Flying in the time of Covid plus The Balcony: Pro’s and Con’s

My whole visit here and uncertain return has hinged on bringing my dogs home safely. Finally, after finding a traveling companion, I thought all was in order. But, ha ha! No! Delta re-routed me from Barcelona through Paris to NYC after cancelling my non-stop flight. That would have been bad enough, but the flight from Barcelona to Paris was scheduled to leave at 6:15 a.m. I’m just not going to do it. After a couple of hours, literally, on the phone with Delta, I’m leaving Barcelona a day earlier, spending the night near Charles DeGaulle, and arriving JFK on my scheduled date of October 11. This whole process is stressful for me because the airlines are in complete control and at any moment they could cancel the flight or say, sorry, the dog carriers are one inch too long, or there´s some detail I missed in the paperwork. It’s humbling and unsettling.

On a lighter note, when I first got back to Begur and saw the balcony at my new apartment, I was THRILLED. Because it’s on the second floor, there’s no roof above me, just sky, and because I’m on the north end, there’s nothing blocking my view of the mountains (where snow fell this week). I really thought I’d hit the jackpot!

THEN, the wind came. I think it was only about 35 mph, but that was sustained for hours and I think there were higher gusts. The table, which is fairly heavy, was moving and the chairs were skating. A couple of the shutters are broken, so I had to tie one to the radiator in my bedroom to keep it from banging open and closed. The dogs were scared and so was I! Maybe if I come back here, the apartment with the balcony with the lovely view of the sea, and a roof and wall will be my pick!

Answering my Spanish telephone has always been a bit challenging. It’s usually someone I don’t know and who doesn’t know I’m not a native speaker and they just start rattling in Spanish and I have to try to grab some key words so I can figure out who it is and what they want. Today I got a call and I swear I thought she said “I’m calling from the Department of Alcohol”! I thought WTF? How do they know? Turns out it was Vodafone my mobile phone carrier. I don’t know how I got it that wrong, but I was greatly relieved for once that it was a solicitation call!