Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Just saw yesterday that the domain OnAPostcard.com was available and it seemed too good to just leave it sitting there.

Anyway, it’s now home to our latest blog.

We’re planning it to be a group blog, initially with myself and Wendy but open to others on request.

No thanks to the ADA guy at the airport who is plain useless but we now have a car for the next ten days or so.

OK, I’ll grant that the ADA franchise in Perpignan is tiny but that’s really no excuse for the dreadful customer service that they’ve shown. In fact, given that there’s rarely any queuing at the ADA desk the customer service should be excellent and indeed up to now we’ve been recommending people to go to them because of that. No longer though.

We’re hoping that we’ll not need to be renting a whole lot longer as our car is supposed to be here sometime this month. Can’t really see that happening myself but who knows? Even in France sometimes things do happen early!

The next challenge is to find some economic way to get myself over to Dublin for the Open University Spanish exam next month. Somehow I’ve managed to get to the point where I “only” need 20% in each of the next two (very large scale) assignments to get an overall pass on the assignments which “just” leaves the matter of the exam.

As a bit of a treat, we’re also planning on heading off to Berlin for a few days after the exam which also needs organising.

I’m not sure if it’s the worst carhire firm, but it’s certainly right up there.

When we originally made our booking way back in May, we arrived to find that nobody was there. In fact, there is never anyone in their office at Perpignan station unless there are car hire bookings. Indeed, there’s rarely anyone there even when there are bookings if our experience is anything to go by.

Roll things on to yesterday and, as you know, the guy flat out refused to let us take the new car without a card authorisation (which he clearly didn’t understand blocked that amount from our account) and neither would he let us take the old car to pick up a card that we’d have needed to give him. This, despite us having 90 minutes left on the carhire.

This morning we thought we’d call to check that he had a car. We’re still waiting for him to call back and frankly don’t believe that he has a car despite us having paid for it.

So, if you’ve a choice: don’t book with ADA.

From this side of the Atlantic, America is largely seen as a hotel type holiday destination but, of course, the whole range of accommodation options are available. There is one difference though… the quality of accommodation is much higher than you’ll be used to.

Take for example the self-catering accommodation options (vacation rental in American). Las Vegas is one place where you’d definitely be thinking hotels but you can rent a quite spectacular penthouse apartment (condo in American) right in the centre.

More typically villa type places include Lake Tahoe where you can choose from a whole range of luxurious villas in a spectacular location and the more central Palm Springs area.

How much for all this? Well, a typical villa runs from around $1500 to $2000 per week (£750 to £1000) which is more expensive than the average in Europe but then what you’re getting for the money is a whole lot more than is generally available.

After much consideration of the flights from Girona (or is it Gerona?) and Barcelona, it looks like Berlin has won for October.

All being well, we’ll be heading off towards the end of October for three or four days. I thought that the hotel prices would blow Berlin out of the water but there are lots of good quality accommodation at quite reasonable prices. Haven’t totally settled on a hotel/apartment but we’re aiming for somewhere in the Mitte area (ie central Berlin) which appears to offer the chance to walk around all the major sights over the course of a few days.

We’re planning on booking that sometime in the next few days once we nail down the accommodation. Flights look deadon as they leave Barcelona in the afternoon and get back in the evening.