I've been so tired since I got back from Spain it's been incredible. I suppose Spain was full on (in more ways than one) and then everything started back up this end too, so I've just spent the last hour going through my emails and updating my calendar and it's a good thing I did. I'm usually on top of all this stuff but I reckon I "lost the will to live" a bit in Spain (figuratively speaking) and it's taken me a while to get back on top of things!
The big draw for Granada is the Alhambra Palace, somewhere you have to book months in advance or you won't get in. Someone was explaining to me that as soon as tickets come up for sale bots start crawling through the website and buying up all the tickets in the hopes that they can do a bit of price gouging later on. Apparently the same is true of Harry Potter World in London (and I'm sure in many other places too), so I was glad we left all that to the travel agent and didn't have to worry about it!
We learned the night before that our departure time had to be changed a little so Monique started running round dining tables in the hotel restaurant trying to catch everyone to give them this news. I got fed up of having to absorb her stress (again) so told her to give me everyone's phone numbers and I would set up a Whatsapp group to pass on the message and ask everyone to confirm receipt. She of course had no idea how to do this (fair enough) but do you think she would leave me in peace to get it set up!!! Of course she couldn't - "are you nearly finished" "shall I run round the tables anyway", "would you like me to read the telephone numbers out to you" (absolutely bloody not! Anyone who knows any French will know just how complicated French numbers are and I did NOT want her wittering in my ear while I was trying to set it up)!
Anyhoo, I got that done and everyone was on time for our bus trip to Granada. We were given about an hour's free time to wander around and then told to meet back at the fountain in the main square by 11.30 am in order to head off to lunch. Well all but one person showed up on time and guess who that one person was - I bet you can't guess. When we realized it was Monique that was missing one of the men started laughing and that set the whole group off. I walked away as I didn't want to be part of that but it did bring home just how fed up everyone was of her shenanigans!
The bad news is that she was late because she'd had her wallet stolen in the souq!!! Now I don't make fun of her for that because it can - and does - happen to anyone (these people are very good at what they do), but as you can imagine this was yet another problem that I sensed I'd end up having to sort out later. During lunch I handed out group paperwork that I'd kept and paid for various things with my own club card since hers had been stolen, and after that it was off to the Alhambra Palace because they have very strict entry times for larger groups! The unfortunate thing is that you have to show your ID in order to get through the gates, and while Monique had left her passport at the hotel, her French ID card was in her wallet when it was stolen and she didn't have a photo of it on her phone so they couldn't allow her in - and believe me they tried everything to accommodate her. Ultimately it was no use so she sat in the restaurant with a couple of ladies who felt they weren't up to the walking involved on the tour!
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| Hotel America, inside the grounds of the Alhambra Palace! |
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| The small town outside the palace! |
The Palace was beautiful, of course, as was the Palais Charles Quint, and Jardins du Generalife, but we ended up being somewhat rushed as we'd wasted so much time beforehand trying to sort Monique out!
On the bus heading back to the hotel I used my phone app to contact the bank about her club credit card, then I managed to get into her personal account and we called them to block that card, but she didn't want to keep going in order to block the last stolen card which was linked to another of her personal accounts. I pushed her to keep going because while I was on the bus I had time to spare but she wouldn't - or at least wouldn't keep trying this account until we were nearly back at the hotel - at which point it was full steam ahead to get this card blocked before leaving the bus!!!! So far we know that the thieves have already used the club card to the tune of €50 (the maximum amount they can spend without having to punch in the code) and I don't know if they were able to use her personal cards but I think jumping on it so quickly will (hopefully) have prevented them from doing too much damage!
When I got off the bus I was fed up, tired and dirty so I wandered over to the bar to get myself a glass of wine to take up to my room while I was getting cleaned up. And that was when Monique came running over to say that the hotel had called a taxi to take her to the police station and I had to go with her!!!! I tell ya, that glass of wine was about one inch from my lips - one inch - and I had to put it back down on the bar and follow her back to reception! I told her to give me a minute so I could at least drop my stuff off in my room and when I got back downstairs the taxi was there. He asked if I was the client and I said yes but we had to wait for the other lady - but after about 10 minutes he said "look I can't wait any longer as I have other clients so give me a call when she gets here" - and he drove off! When she eventually showed up Monique went into a tailspin about how "she hadn't been gone that long and he shouldn't have driven off" but I just asked reception to call us another taxi and we were on our way all the while her having a caniption fit in the back!
In the car Monique tried to give the driver a tourist map of the town to show where the police station was but I told her to put it away because this was his patch and he knew where the bloody police station was! Now I can get by in Spanish but it is hard and I need them to speak slowly (but of course no native speaker in any language is capable of that), so at one point I've got Monique yapping in my right ear in French about how "she couldn't understand how they'd gotten their hands on her wallet" and the taxi driver talking 100 miles an hour in Spanish that I'm finding very hard to follow, so again I had to tell Monique to stop yapping please!!!!!! When we got the police station they didn't speak English or French so I again have the same problem of having to tell her to shut up and let the cop speak!!!! After about an hour we were done and called the taxi to take us back to the hotel - and that was when Motormouth came running out of reception yelling that Leone (the woman who missed the outbound flight) had also been robbed! I asked her what she'd had stolen and it was only about €20 and no paperwork so I told her there was no point going back to the police station because the police would only do a report if paperwork had been stolen, not cash! At that point I told Monique I was going for a drink and when she tried to shoo me into the hotel I just said "hell no" and headed off on my own to a bar where I could hide - unwashed and sweaty - and enjoy a glass of wine on my own in peace!!! To top it all off, when I got back to my room I stripped off to take a shower and that was when I realized the maid service had taken my dirty towels but hadn't left any clean ones - so I had to get dressed again, call down to reception and then wait for them to send someone up with the replacement towels! To say it was not my day would be an understatement!
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