CHRISTMAS IN IBIZA

Here we are only two weeks away from Christmas and the lights up and switched on all over the Island. December 1st was the big switch on in several if not all the major towns with the Paseo Vara de Rey being the most popular with a large sparkling Christmas tree at one end of the square and a very busy Christmas Hippy Market running the length of it. Nicely decorated but the whole atmosphere is one completely lacking the commercialism we have come to know in the UK. It's rather like the feeling Christmas was in the 1950's or 60's, nice and relaxed.
We will be spending Christmas day here in Playa den Bossa as we wont be moving to Santa Carles until the middle of January although we can now start to move some of our furniture and boxes up to it between now and then. Alix may be spending Christmas with a friend in Switzerland so we may well have a day alone, probably eating out at one of the nicer restaurants that are open on Christmas day (we may have to skip the "menu del dia" though!) - we are still keeping our options open and hope to be able to talk to friends and family over the holiday period.
Breaking news !!!! We have now obtained our "Certicacion de inscripcion Padronal" which is the first of the papers we need to obtain to live here. The next step is to obtain our "Certificado de Residencia" which will give us our NIE numbers – the applications for these have been submitted again and this time accepted- Yippie!!! Bad news is that they wont be issued for about two to three weeks although marked urgent. Unfortunately this means yet another delay before we can actually buy a car from our friend and benefactor Manel of AutoManel where we are buying our car from. We are nearly there now but not without the help we have had from Manel and his wife Bus in passing on our mail and lending us a variety of cars for the last six weeks without complaint.
We do now feel obliged to buy a car from Manel now though!!
We had a minor catastrophe yesterday which involved me having to hunt out my tool boxes to find an allen key. There is a sun awning that has been unfolding and at refolding with the sun, or so we think. We have been unable to find out how to isolate the thing and so had given up on it. Anyway, it was yet another lovely day yesterday with a slight wind from the sea but the sun was hot and bright. The awning, as usual unfolded in the hot sun and the wind rose increasingly until the sun screens started to flap but we were sure the awning would fold away as normal - it didn't! The wind then wrenched the awning off its folding arms and snapped them at the weakest points leaving the thing flapping around like a loose sail. Once I found my tool kit and dismantled the arms from the awning I then had to anchor the thing back so that it didn't flap madly about. Eventually, it rolled itself back up and I then spent a hour and several texts to people until I found the isolation switch cunningly disguised as an ordinary switch against a wall socket in a spare bedroom. We are now waiting for the repair man to come.
This year I made some of our Christmas cards using a photograph I took of a Christmas tree in another square in Ibiza town. We posted them at the main post office and to our shock and horror they all arrived in the UK three days later!!
The sooner we move, unpack our boxes, unwrap our furniture, get our clothes out of their cardboard wardrobes, get a land line installed, get the Internet and Sky TV installed the better. We still feel like we are camping sometimes.
Until my next posting Happy Christmas to one and all from us both
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