Spain (unless you’re living close to one of their branches of course).

Something of a packed day which kicked off with us having a test drive of the Suzuki Ignis this morning and ordering it. In theory it should arrive sometime in the next six weeks or so but then this is France so it could be somewhat longer.

The afternoon seemed pretty full as we’d pretty much all of the rooms to make up yet again. This is supposed to be a fairly slack week but it hasn’t been so far.

On the blog front, I updated the software that does the emails to subscribers to something a lot more flexible. The first fruits of that are that you won’t get the emails in the “sponsored” category (ie the paid ones) and will get the emails once per day rather than as they’re written. If you register as a user, you can change that.

Anyway, must head on as I’ve to pack for a daytrip to Belfast. Yeah, crazy, I know but it can’t be helped.

We’re about set to choose our next car and aren’t too sure what to get at the moment.

In theory, we’d like to get another Suzuki Alto as it was a brilliant little car with getting on for 70 mpg but they don’t make them anymore so that’s not an option. So, we looked at the next model up which is the Wagon R but I’m not too keen on that one. Their Ignis is a baby 4×4 which looks interesting and would let us go up to the ski resorts this winter plus we’d not need to use the tailer all the time as we did with the Alto. On the diesel model the mpg isn’t too bad either at around the 50mpg mark.

We were also looking at the Chevrolet Matiz but it seems a bit tiny and I suspect that when they say it’s a five seater they mean three kids in the back rather than three adults. Still in the running, but we’d need the trailer all the time with it and, until very recently, the Matiz range didn’t have type approval for trailers so we might not be able to get a tow bar fitted.

We’re still looking though… ideas welcome… ideally what we need is a four door, five seater car with a large luggage capacity and very economical on the petrol/diesel. Preferably 4wd but not necessarily so. Oh, and cheapish but reliable.

The funny thing about chickenpox is that once you’re covered in spots, you’re not infectious.

That doesn’t stop people backing away from you though. I well remember the time when I was in the middle of the exams for my MBA and caught it: one big step backwards was taken by everyone once they found out what I’d got!

James wasn’t feeling too well yesterday and he’s still pretty hot at times but he isn’t anything like as lethargic as he was yesterday so I guess that he’s on his way to getting over the disease itself which “just” leaves those darned itchy spots.

We’re looking forward to John getting it, probably sometime next week I expect.