moving out

In the past 3 days we were very busy with our move. The packers packed all day Friday and Saturday and then took everything away on Sunday. Of course we had lots of decisions to make on what to put in the air shipment, what to put in the sea, what to carry with us, what to give away and what to throw away. A few more things were sold at very low prices as well.
There were lots of papers to sort through and that took lots of time too. We don't want to lose any that might be important or useful later , but we also don't want the weight.
Because everything was pretty much packed up on Saturday we moved to a hotel- really serviced apartment. We chose it because we were thinking that Ziggy and Zoe would come with us and it also has some good restaurants very close by. The latter is important because we don't have our car available now and have to walk or arrange for an expensive car and driver. We did get a car and driver on Saturday because Janet has been sick and decided she should go to the doctor, but we also needed it to take us and our luggage from the apartment to the hotel.
On Sunday Jim walked to the apartment carrying a heavy bag of clothes and other small items to have the movers take with our sea shipment. This was hard on the back!
We also had a large plant that did not sell and Janet decided she wanted to keep the nice pot it was in, so we managed to find someone in the building to empty the pot and clean it out. The movers had mistakenly packed up the vacuum cleaner, even though the maid told them she thought she needed it. So, they had to unpack that and it was no problem for them to pack the other things that we had found the previous night and decided to ship by sea.
The Apartment is on the 4th floor (3rd floor in Indo- European naming) and the movers had to carry all the boxes down the stairs. They appeared to do this efficiently, but it was hard to keep an eye on them. They seemed good, but the only way we really know is when we receive the stuff on the other end and see what broke or is missing.
There are a number of tasks to do on Monday and Tuesday before we leave- hopefully they will go smoothly and Janet will feel better as well.
As for Ziggy and Zoe, we decided to leave them in the apartment rather than take them to the hotel. We think that fewer transitions will be less stressful for them. So, we will go there Tuesday evening, get them and go to the airport, where we also hope all the paperwork is satisfactory.
Before we left the US we did a lot of research on what was required to take the cats to India. In at least one place they said that having microchips inserted in them was required. We tend not to like this, but thought that it might be valuable if they were to get separated from us or lost. However, we have not seen any evidence that there are microchip readers here. At least none of the vets have mentioned them. We shall see.