No room at the inn

There we were, stranded in a foreign country with people to see, places to go and things to do, and no hotel...By now the husband was sweating profusely and it wasn't just the humidity.

The reception attendant struggled to understand the problem, probably due to my inability to speak Spanish, go figure, and even as I presented the multiple room reservation e-mails I exchanged with the hotel staff, he came around to realizing that no one had logged our reservation. Naturally, none of the responsible parties answered their phones... Unbelievable. Of course the husband was regretting that he gave me the responsibility of finding the hotel when we had previously discussed staying at the "wedding" hotel.

I can't even begin to describe the amount of work I put into travel arrangements. Anyone who knows me knows that I (almost) always get the best deal. Seriously, the catchphrase "never pay retail" is my mantra. In a way, this was an exception because I was more than willing to pay their rate, but I thought the prices at the "wedding" hotel were ridiculous. Prices started at $350 a night compared to the more modest Casa del Curato that started at $100 a night and was conveniently 50 feet or so from the "wedding" hotel.

After much begging on our part, the attendant called several nearby/related hotels to find a room for us. Although I thought it was amusing, the husband wasn't amused at my insistence that we would not pay more than the rate we had negotiated with Casa del Curato. The attendant definitely understood this request (or demand). Several calls later, we had some options and chose the closest hotel, Hotel Zaguan.

We decided to walk since it was a block down the street and around the corner. While it was close, when you're dragging luggage, nothing is as close as it seems. I saw the humor, again, the husband did not. ANYWAY, here's where we ended up...

Nice...

Looking pretty good...

Ooh a balcony AND a soaking pool, pretty good for $100 a night...

or so we thought. First impressions were deceiving.

You're going where?

The title to this post is the response I got from every.single.person who bothered to listen about my newest adventure with the husband. Honestly, I had the same reaction when the husband told me we would be attending his friend's wedding in...Colombia.

What's the first thing that comes to mind? The FARC? drug trafficking?...exactly. I read Our Guerillas, Our Sidewalks in college, so I harbored a certain amount of fear about traveling to Colombia. Fortunately, all my fears were completely washed away once we arrived at our destination - Cartagena, Colombia.

We left at 4am on a Friday morning to make the trip out to JFK to catch our Avianca flight to Miami and then on to Cartagena. If you need to travel from the U.S. to Latin America, I highly recommend Avianca. It's like JetBlue (which I also love), but even more awesome. We carried our bags onboard so we wouldn't have to worry about lost luggage, it was annoying, but I'm glad we did it in light of all the troubles to come.

We touched down in Cartagena at 2ish Friday afternoon and it was hot, overcast and HUMID. Cartagena is located on the Atlantic side of Colombia, so there was a nice ocean breeze, but it doesn't really stop the humidity. Here's a picture from our super cool van.

Ah the van, it was our place of refuge. Before the trip the lovely bride and groom sent us a good deal of information on local hotels, airlines servicing Cartagena and a schedule for the wedding weekend. Fortunately, they also made transportation arrangements to the hotel for us. This was both a good and bad thing considering we didn't speak Spanish...we were told to exit the customs area and a company would be waiting to pick us up.

As we exited, there was no company, just a million taxi drivers swarming us. We wandered around for 5 minutes or so and went back in the terminal to see if someone could help us. The tour company had an office in the terminal, but we had to climb a set of stairs to get there, which we both proceeded to fall down. I have no idea how this happened, but I went down after three steps or so, then the husband went down. Nice. When we got to the office, the agent had no idea who we were and why we were bothering her, but she called someone who could help and lo and behold, there was the van waiting outside filled with people from our flight. Whatevs.

SO, we end up at our hotel, Casa del Curato. Now I probably shouldn't be naming names, because we didn't end up staying there. Why is that? They LOST OUR RESERVATION and were completely booked. We were in Colombia for less than 1 hour, it was hot and humid, we didn't speak Spanish (ok, ok, now I see how it feels to be in a place where no one speaks your language - I get it), we had a rehearsal dinner to be at in an hour and a half, and now NO HOTEL. They did give us some drinks while we waited. Here are some pictures to tide you over until my next segment...

This is THE cathedral in town. It's ginormous.

Fruit carts were everywhere. I believe you are looking at mangoes, aloe, coconuts, plantains and papayas.

Mayo in a tube. Gross - really just because I hate mayo.

march showers bring april flowers

After February's furnace catastrophe, who would believe, we had yet another house-related catastrophe. The newest bane of our existence? A flooded basement. Nay, a flooded FINISHED basement. Great.

This is clearly an exaggeration, but it's sure how we felt. The first flooding (yes, more than one instance) occurred in February. It had rained heavily for two days and just as it began to snow the water appeared. The husband rushed upstairs as I was lying in bed and we spent the next several hours vacuuming up the water and preventing its spread. In all, there was about an inch of water in the utility closet and bathroom (the rooms are adjacent), with little spread in the truly finished portion. We were so fortunate MIL (mother in law) had a wet/dry vac, otherwise we don't know what we would have done...though we would find out soon enough.

After some thought and examination, we determined the water was ground water that was unable to filter down because of a frozen watertable and the saturation issues from the heavy rain. I immediately began calling local "dry basement" companies to get a sump pump installed. Since our area had been experiencing mild flooding, we only had two agencies come out to quote us, one of which never called back. Boo! We ended up contracting with Connecticut Basement Systems to come out after we returned from vacation.

So we went about enjoying our vacation (another post to follow) and just as we were readjusting to our lives back at home, another flood hit. The BIG one. We lost power for about a day, though some in our area lost power for a week+, MIL included. Wet/dry vac, we hardly knew ye. This flood covered the entire basement floor with half an inch of water, and the utility closet/bathroom had at least two inches. Amazingly we were able to pick up the water with towels and t-shirts, though it took all day. Blargh.

Connecticut Basement Systems came out about three days later and put in the sump pump. It's truly a beast. See boring picture below.

It rained heavily a few days later, and lo and behold, the sump pump works! No water AT ALL. We could hear it click on and flush out the water intermittently, so we know there was definitely the possibility of damage if we had done nothing. Eventually we'll need to rip out the bathroom... ugh.

and so it begins

I've been contemplating a blog since 2002, but I never felt I had something interesting to say. Now that those words are down for the record, so it begins.