Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!!!

Here you go, direct from Dublin!

Lexi's Irish too! and being silly about it...

Short post this time...

We received the permit to operate the elevator!!!! Wheeeee! Tuesday March 14, four days short of two months from start to finish. Technician came, fixed the phone inside it, and did minor adjustments. Answered all our questions with Pepe’s help, since he was here to translate for Juan, who was also here. Wheeee again! 

I took the bus! Not very startling news really, but, it stops in two locations close to our flat and I was curious as to where it went, map on the website isn’t easy to read so I just hopped it. For 1.40 Euro it’s an hour trip that circles the Central area of Sevilla, covering all the neighbourhoods. This just opened up more possibilities to visit other neighbourhoods, some we’ve seen, some we haven’t - yeah! Bus was full most of the way and clientele were on the older side, many with canes.

Sunny Saturday and it seems all parents in Seville are out with their, sometimes massive, baby carriages, makes it a minefield of maneuvering for Bruce in his chair on the sidewalks. We found the fabric store Rocio had bought our curtain fabric from and chose a pretty patterned piece for the kitchen windows, lunch Bar Tino, Alonso not there, suspect he starts later, back home to show Rocio the fabric. Bruce wraps it around her and hums the wedding march. She was adamant and indicated she got married once but never again. It’s amazing that we can usually, not always, communicate so well.

Two important people who have made a great difference in this elevator project and getting broken things straight again, aside from Pepe and Ivan who introduced us to these two. 

Rocio: She likes to sew and said new doors, new window treatments and she sewed them for no cost, in fact, she brought back the receipt and change. She worked her ass off to rid us of dust from construction spent an entire day cleaning everything. With the unplanned destruction earlier in the year spent a weekend cleaning more. She lined our dishes cupboard with plastic. She does so many little things for us that are above her "duties", we consider her to be a friend despite the language difference, our fault. She said to Ryan and Angela she wished we spoke better Spanish because she wants to tell us so much, certainly we do too. She is an absolute jewel that I am so glad Ivan introduced us to her. 

Juan: Pepe found us this lovely man, he’s retired but has worked in woodwork his entire life and appreciates being able to use old wood to it’s advantage. He has repaired our windows/doors which were in really bad shape and he is a master! Now he’s doing small jobs for us that need doing that have been annoying us for some time: bedroom closet door fell off; reinforcing the couple of stairs that creak as you go up; replaced, what the elevator people took, a piece of wood from the bottom of the washing machine; building shelves in the new closet upstairs. He also makes use of what is available since we had a closet upstairs redone due to the elevator, there was quite a lot of wood left over The contractor could have taken it away but something in Bruce and my minds said let it stay and Juan is making good use of it. It’s stained like the rest of the place so it fits in without having to re-paint and same quality of wood.

We went to El Disparate for lunch and meet Ryan’s parents who are lovely people and we can see where Ryan’s positive attitude and humour come from. Food and service were good, really, really, good in fact. 

Ryan and Bruce foolin' around, photo by Pepe

Orange season is on the way out, as is strawberry, both have been extremely good. 

The orange blossoms have started to come out and the smell is heavenly! There are companies that bottle that smell in perfumes and lotions and it comes pretty close to the real smell. 

All for now, Cheers! But no green beer for me... Bx2 and Lexi Cat