Greetings from quirky Spain!

I can't report that our first day went off without a hitch . . . As with most new destinations and unfamiliar languages mishaps can ensue. For us, it was starting the morning with just one piece of luggage on the conveyor belt at Malaga airport. We waited until the last lonely piece emerged and listened for the sounding horn to indicate the belt was stopping. Of course it was mine and I was already imagining another vacation with a cobbled together wardrobe. We finally found the lost luggage office, at Iberia airlines, even though we were flying Aer Lingus. We waited in line, and waited some more. Then a lovely woman looked at my ticket and without even scanning it or looking at a computer screen she discerned that my bag had mysteriously gone on another belt. She gave us directions that could have been "follow the yellow brick road . . ." And sure enough, there was MY bag, all alone in an abandoned portion of the terminal. We shrugged, having no idea why. Oh, well.

Okay, so then we go to the rental car desk. No problems there until we go to the garage and Joe discovers--to his utter horror--that the car is friggin' lime green. Metallic lime green. And it's tiny and terribly ugly. He looked like he wanted to cry. But he perked up eventually, nicknamed the car the "lemon-lime limo" and he suggested we enter it in a gay pride parade, with himself at the wheel. Well, at least he was developing a sense of humor about it. Later, on the highway, we passed a lavender Fiat 500 and Joe was delighted that his car was considerably "less fruity," than that one.

Then we followed the directions our hosts gave us for retreiving the keys from the property agent in the next, funky beach town. We did that just fine. Whew! Then we found our apartment, used the correct remotes to open the front gate, then the garage, then continued upstairs with the directions to flat A. Well, the key did not work. We tried both directions. We tried kneeling down and peering in the hole. I blew in the hole--who knows why? But no luck, so we called the agent who told us to head back down to the office to see if maybe we were given the wrong set.

So Mike, nice guy, said there was another set of keys at their home and it would take him 20 minutes to retrieve them. Conveniently, there was a tapas bar just steps away, so we ordered some cool vino blanco, and a lovely plate of stewed octopus with peppers and tomatoes showed up along with the wine--brilliant! We also had a platter of fritura di pescados. Mike came back, we took the keys and found the flat door again according to our directions. Mike's keys didn't work either. I felt better, at least, that we weren't Spanish key-challenged.

He called another agent who was more familiar with the property and we all finally figured out that we were one identical apartment building away from where we were supposed to be. The key fit! 

So here we are on this full-moon night, needing sleep, and hoping that tomorrow runs a little smoother.