One Week In

We've survived our first week!!! Or, should I say that amazingly, we've survived our first week. From the moment we boarded the plane, our adventure began. We must have taxied up and down every runway at O'Hare for 2 hours before the plane was directed back to the gate. The reason given was that the baggage was unbalanced, and it certainly felt like the plane was unloaded and reloaded before we were allowed to drive around on all the runways again. Soon we were up in the air and on our way to missing our connecting flight at Heathrow. Fortunately there was another flight scheduled 2 hours later and Jim remembered that if the delay was due to mechanical error the airline had to feed us. So we picked up our new boarding passes for the later flight, the voucher for food and headed toward a restaurant for a lovely English breakfast, complete with fried tomatoes and beans!!!

After breakfast we headed to our next gate where we waited to be told we could board the plane. We waited, we waited, we waited....well you get the picture. We landed in Barcelona at the BRAND NEW terminal 1. It's a beautiful, light filled space. There are 16 brand new luggage carousels and none of them held Jim's suitcase. So we waited an hour for the next flight from London to arrive in hopes that Jim's suitcase would be on that flight. Still no bag so we headed to Sitges. David had the key for our apartment and Lola walked with us to introduce us to our landlady...also Lola (I'll call her Otra Lola).

Our apartment is beautiful!!!! We are halfway between the Basque tapas bar and the sea on a narrow pedestrian street in the old section. By narrow I mean that if the lady across the balcony from ours asked for the sugar I could pass it to her! Right now the street is being recobbled so we hear a lot of tap tap tapping. We have an oven, AND A DISHWASHER. Feeling fairly domestic, on Monday I decided to do some laundry and the accumulated dishes. Well, maybe I need a lesson or two on operating these conveniences. I thought I had set the washing machine for the 1 hour cycle, however 3 hours later our clothes were still swishing back and forth. And the dishwasher was burbing out mountains of suds that required some really fast mopping! I used a pot to scoop out a lot of the suds and then ran the dishwasher through 3 more cycles to get rid of the rest. So I'm thinking that the soap under the sink wasn't the one for the dishwasher.

While I was busy with my domestic adventures Jim was writhing in pain in the bedroom. He woke up Monday sicker than I have ever seen him. And I felt great.
Tuesday I went out to pick up some food and soda. Jim was still too sick to leave the apartment. Wednesday afternoon Jim felt well enough to take a short walk along the sea and do some shopping for more supplies. I still felt fine until Wednesday night when I got sick and it was my turn to writhe in pain. By Friday we were both feeling well enough to be up and able to attempt a meal out. I don't think we've ever had a week where we've spent so little on food or eaten so few meals. It was a great way to jump start our 2010 diet, but I don't think it's something I would recommend.

Since this is the first time I've tried a blog, I think I'm going to try posting this to see if it works. More later....I promise