Ramblings in Retirement
November 2005
November has been a bit of a quiet month, in the first week Penny went to the UK and I just puttered around doing not much of anything. Amazingly, the week passed quickly and I also then travelled to the UK.
Whilst in the UK I need a car and, expected to hire one up-on arrival however this proved to be incredibly difficult owing to a lack of foresight by the hire companies. I arrange all my bookings via the Internet and in the case of car hire I type in to the search engine “cheap car hire, Leeds” and voila! a long list of suppliers comes up. I browse through a selection, decide, and duly filling in all the details required regarding arrival etc., concluding with submitting my credit card details (on a secure site, and of course the CC is protected by the CC companies in case things go wrong). I then receive an email from the hire company to advise that they cannot provide the car as their office is closed on Sunday! I now have to cancel the booking and ensure they reimburse my CC with the money! Why did they not have a check in place when I made the original booking? Anyway, I then booked a car with Hertz who although more expensive, were open on my arrival and, provided excellent customer service to boot. A further observation was that the cost of a weeks car hire in the UK, was double that for a similar car here in Spain!
Whilst at our house in Yorkshire, Penny and I did some serious garden clean up (it used to be that we lived in the UK and when we went to Spain we had to tidy the garden, now it’s reversed)! I decided to prune the roses, then the lilac bushes then some borders and when I looked around me I was swamped with masses of debris. I should have hired a van, not a car. A skip was to be the answer and now both front and back gardens are looking fine, for a while at least.
The weather was initially wet then cold and sunny so not too bad really (in Spain they had 4 days of continuous rain in downpour, so we were lucky to miss that). It was great seeing the family, friends and grandkids but equally it was great to arrive back home at La Sella and miss the bitter cold weather that hit the UK.
Having been in the Pub, Restaurant and hotel trade for ages I am always looking for new ideas or concepts, I think I’ve found one but it might not be too popular in the UK.
Back home, Penny and I had a couple of things to get sorted, firstly our bank account, which to date has been what is known as an “extraneos account” (non resident) needed to be changed to a residents account (the terms and charges are more favourable too). Secondly, we had to register on the “Padron” at the town hall, which is similar to being on the electoral roll. This proved to be something of a challenge as our town hall in Pedreguer does not have any English speaking staff! Nevertheless, we were handed about half a dozen forms to complete and told to bring them back when completed. This we duly did and, now we are officially registered, we are allowed to vote in local elections (whatever good that would do anyway as the Spanish have the council all sorted).
I don’t know whether it is a central government, regional government or local council law, but in Javea, all apartment blocks must have retail outlets on the ground floor instead of apartments, this results in loads of empty shop premises as you can see.
I’m told that the developer charges such high rents that he does not care whether the shops are let or not!
Hope you enjoyed this type of communication, I am still experimenting with it but it does seem fun so far.
November 2005
November has been a bit of a quiet month, in the first week Penny went to the UK and I just puttered around doing not much of anything. Amazingly, the week passed quickly and I also then travelled to the UK.
Whilst in the UK I need a car and, expected to hire one up-on arrival however this proved to be incredibly difficult owing to a lack of foresight by the hire companies. I arrange all my bookings via the Internet and in the case of car hire I type in to the search engine “cheap car hire, Leeds” and voila! a long list of suppliers comes up. I browse through a selection, decide, and duly filling in all the details required regarding arrival etc., concluding with submitting my credit card details (on a secure site, and of course the CC is protected by the CC companies in case things go wrong). I then receive an email from the hire company to advise that they cannot provide the car as their office is closed on Sunday! I now have to cancel the booking and ensure they reimburse my CC with the money! Why did they not have a check in place when I made the original booking? Anyway, I then booked a car with Hertz who although more expensive, were open on my arrival and, provided excellent customer service to boot. A further observation was that the cost of a weeks car hire in the UK, was double that for a similar car here in Spain!
Whilst at our house in Yorkshire, Penny and I did some serious garden clean up (it used to be that we lived in the UK and when we went to Spain we had to tidy the garden, now it’s reversed)! I decided to prune the roses, then the lilac bushes then some borders and when I looked around me I was swamped with masses of debris. I should have hired a van, not a car. A skip was to be the answer and now both front and back gardens are looking fine, for a while at least.
The weather was initially wet then cold and sunny so not too bad really (in Spain they had 4 days of continuous rain in downpour, so we were lucky to miss that). It was great seeing the family, friends and grandkids but equally it was great to arrive back home at La Sella and miss the bitter cold weather that hit the UK.
Having been in the Pub, Restaurant and hotel trade for ages I am always looking for new ideas or concepts, I think I’ve found one but it might not be too popular in the UK.
Back home, Penny and I had a couple of things to get sorted, firstly our bank account, which to date has been what is known as an “extraneos account” (non resident) needed to be changed to a residents account (the terms and charges are more favourable too). Secondly, we had to register on the “Padron” at the town hall, which is similar to being on the electoral roll. This proved to be something of a challenge as our town hall in Pedreguer does not have any English speaking staff! Nevertheless, we were handed about half a dozen forms to complete and told to bring them back when completed. This we duly did and, now we are officially registered, we are allowed to vote in local elections (whatever good that would do anyway as the Spanish have the council all sorted).
I don’t know whether it is a central government, regional government or local council law, but in Javea, all apartment blocks must have retail outlets on the ground floor instead of apartments, this results in loads of empty shop premises as you can see.
I’m told that the developer charges such high rents that he does not care whether the shops are let or not!
Hope you enjoyed this type of communication, I am still experimenting with it but it does seem fun so far.
posted by Rob at 2:33 pm
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1 comments
