Hola! Sorry I´ve been so long between stops, but the internet in Southern Spain is doing my head in. Wireless connection has been elusive so my laptop is gathering dust, and the broadband connections have been slow enough that writing and uploading photographs takes more time than mi familia are willing to give.
It´s been driving me nuts because I´ve been itching to write a post - I have pages of notes with ideas - but thus far I haven´t been able to actualize my desires. Online connection has been the paramour who is teasing me, dangling itself in front of me every other day or so and then proving itself disinterested in consumating our relationship. I´m like the most frustrated blogger in the world right now!
Yesterday I thought I´d found the right ingredients for a successful seduction. I had the internet cafe scoped out. I´d made introductions. I had arranged with my other loves to be amused elsewhere for an hour or so while I slipped out alone. I had my memory stick all prepped with photos and some scrawled notes to ensure I wasn´t caught up too long. Everything was organised. What could go wrong?
Our apartment, that´s what. Yes, a Spanish apartment kept me prisoner and I had to be rescued. After that I was too rattled to sneak away again and so clung close to the side of mi esposo, certain Spain was conspiring to keep me away from you. It sounds like I´m joking, but I´m not.
Let me first describe the apartment where we´re staying in Sevilla. It´s a building with three floors. The top has a roof terrace perfect for drinking cervezas with the fading sun in the evening warmth. The second floor is ours with an adorable, traditional Spanish apartment. One that has those full length windows/doors that open up in the lounge room and bedroom with the picturesque iron bars and flower pots to keep you from falling out. It´s like having a juliet balcony, but there´s no balcony.
Still the apartment is gorgeous and the view of cobbled streets and adobe buildings all around and the church at the end of the street (with bells that ring at times we find hard to comprehend) makes us feel like we are truly living like a Seville local.
The first floor is another apartment, which has been empty this week, so we are all alone in the building. Great for privacy. Terrible for when you need rescuing. The ground floor has a solid iron and double glassed security door, which needs a key to open it. Mui seguridad The only problem is you need a key to leave as well as to enter. Can you see where I am going here?
The realtor of the apartment only gave us one key for the front door. Musicman and Bunny left while I was having a shower. They unlocked the door and then closed it when they left, thereby locking me INTO the apartment block. Musicman had no idea what he had done.
So I toddle down 15 minutes later, notebook and memory stick in hand, psyched to get a post up and I only make it as far as the door to our apartment before I remember about the front security door. You see, we had noticed the annoying quirk of needing a key to get out on our first day, but then we´d forgotten about it. I was just about to close the front door to our apartment, thereby locking myself in the stairwell, when that memory flickered my mind and I stopped dead. “Oh shit!”
Now I look back and I am so grateful I realized before I shut that door. If I hadn´t had my mobile, I could have been stuck in the stairwell for hours. As it was, I could only text Musicman and hope for the best.
For some reason the fact that both our mobiles are roaming means we can only message each other. We can´t call. We can call other phones, just not each other. Do you think Musicman checked his mobile for messages? Of course not.
I texted him five times and he just couldn´t hear the beeps of the phone in his bag. Bunny had his attention, he was navigating roads, whizzing Spanish drivers and a 4 year old. He couldn´t hear me at all.
45 minutes later I was feeling quite claustrophobic. I couldn´t leave the apartment. I checked the windows - long drop, then there´s the bars - and I wrenched at that bloody front door for ages. I cried and punched the wall. I imagined myself stuck there all day and I began to panic.
That was until I had a brainwave. I remembered a girl´s best friend - her mum.
I called mum, apologised profusely for the late hour (damn that time difference) and got her to call Musicman. I knew he´d answer a phone call because it could be work and he´d definitely hear it. I was right. Mum sent out the rescue mission and I was freed within the next half hour.
Unfortunately, I was way too freaked to come out and write the post. I guess that´s the proof I still have not got over that childhood thing about small spaces. Even an apartment is small when you know you can´t get out. Please don´t think I´m too pathetic.
And now the stupid computer is saying it won´t upload any more photos. Of course not, that would be too efficient.
Sorry to leave you with no more visions of Spain. Will try again when I can, otherwise I´ll be home in 10 days or so. Hasta luego amigos.
