Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

ADA have been after me for quite a while now to add their logo to my sites, so here it is.

As you know, we’ve been renting a far from them since our own was wrecked by a tractor way back at the end of May. In that we’re quite a good customer for them you’d think that we would be due some brownie points for that, wouldn’t you?

Well, we’ve been renting the car for so long that they need it back as they’ve to return it to the leasing company and we agreed to make the changeover today.

We’d arranged to change it over at the airport as the town centre location is a bit of a nightmare to get in and out of plus it doesn’t have terribly long working hours.

Anyway, we dropped James off at school and off we went to the airport.

First off, we were going to have to pay for all the damage to the car. Kind of peculiar seeing as it was already damaged when we picked it up, eh?

Next he said he had a little two seater car for us. Yes, a car smaller than we had ordered and useless to us as we need at least a four seater. So, whereas other car hire firms would have been upgrading our car after such a long rental, ADA were going to make quite a downgrade.

Finally, he said he’d to do an authorisation on our card for another EUR 600. Now, that wouldn’t matter too much with a UK credit card but a French debit card it does. In particular it means that EUR 1200 would have been blocked in our account and in fact we’d not have been able to extend the car rental next week as planned.

Nope, he couldn’t do anything about any of that.

So, we’re sans-voiture. We’re also down EUR 70 as we needed to get a taxi to the school to collect James.

Next time, if there is one, I’ll tell them to collect the car if they want it because we certainly aren’t going to be helpful to them when there is zero service in response.

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).

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.

For the first time in several years, I managed to fly out of Perpignan airport straight to Belfast.

It was my first time on BMIBaby, the discount airline arm of British Midland.

As discount airlines go, they seem to have gotten several things completely wrong but hopefully they will continue in the same vein for quite some time.

For a start, they allow 20kg in checked luggage although they did get it right by charging to have the bag checked in. They didn’t even have a weight limit on carryon luggage (although there is the usual size limit).

Then they went on to be friendly and even displaying a caring attitude towards the passengers. You just can’t legitimately call yourself a discount airline and do stuff like that.

But they didn’t stop there. Those with small children (and they sensibly limit to those up to around 6 years of age) get priority in boarding. They even try to allocate a window seat as the little guys usually like to see what’s going on. Yeah, seat allocations!

Finally, you can even get airmiles on the flights (well, BMI’s version).

We’d a notionally connecting flight in Manchester but as I wasn’t too sure how long it was between flights, I booked a slightly later one. Had I been a bit sharper in getting off the previous flight I think they’d even have let me go on the earlier one but I just missed it. 

Overall, as you can probably gather, I was very impressed with them. Aside from the lack of a weight limit on carryon luggage, none of the little things which they do really cost them any money but together they add up to making the flight a much more pleasant experience.

No, I think BMIBaby will definitely have to try harder or their “discount airline” label will just have to be taken off them.

In case anyone from BMIBaby reads this… a big thanks to Sue on the 1030 flight from Perpignan to Manchester on Thursday!