Arrival - Weeks 1 onwards

It´s Tuesday 30th October - here's the story so far!

Well we booked into our usual hotel, the Lux Isla in Talamanca and got our usual friendly welcome. The weather to start with was wonderful and hot and I managed to get a quick (where you can see it) tan. Val was keeping in the shade and covered doing the senisible thing and only trying to get her legs tanned......

All went well with getting a hire car but then things started to go downhill when I read my horoscope in Spanish -

• You will get a sore throat
• You will have financial problems

Well, needless to say I got the mother of all colds and still have a cough now (it's driving Val mad) and then I left my new bank card in the ATM in the middle of Ibiza town!! Happy to say there was no money in the account to draw but it did give me a scare - I have a new card now!!

The real bad news is the strong Euro and weak pound which is rather worrying given that we want as much as we can in euros to buy a house after Christmas!!! Please tell me the pound with improve!!

Camping out in the hotel soon became very tedious with our only entertainment being Spanish or German TV prgrammes or the dreaded CNN...... where DO THEY learn their English as CNN?

Oh and there was the Spanish Jimmy Saville lookalike who was once more in the hotel... every year we see him ..... same clothes too!!!

Well, the 17th October arrived and we moved into our appartment closely followed by our furniture and boxes on the 19th, these now occupy two of our four bedrooms and we have unpacked some of our stuff to help us feel more at home. Val desperately misses "Waitrose, M&S and all her UK wonderful food"

I am taking advantage of the situation and losing weight at last!! Meat free and healthy diet (nearly) I am having a small amount of chicken now and then.... We have had a few bottles of wine as a treat and have hunted down some porridge!!!

Getting a phone line set up, getting a Post Office box and and NIE number are all proving challenges given that we seem to have forgotten ALL our Spanish since we arrived.... so sad really as we are less confident now than when we knew hardly any Spanish at all.

We did manage to open a bank account and will be registering with a Gestor very shortly so they should be able to sort us out.

We have to get a telephone and internet connection soon as using these Locoturios is so awkward and inconvenient. - Internet cafes!!! I learnt a new word see!!

Finally for now.... Wednesday I pick up a new car - I hope. A 2 year old Peugeot 206 from the hotel owner who also happens to hire cars.... so convenient.

More on this later!!

Hasta Lluego Amigos!