Monthly Archives: October 2013

HELP ME RONDA, HELP, HELP ME RONDA!

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A couple of weeks ago Eric and I visited Ronda – a town built over the El Tajo gorge 100m deep, with a strong Moorish history taking it back to the 12th century.

For days before and after our visit we had the lyrics ‘help me Rhonda’ buzzing around in our brains! It was driving us crazy – and honestly right now (just talking about it) it is echoing in a maddening way!! HELP 🙂

It was a good day out. You can catch a train from here (Alora) leaving at 10.30 and arriving at Ronda by 11.55, with stunning views of El Churro on the way (google it!). The train departed for Alora at 16.50, so it wasn’t long to enjoy the town. We had an idea of what we wanted to see and the first step of our plan was to visit the tourism office – partly to use their loos!

So, we walked up town from the train station, through the Plaza de Socorro (which is a good square for meeting people and eating) to what we thought was the tourist bureau. It was a Parador right at the Puente Nuevo, next to the Puente Nuevo interpretation centre (a teeny booth, just big enough for a teeny man!). Paradors are usually ‘hotels’ built on existing old properties – such as castles or farms – so you get to experience the architecture and atmosphere of the historical building, but modernised. You are allowed to walk through the Parador even if you aren’t staying there and it is gorgeous!

So, unfortunately it wasn’t the tourist bureau and therefore there weren’t toilets. Eric asked the teeny man where they were and he said ‘McDonalds’!! I could not believe and was so ashamed ( 😦 ) that the first place we visited in historical Ronda was Maccas! And of course, not only would my moral compass not allow me to use their toilets without buying something, but they had signs around saying ‘only for customers!’. No wonder, if the teeny man was directing everyone to their shop!!

So, we got chips and a McFlurry 🙂

Then we worked out where to visit:

1) Puente Nuevo is the newest bridge (1793) passing over the amazing gorge, on both sides of which Ronda is built. One side is the historical Moorish part of town and the side we started on is the modern area (hello Maccas!) Before going over the bridge we walked around on Paseo Ernest Hemingway and Paseo Orson Welles, which allow spectacular viewing of the gorge and the older town on the opposite side.

Pont3 Nuevo Ronda

Ponte Nuevo

There are 3 bridges at Ronda – the others are Puente Viejo (Old Bridge) from the 16th century and the Puente Arabe (Moorish Bridge) from 11th or 12th century.

2) Palacio de Mondragon (town museum) – we got lost finding it, but that’s okay because it is such a picturesque neighbourhood that it didn’t matter. In fact, we almost gave up, but it was one of the few places I’d decided on, so we persevered – and it was beautiful. It is a restored Moorish palace stemming from the 12th century and is now the museum of Ronda (and we’ve been avoiding museums) but the building itself is stunning and worth the visit.

Palacio de Mondragon

Palacio de Mondragon (alarmy.com)

3) Palacio del Rey Moro (Palace of the Moorish King) with gardens and entrance to mine (Arab fortress) (from 13th century). The mine goes deep deep down (only Eric went underground and he was knackered when he got back. Moaning and carrying on – sounded a lot like me! 🙂 ) He thinks the elevation was about 300ft (100m) straight down and then back up! Lead to a lovely clear stream at the bottom.

Casa del ReyMoro

Casa (palacio) del Rey Moro

4) Banos de los Arabes (Arab baths) 11th to 12th century. This is an apparent ‘must see’ and if you’ve never seen any other archeological digs or ruins before ‘go for it’, because for me it was a little bit “YAY” – an old ruin ( for the entry fee) and was doable in about 10 minutes.

Banos des Arabes (Ronda)

Banos Arabes de Ronda (andalucia.org)

It was interesting to see how the baths worked – cold water from two nearby streams and drawn by buckets from a well, pumped by horse power ( 🙂 ) then poured into a reservoir over a furnace, then piped through the baths. They had a cold room, warm room and hot room.

There were steep steps down from the street where the Moorish castle is down to the baths, which meant a steep climb back up to the street – but yikes, even more steps to get back up to the main drag leading to Puente Nuevo and back to new Ronda.

This sounds like we didn’t really see much, but in all the running from place to place we enjoyed Ronda. The gorge is stunning, the bridges over the gorge (how the hell did they build them?) the streets in and around old Ronda were beautiful – buildings, windows (railings) balconies, trees and flowers and lots of lovely tucked away eateries. Lots that we said ‘we have to go back there’ to, but time flew and we ended up having a quick and not very satisfactory lunch at the Castle Cafe; there were so many other nicer places!!

A word of advice too from my experience so far; when in a city if there is a square or street recommended to tourists for eating – especially if they have large and gaudy signs with photos of the food (if the photos look cheep and nasty then potentially the food will be) then don’t go there (or at least don’t have very high expectations!).

There is so much nicer food to be had away from the tourist bustle. Sometimes it’s scarier (perhaps you don’t have the language – and the tourist spots usually have English on the menus) but if at least once you try to eat where the locals eat – it is well worth it!!

So, it was a lovely day out in Ronda; perhaps a little rushed, but it was great that the train went straight there from Alora and we were home again by about 6.30pm.

We then took the opportunity to eat at the Manhattan Bar right near the train station at Alora. As it sounds, it isn’t exactly Spanish, but it had been recommended and is only open 3 nights a week and as it’s by the station the only time we are likely to be near it is at the end of a day trip.

There’s no Spanish food in sight, but I did welcome their delicious fish and chips with tartare sauce (mmmm). I think Eric had nachos. Plain, straight forward and familiar food. We have tried to avoid doing ‘safe’ food while travelling, but I don’t enjoy the tapas experience, especially when in local restaurants where a) I have to work out what the choices are and b) I don’t know how it works at this restaurant. It’s because we don’t speak Spanish – even though we’ve picked up some. Our fault, of course; we should have made more of an effort before we got here!!

So, that was our Ronda day trip – finished off by dinner and a walk home in the dark. Yes, along that railway track (no lights) and climbing around the gate. Oh! There was a smelly dead chicken on the track, that luckily we’d seen earlier, so knew not to step on it!

Adios a todos; hasta pronto! 🙂

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SOME TIME LAST WEEK I SAID TO ERIC ‘WE COULD JUST GO HOME” – 29th October

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What are we doing here?

In earlier blogs I said we want to laugh, sing, dance …. 

In my imagination I thought (and spoke about in passing to Eric – who clearly wasn’t paying any attention!) that we would find a secondhand (cheap and working) guitar. Eric would play tunes more often (all the time) and I would sing along with him. At home, he only occasionally picks up his guitar – I thought this was because he was always working OR thinking about work. Also, he likes to spend his downtime with me – so if he is playing his guitar, he is not with me!

He’d also love it if I sang with him as he played. Makes sense! I can sing … and enjoy music; but inexplicably, even though Eric is the one person I can be myself with and trust the most in the world – I’m shy!! Back to that deep seated problem I have where I don’t want to look foolish OR make mistakes – even in front of my sweetie!

Sometimes Eric is playing to himself and I’ll be pottering around OR even reading – and I’ll start singing in the background, particularly doing harmonies! I do excellent harmony!!! But if Eric says ‘that’s great’ or ‘come over and sing this one’ or ‘join me’ I won’t. He has learned to not say anything.

Now he’ll come to me later and say “I love it when you do harmonies. I’m so amazed how you can do that and I wish you’d come and sing with me!”

So, I thought in Spain we’d find Eric a guitar; he’d play for himself, I’d get over myself and join in with him AND he could start teaching me how to play the guitar. When I said to Eric “we need to look out for a guitar for you” he said “I’m not that fussed. I don’t have a burning desire to play guitar”.

I was so surprised, but apparently Eric enjoys tinkling on his guitar every now and then, but has resigned himself to not ever being very good at it. And three months isn’t long enough to become an expert!

So, with one sweep of his ‘not really that interested’ broom, a large part of my vision of what eight weeks in Alora, Spain looked like was wiped out.

I’m very conscious of how much I do or don’t do and achieve or don’t achieve is down to me and I’m not blaming Eric’s lack of need/desire to play music or practice his skill for us not achieving this.

So, a couple of weeks later we’ve arrived in the UK for a whistle stop 5 days in England, then 5 days in Dublin and I say “okay, Iv’e been keeping an eye out everywhere we’ve been in the last 8 weeks for a musical instrument shop or secondhand shop for a small guitar for me, so that you can teach me chords and I can learn to accompany myself. Eric shows great surprise at this “oh, I didn’t realise, why didn’t you say?”

So, we were in Horley and there is a guitar shop and I find a lovely small steel stringed guitar that I fall in love with, costing about 150 pound. The young guy in the shop was very helpful and lovely and if you’re ever in Horley and want to buy a guitar – go and see him! He described the differences between nylon and steel strings – mainly to do with the sound (more classical versus more grunt) and helped with sizing, because I have small hands.

We went away to consider the purchase – pros and cons.

The first con was that we’d bought all ‘best and cheap rate’ flights for our three legs (Malaga to Gatwick, Cardiff to Dublin and Dublin to Malaga) and had said we’d only do carry on and no checked baggage. If you wanted to check in luggage it was possible, but for approximately 60 or 70 euros.

Ryanair is the most pedantic You can have 10kg each carry on BUT it has to be in one piece of luggage – no laptop bag, no handbag, no duty free shopping unless they are INSIDE your carry on bag. This made it difficult to see how we could justify the expense of buying a guitar in Horley.

The pro for buying this particular guitar is that forever more when I play it, I will always remember buying it in my friend Rachel’s village!!

Of course, while we were pondering this decision we discovered that our credit card had temporarily run out of money and so the potential to buy was no longer an option.

So, we decided while away in UK and Ireland that we would look for a guitar in Malaga when we get back. Ideally finding something secondhand would be good (for our budget) but since a) I want a small guitar (therefore choice) and b) it’s hard enough to find a musical instrument shop in Malaga (due to language) then it will be hard to find a secondhand shop too.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, we’ll find one tomorrow ….. when we visit Mal-a-ga!!!!

We hope!!

There’ll be less than 3 weeks left in Spain to learn some chords; but with still 2 weeks travelling in Morocco (no reason I can’t practice chords in the evening). If I can get a handle on chords and simple tunes in the next 5 weeks, I’ll be set up for continuing playing when back in Oz.

I need to find some more energy and anticipatory excitement from somewhere. Morocco will be amazing!!! It’s the next few weeks in Spain I’m not sure about!

Love to all! xxx

 

SOME TIME LAST WEEK I SAID TO ERIC ‘WE COULD JUST GO HOME” – October 2013

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What are we doing here?

In earlier blogs I said we want to laugh, sing, dance ….

In my imagination I thought (and spoke about in passing to Eric – who clearly wasn’t paying any attention!) that we would find a second hand (cheap and working) guitar. Eric would play tunes more often (all the time) and I would sing along with him. At home, he only occasionally picks up his guitar – I thought this was because he was always working OR thinking about work. Also, he likes to spend his downtime with me – so if he is playing his guitar, he is not with me!

He’d also love it if I sang with him as he played. Makes sense! I can sing … and enjoy music; but inexplicably, even though Eric is the one person I can be myself with and trust the most in the world – I’m shy!! Back to that deep seated problem I have where I don’t want to look foolish OR make mistakes – even in front of my sweetie!

Sometimes Eric is playing to himself and I’ll be pottering around OR even reading – and I’ll start singing in the background, particularly doing harmonies! I do excellent harmony!!! But if Eric says ‘that’s great’ or ‘come over and sing this one’ or ‘join me’ I won’t. He has learned to not say anything.

Now he’ll come to me later and say “I love it when you do harmonies. I’m so amazed how you can do that and I wish you’d come and sing with me!”

So, I thought in Spain we’d find Eric a guitar; he’d play for himself, I’d get over myself and join in with him AND he could start teaching me how to play the guitar. When I said to Eric “we need to look out for a guitar for you” he said “I’m not that fussed. I don’t have a burning desire to play guitar”.

I was so surprised, but apparently Eric enjoys tinkling on his guitar every now and then, but has resigned himself to not ever being very good at it. And three months isn’t long enough to become an expert!

So, with one sweep of his ‘not really that interested’ broom, a large part of my vision of what eight weeks in Alora, Spain looked like was wiped out.

I’m very conscious of how much I do or don’t do and achieve or don’t achieve is down to me and I’m not blaming Eric’s lack of need/desire to play music or practice his skill for us not achieving this.

So, a couple of weeks later we’ve arrived in the UK for a whistle stop 5 days in England, then 5 days in Dublin and I say “okay, I’ve been keeping an eye out everywhere we’ve been in the last 8 weeks for a musical instrument shop or secondhand shop for a small guitar for me, so that you can teach me chords and I can learn to accompany myself. Eric shows great surprise at this “oh, I didn’t realise, why didn’t you say?”

So, we were in Horley and there is a guitar shop and I find a lovely small steel stringed guitar that I fall in love with, costing about 150 pound. The young guy in the shop was very helpful and lovely and if you’re ever in Horley and want to buy a guitar – go and see him! He described the differences between nylon and steel strings – mainly to do with the sound (more classical versus more grunt) and helped with sizing, because I have small hands.

We went away to consider the purchase – pros and cons.

The first con was that we’d bought all ‘best and cheap rate’ flights for our three legs (Malaga to Gatwick, Cardiff to Dublin and Dublin to Malaga) and had said we’d only do carry on and no checked baggage. If you wanted to check in luggage it was possible, but for approximately 60 or 70 euros.

Ryanair is the most pedantic You can have 10kg each carry on BUT it has to be in one piece of luggage – no laptop bag, no handbag, no duty free shopping unless they are INSIDE your carry on bag. This made it difficult to see how we could justify the expense of buying a guitar in Horley.

The pro for buying this particular guitar is that forever more when I play it, I will always remember buying it in my friend Rachel’s village!!

Of course, while we were pondering this decision we discovered that our credit card had temporarily run out of money and so the potential to buy was no longer an option.

So, we decided while away in UK and Ireland that we would look for a guitar in Malaga when we get back. Ideally finding something secondhand would be good (for our budget) but since a) I want a small guitar (therefore choice) and b) it’s hard enough to find a musical instrument shop in Malaga (due to language) then it will be hard to find a secondhand shop too.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, we’ll find one tomorrow ….. when we visit Mal-a-ga!!!!

We hope!!

There’ll be less than 3 weeks left in Spain to learn some chords; but with still 2 weeks travelling in Morocco (no reason I can’t practice chords in the evening). If I can get a handle on chords and simple tunes in the next 5 weeks, I’ll be set up for continuing playing when back in Oz.

I need to find some more energy and anticipatory excitement from somewhere. Morocco will be amazing!!! It’s the next few weeks in Spain I’m not sure about!

Love to all! xxx

MONEY TROUBLE – CONTINUING SAGA! – 28th October

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This last 3 weeks in Spain will be interesting. I don’t know if I have lost interest now or whether it is just that I’m socialised to death from catching up with too many people the last couple of weeks – and the stress of all the money stress. You know how stressful it is when you don’t now what is happening with the money.
I slept most of yesterday and today – I think that’s a reaction to something!
I’m trying to pay finals on Morocco. I emailed them last week to say “guys, I haven’t heard from you about paying finals. Are you still emailing my home account, when I gave you all my travel details (including email)?” They emailed back ‘oh yes, you’re right – that’s exactly what we are doing!” So they’ve been emailing me about finals and haven’t heard.
Now we are communicating, but we are having issues with our credit card paying the balance. I called the bank and they said ‘yes’ there’s a hold on the account – from when they queried the Western Union transfer as a possible overseas fraud, but we’ve taken off the hold now and it should all be okay.
It wasn’t!
So I emailed them again and they said ‘sorry – the hold wasn’t completely off – but it should be good now’. It still isn’t. I just got a message from the tour group saying it has been declined.
So, I’ve emailed the bank again (pain in the butt being in Spain and being too expensive to call them) and said ‘guys, it’s getting desperate. These guys will think I can’t pay for my trip!”
Let’s see what they say now!
So, hopefully tomorrow we’ll have our act together again and go out to Malaga for the day; maybe Cordoba later in the week. Mark (Alora) says that Cordoba is worth a visit – and easily done by train!
BUT, I need to have that Morocco leg finalized – otherwise, what are we going to do for November? 🙂

MONEY TROUBLE – CONTINUING SAGA! – October 2013

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This last 3 weeks in Spain will be interesting. I don’t know if I have lost interest now or whether it is just that I’m socialised to death from catching up with too many people the last couple of weeks – and the stress of all the money stress. You know how stressful it is when you don’t know what is happening with the money.
I slept most of yesterday and today – I think that’s a reaction to something!
I’m trying to pay finals on Morocco. I emailed them last week to say “guys, I haven’t heard from you about paying finals. Are you still emailing my home account, when I gave you all my travel details (including email)?” They emailed back ‘oh yes, you’re right – that’s exactly what we are doing!” So they’ve been emailing me about finals and haven’t heard.
Now we are communicating, but we are having issues with our credit card paying the balance. I called the bank and they said ‘yes’ there’s a hold on the account – from when they queried the Western Union transfer as a possible overseas fraud, but we’ve taken off the hold now and it should all be okay.
It wasn’t!
So I emailed them again and they said ‘sorry – the hold wasn’t completely off – but it should be good now’. It still isn’t. I just got a message from the tour group saying it has been declined.
So, I’ve emailed the bank again (pain in the butt being in Spain and being too expensive to call them) and said ‘guys, it’s getting desperate. These guys will think I can’t pay for my trip!”
Let’s see what they say now!
So, hopefully tomorrow we’ll have our act together again and go out to Malaga for the day; maybe Cordoba later in the week. Mark (Alora) says that Cordoba is worth a visit – and easily done by train!
BUT, I need to have that Morocco leg finalized – otherwise, what are we going to do for November? 🙂

BUS TO CARDIFF – 20th October

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Rainbow UKAFTER DEBACLE OF NO MONEY – AND NOT BEING ABLE TO COLLECT CAR! Set to tune of ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’.

On the bus and saw a rainbow up ahead – my juices must still have been flowing!!!

  Somewhere over the rainbow, our hotel

4 hours into the future, Cardiff means we’ll sleep well

We woke up this morning, blissfully unaware

Of the chaos awaiting, car hire and credit card hell!!

We walked up to the counter smiling, here’s our reservation booking – car-now-please!

The lady wanted ‘driver’s license and 200 pound deposit – bank-cards-only!

We began crying and snarling; girl apologised

Sorry sir, it’s company policy; rules by which I must abide!

Is there an-other option? This strongly sucks!

No, and it’s not our problem; okay lady, you can get …. stuffed!

MONEY TROUBLE – the adventure!!! – 20th October

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We have been seriously stuffed for three days!

Firstly because we had a run of charges on our pre-paid credit card and didn’t top it up fast enough AND then because we didn’t know about the 200 pound security deposit required (to only be paid with an international credit card).

So, we had Harry Potter tickets booked for Friday 18th and worked out which trains to catch to get there (HP booked for 10am and ticket said if we were late they couldn’t guarantee entrance). We caught the first train from Horley to Clapham Junction but the number of people getting on the bus to Watford Junction was amazing (rush hour) and about 20 people were left on the platform – including us!!!

So we caught another train to Shepherd’s Bush (from which we could catch the next train to Watford Junction (don’t you love that name – WATFORD JUNCTION!!) but when we got there we realised that there was a wait for the train AND then it would take about another 40 minutes. We didn’t have 40 minutes +, so we decided to catch a taxi.

We knew this was an extravagance (maybe 40 pound?) and tried not to notice it getting higher and higher – until by the time we got there, it was 91 pound!!!! That’s approximately $180 AUD folks!!!

So crying on the inside but smiling on the outside, we handed over our cash (because his EFTPOS machine was broken) and kindly he’d reduced it to 80 pound. We knew it was a waste of money and not something we’d happily do every day – but we had resources and we had to be there by 10am. It was 10.07!!

We were waiting in line at HP and realised that some people were just buying their tickets on the day! What the??!!! I guess it isn’t peak season, so they were able to do it AND of course they weren’t fussed that we were late. We could have called them and turned up an hour late and it would have been okay!!!! 😦

So, we enjoyed Harry Potter – it was very well done – and luckily (phew) didn’t feel the need to buy lots of merchandise and caught the train to Victoria Station. We’d planned on doing a Charles Dickens walking tour of London, followed by a quick run into Harrods (in the many times we’ve visited London we haven’t gone in) and then high tea at the Atheneum! Cool!! But when Eric went to use his card to call home – the operator said there wasn’t enough money on the card! And that was when we learned that we had only the cash in our pockets – and we’d blown 80 of it on the bloody taxi!!

SHIT!!

We quickly calculated what was happening for the next few days (this was Friday). Saturday at Rachel’s. Sunday collect car and visit Becky and on to Cardiff. Monday at Dr Who in Cardiff. Tuesday drop car off and fly to Dublin. All accommodation paid for, car paid for, flights paid for and Dr Who paid for – all we needed money for was eating and sightseeing.

So when we visited Rachel and Andy we got our courage up and asked for a loan. It was embarrassing because as I said on the ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS blog, I only know Rachel from a Mauritius holiday and Facebook penpaling! BUT thankfully Rachel said yes immediately. That gave us 200 pound in our pockets.

Then when we turned up to collect our car rental at Gatwick to drive and visit Becky in Poole and on to Cardiff (which we had paid for online) – we couldn’t collect it because we didn’t have an international credit card with us! We’ve been travelling with only our prepaid Currency Card.

We booked the car with a booking agent online with our prepaid card – but when we went to collect were advised that we also had to pay a refundable 200 pound security deposit, but that this can only be paid with an International Credit Card (attached to your bank accounts)! Not prepaid currency cards and not cash – we could have had 1000 pounds in cash and it would have made no difference!

Therefore, our plan to drive to Gatwick to Dorset to lunch with Becky and then on to Cardiff that afternoon couldn’t work. We luckily had enough cash to buy a bus ticket direct to Cardiff, where we had two nights accommodation booked and paid for. It seems ridiculous!

We have ID (passport and driver’s license) but we most likely won’t be able to hire a car in Dublin on Tuesday either (which we weren’t able to, of course) because of this problem.

I did want to bring our Mastercard as well – for emergencies – but Eric said “No. It defeated the purpose of having bought a prepaid card – nobody getting hold of our card attached to a real banking account if lost/stolen, no scanning it at shops/ATM”.

The ticket seller at National Express (buses) said ‘it happens all the time!’ So, it’s not just us eejits!!

We had to decide (for both timing and cash reasons) not to visit Becky – which was very sad because we were so looking forward to it and since Becky and Joe left Australia to return to the UK last December, they are now expecting a baby. Joe has done up the nursery and of course Becky looks preggers!! We were really looking forward to seeing where they live and eating in their local! 

For financial reasons the best decision was to head straight to Cardiff where we had 2 nights accommodation already paid for. The bus cost 105 pound for the two of us, which left us less than 100. Transfer of funds into the prepaid card was already in progress, but takes 2 to 3 working days to process, so potentially we wouldn’t have any more money until Wednesday (and it was Sunday). 

We talked to Von that night about maybe using Western Union to send some instant cash – and she got that happening. But the next exciting money adventure was that the bank decided to ‘freeze’ our credit card in case it was a fraudulent payment out of our account to an overseas business – because they didn’t know we were overseas and because Von used our bank account but with her name and details. ALARM BELLS RANG AT BANK WEST!!!

It was all sorted and on Monday we got cash out. Our new BFF in Alora, Mark of Finca Fenix was offering to send us money immediately – but of course are his guests and we didn’t feel at all comfortable letting him help us. It was crazy! We had money in our bank – but we were living on ham and cheese sandwiches!!! 🙂

We hit Dublin airport on Tuesday morning assuming that the money wouldn’t be through to our prepaid until Wednesday – but checked it out at the ATM anyway and BONUS we had money again!!!

MORAL OF THE STORY IS: DO NOT LET YOUR PREPAID CARD RUN OUT OF MONEY and bring the bloody REAL CARD with you in case of emergencies – a message I need to pass on to our travel agent to pass on to their customers!

Reminds me …. better check what the balance of our card is now! 

xx

MONEY TROUBLE – the adventure!!! – October 2013

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We have been seriously stuffed for three days!

Firstly because we had a run of charges on our pre-paid credit card and didn’t top it up fast enough AND then because we didn’t know about the 200 pound security deposit required (to only be paid with an international credit card).

So, we had Harry Potter tickets booked for Friday 18th and worked out which trains to catch to get there (HP booked for 10am and ticket said if we were late they couldn’t guarantee entrance). We caught the first train from Horley to Clapham Junction but the number of people getting on the bus to Watford Junction was amazing (rush hour) and about 20 people were left on the platform – including us!!!

So we caught another train to Shepherd’s Bush (from which we could catch the next train to Watford Junction (don’t you love that name – WATFORD JUNCTION!!) but when we got there we realised that there was a wait for the train AND then it would take about another 40 minutes. We didn’t have 40 minutes +, so we decided to catch a taxi.

We knew this was an extravagance (maybe 40 pound?) and tried not to notice it getting higher and higher – until by the time we got there, it was 91 pound!!!! That’s approximately $180 AUD folks!!!

So crying on the inside but smiling on the outside, we handed over our cash (because his EFTPOS machine was broken) and kindly he’d reduced it to 80 pound. We knew it was a waste of money and not something we’d happily do every day – but we had resources and we had to be there by 10am. It was 10.07!!

We were waiting in line at HP and realised that some people were just buying their tickets on the day! What the??!!! I guess it isn’t peak season, so they were able to do it AND of course they weren’t fussed that we were late. We could have called them and turned up an hour late and it would have been okay!!!! 😦

So, we enjoyed Harry Potter – it was very well done – and luckily (phew) didn’t feel the need to buy lots of merchandise and caught the train to Victoria Station. We’d planned on doing a Charles Dickens walking tour of London, followed by a quick run into Harrods (in the many times we’ve visited London we haven’t gone in) and then high tea at the Atheneum! Cool!! But when Eric went to use his card to call home – the operator said there wasn’t enough money on the card! And that was when we learned that we had only the cash in our pockets – and we’d blown 80 of it on the bloody taxi!!

SHIT!!

We quickly calculated what was happening for the next few days (this was Friday). Saturday at Rachel’s. Sunday collect car and visit Becky and on to Cardiff. Monday at Dr Who in Cardiff. Tuesday drop car off and fly to Dublin. All accommodation paid for, car paid for, flights paid for and Dr Who paid for – all we needed money for was eating and sightseeing.

So when we visited Rachel and Andy we got our courage up and asked for a loan. It was embarrassing because as I said on the ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS blog, I only know Rachel from a Mauritius holiday and Facebook penpalling! BUT thankfully Rachel said yes immediately. That gave us 200 pound in our pockets.

Then when we turned up to collect our car rental at Gatwick to drive and visit Becky in Poole and on to Cardiff (which we had paid for online) – we couldn’t collect it because we didn’t have an international credit card with us! We’ve been travelling with only our prepaid Currency Card.

We booked the car with a booking agent online with our prepaid card – but when we went to collect were advised that we also had to pay a refundable 200 pound security deposit, but that this can only be paid with an International Credit Card (attached to your bank accounts)! Not prepaid currency cards and not cash – we could have had 1000 pounds in cash and it would have made no difference!

Therefore, our plan to drive to Gatwick to Dorset to lunch with Becky and then on to Cardiff that afternoon couldn’t work. We luckily had enough cash to buy a bus ticket direct to Cardiff, where we had two nights accommodation booked and paid for. It seems ridiculous!

We have ID (passport and driver’s license) but we most likely won’t be able to hire a car in Dublin on Tuesday either (which we weren’t able to, of course) because of this problem.

I wanted to bring our Mastercard as well – for emergencies – but Eric said “No. It defeated the purpose of having bought a prepaid card – nobody getting hold of our card attached to a real banking account if lost/stolen, no scanning it at shops/ATM”.

The ticket seller at National Express (buses) said ‘it happens all the time!’ So, it’s not just us eejits!!

We had to decide (for both timing and cash reasons) not to visit Becky – which was very sad because we were so looking forward to it and since Becky and Joe left Australia to return to the UK last December, they are now expecting a baby. Joe has done up the nursery and of course Becky looks preggers!! We were really looking forward to seeing where they live and eating in their local!

For financial reasons the best decision was to head straight to Cardiff where we had 2 nights accommodation already paid for. The bus cost 105 pound for the two of us, which left us less than 100. Transfer of funds into the prepaid card was already in progress, but takes 2 to 3 working days to process, so potentially we wouldn’t have any more money until Wednesday (and it was Sunday).

We talked to Von that night about maybe using Western Union to send some instant cash – and she got that happening. But the next exciting money adventure was that the bank decided to ‘freeze’ our credit card in case it was a fraudulent payment out of our account to an overseas business – because they didn’t know we were overseas and because Von used our bank account but with her name and details. ALARM BELLS RANG AT BANK WEST!!!

It was all sorted and on Monday we got cash out. Our new BFF in Alora, Mark of Finca Fenix was offering to send us money immediately – but of course are his guests and we didn’t feel at all comfortable letting him help us. It was crazy! We had money in our bank – but we were living on ham and cheese sandwiches!!! 🙂

We hit Dublin airport on Tuesday morning assuming that the money wouldn’t be through to our prepaid until Wednesday – but checked it out at the ATM anyway and BONUS we had money again!!!

MORAL OF THE STORY IS: DO NOT LET YOUR PREPAID CARD RUN OUT OF MONEY and bring the bloody REAL CARD with you in case of emergencies – a message I need to pass on to our travel agent to pass on to their customers!

Reminds me …. better check what the balance of our card is now!

ARE YOU ENJOYING FOLLOWING THIS JOURNEY?

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HI EVERYONE!

Sometimes I feel that I’m writing to myself, because there aren’t many comments or ‘likes’.

If you have read a post, I’d appreciate if you even just hit ‘like’ – then I feel that we are having a conversation. You don’t have to comment!

I’m sharing a lot of myself – good and bad – in this blog.

On my Facebook page, if I have friends that don’t engage with me I delete them. I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of people just watching (voyeur) and really want to feel we are engaging!

End of lecture! 🙂 xx

 

ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS! – 19th October

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On this day in Surrey in the United Kingdom, Eric and I met up with Rachel and Andy at their lovely home.

We met Rachel and her mum Sue in Mauritius four years ago, when we joined the same day trip and we offered to take a photo of them. They were staying at the HIlton further down the beach; we were at the Sands and we organised to meet up with them to eat at a local Indian restaurant (delicious food) and they joined us for drinks at our hotel on another evening.

After that day we only caught up a couple of other times, but I thought I’d found a kindred spirit in Rachel!

On the surface we aren’t that similar. Rachel has a big personality and a passion that saw her actively and intensely pursue a  career (in the police) that had not been available to her as a youngster, due to entry requirements. So, in her late 30s and after a 21 year Admin job in high end retail she had completed all the testing and interviews and was waiting for confirmation she had made it!

They said “YES” but it took another two years of waiting due to cutbacks; and as the queue of successful applicants grew – Rachel worked full-time while “volunteer policing” to improve her chances of getting in. Finally, two years ago she got her ‘dream’ job and I was as proud of her as if I’d done it myself (or was her mother, sister, best friend …..)!

So, what do we have in common? At the same time that I ask that question, I feel that if we had grown up together OR lived in the same town, we’d be buddies! As it is, through the wonder of Facebook and email (basically the internet) we are modern day pen pals – often though in ‘real time’. And we both love to get snail mail – and try to write or send small prezzies a couple of times a year!

In planning our holiday there was a magnet pull from Surrey, UK and it would have been seriously disappointing if we hadn’t caught up.

When we met, there wasn’t any awkwardness! The four of us talked and laughed the afternoon away. Andy cooked a simple and delicious meal and made a lovely cheesecake (hello Cheesecake buddy 🙂 ). Rachel had to work in the evening and pushed on as long as she could before she had to chase us out!!!

We had a great time and it was easy and comfortable. Andy was lovely with these strangers that Rachel had brought home!

Rachel is the woman who had a dream and went for it, with the loving support of her ‘rock’ Andy. Eric has always been my rock and will support me in whatever I want to do. Perhaps I need to decide what that is – and go for it 🙂

Thanks guys for a great welcome and a fabulous afternoon! xxxx

P.S. Thanks for the lend of 100 quid! That is part of the next frustrating and dramatic (da dum!) story – to be blogged soon!

 

xx