Western Union, Moneygram, three currencies, one apartment and too much luggage.

October was turning into a whirlwind month with all of our travel around Spain and getting ready to move to Uruguay.  The weather was still beautiful with only some occasional rain and now our friends Ash and Donna from Marbella came up to visit us.

After some frustrating cross connections on our phones we finally tracked them down at the Minotaur Bar at the bottom of the hill and we ordered, what else, bottles of Alhambra 1925 (otherwise known as “verde” or “milno” depending upon the bar and the location).  Since we started late, it was late when we turned in.

Early the next morning (for us, in Spain that’s 9 or 10) we arose and over coffee took turns taking showers.  By noon we were ready for breakfast and we set out for Puertas de las Pesas for our normal coffee, juice and tostadas.  Since it was a weekend and because Ash and Donna were there and, most importantly, because we were in Spain, breakfast was topped off with an adult beverage…..or two.  We sure like it when these two get together with us.

The weather was beautiful so we went “a tapeo” around the Albaycin starting at the top where Ash took some very nice photos at San Nicolas. 

Later we hooked up with our friends Tony and Chessa at Hannigans and ran into Kellie and Brittani while we were there.  Bacon sandwiches ensued!

Strolling back up the Albaycin we stopped for a nightcap at Puertas de las Pesas around 10 or 11 where we ran into our friend  Hassan and his lady friend and decided to go up to another friend, Ray’s place “La Terraza” for some continuing entertainment.  We picked up another friend, Nicole on the way and suddenly we were a good sized group.  It was just a normal Saturday night in the Albaycin.

At La Terraza we were joined by yet more friends and we all enjoyed great food, great conversation and the wonderful sounds of Wahdi playing his guitar.  We were all exhausted by the early morning hours and decided to call it a night although others were going to yet another after hours place.  It had been just the right amount of fun.

We said good-bye to Ash and Donna the next morning after breakfast and they returned home to Marbella while the weather was good.  We now turned our attention to our upcoming move to Uruguay.  Suddenly, we realized, that there was not much more time before we were scheduled to leave and that we were saying good-bye to friends that we might not see again for a considerable amount of time.

The practicalities of moving were upon us.  We had to get ourselves, two backpacks and four heavy (23 kilos each) duffel bags to our hotel in Venice and then to our ship.  After considering a complicated three day journey involving trains and ferries we decided that it simply made more sense to fly if….. we could travel with only one checked bag.  Enter Bag Express.  We found that for about 50 euros per bag, we could send our bags ahead to our hotel.  This was far cheaper than the several hundred euro charge for extra checked bags on the discount airline EasyJet (about 800 dollars for all four of our bags).  The only catch; we had to allow seven days for the bags to be delivered which meant that packing would have to be carefully done.

One problem solved.  Now we had to tackle another seemingly simple task but one that, in hindsight, was a preview to our Uruguay experience.  We discovered that apartment prices in Uruguay skyrocketed for the months of December through March and we finally found what appeared to be a reasonable apartment in the location we were looking for.  Now we needed to send a deposit to hold the apartment.  Simple right?

The imobliaria (rental agent) in Uruguay needed 500 US dollars sent to her but, here’s the catch; she could only accept US dollars, in cash so we were limited to MoneyGram or Western Union, both expensive solutions.  The situation was further complicated by the fact that, being in Europe, we were dealing in euros, obviously, so we were looking at getting killed at least twice on the exchange rates, and possibly three times if they insisted on sending the wire in Uruguayan pesos and then having the imobliaria convert to dollars in Uruguay.

Western Union seemed the easy solution - we could do it on line from our US bank account in dollars and avoid any currency exchange issues, perfect... right?  Wrong!  Western Union would not allow us to use their on-line service because we were not currently in the US (our IP address was alas, a Spanish one and is one more reason to obtain a VPN service) "please go in person to a Western Union office in Granada with your identification and we will be happy to help you", came the auto-response.  In the morning we headed down the hill and after over two hours of walking and three different Western Union offices we gave up in despair.  It just simply could not be done, even after one manager called their headquarters and was told they could and should do it, no one was able to make it work.  Evidently, in order to use my US bank account and send money to a foreign country I had to be either in the US or in the country I was trying to send the money to.  

The following day we dutifully went to an ATM, took out enough Euros to cover it and found the one place in the Albaycin that could send a MoneyGram to Uruguay for us, they of course, charged exorbitant fees and gave horrible exchange rates, but they did allow us to send dollars so we avoided the additional pesos to dollars conversion..

What a stupid way to do business we thought and sure enough, the imobliaria had quite a difficult time acquiring the cash after we emailed the pick-up code to her.  Why on earth wouldn't she accept PayPal or any other normal electronic payment system?  We figured it served her right, but we learned that this was more common than we thought and would come back to bite us again later.