Foreign Perspectives

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.

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!

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.