We started the day with breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Most mornings we have breakfast in our room because we have a mini fridge. Then we took the kids to a place called Jump. It is an indoor play area with some inflatables, slides, mazes, etc. They love it!
Afterwards we went to the house to meet with the landlady and sign the lease. WooHoo! We have a place to live, now to pay the deposit and 1st months rent so we can get the keys.
Off to base to fill-out paperwork to get reimbursed for all the travel, hotels, food, etc.
Once we get back to the hotel we try to initiate the wire transfer for the deposit and rent, but it turned into a nightmare process. The online banking says we have to call the bank, a call to the bank phone tree informs us we have to process the request online. Don't you love the run-around. Finally we get a person after several attempts through the phone tree and have wire transfers added to our online profile. I start the process, add data for the landlady and get an error that the account number is in an invalid format. We call the landlady and confirm we have the correct account number. At this point we have been working on this wire transfer for at least 40 minutes. Still getting the error, so I try the online chat since trying to get a real person on the phone tree is awful. After 15 minutes chatting with the guy, he tells me that I have to call because he can't help me. Ugh! Back on the phone, through the tree to a person, but wrong department, so they transfer me. They have me clear the cookies and I re-enter all the information again, but I still get the error. The representative asks to verify account data and informs me we can't use the standard UK account number for an international wire we need an International Bank Account Number (IBAN) in order to continue. Remember we still have American accounts because we can't get a UK account without a lease. Meanwhile it is now 6:40pm here, so all of the banks are now closed. We will have to try again tomorrow or Monday. Seriously that was 2 hours of our lives we will never get back and we accomplished nothing.
The kids are starving, so we head downstairs for dinner. 3 bites into his Mac and Cheese and Lil Ron is off to the loo because he is getting sick. Poor kid, not sure what keeps upsetting his stomach. So him and I go back to the room while Annette and Ron finish dinner.
It wasn't a very exciting day, but we did get some things accomplished despite the wire transfer fiasco.
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