La vida sin Internet!

We arrived safely in Barcelona, took the aerobus to the correct stop in the city, walked two blocks and found a large garage door with a tiny person-door nested inside that seemed to correspond to the address we were given. I pushed a button and announced myself, in Spanish, as "Erin from the United States," and the little door buzzed open. We were here! Betty, the housekeeper who speaks no English, showed us around the house, which consisted of pointing out the rooms, showing us how a gas stove works, and then leaving. We still didn't know if there even was a washer and dryer, and no instructions on the much-needed air conditioning or THE INTERNET!!!

We continued to explore the house on our own, found the washer and dryer, opened all the doors and windows in the house to let in some air, and finally decided to call Betty back on her cell phone to ask about the Internet. She tried to explain in Spanish by phone, gave up and came back to the house to show us a router with a name and password printed on the bottom. The problem was that the name on the router didn't correspond to ANY of the many wireless connections that appeared on our various devices. There was nothing to do but ask her about the air conditioning, which she showed us (gracias a Dios!). We spent much of the day trying to decipher the wifi connection and trying to use the international phone we had purchased for just this purpose. Nothing worked!

We headed out to explore, eat, and grocery shop, all of which were successful. Came home and the kids tried desperately to find any TV in English, while I drank some champagne the Spanish family had left for us and promptly fell asleep at 4:00 p.m. Woke up four hours later to find both kids asleep and still NO INTERNET! Now that it was daytime back in California, I tried to call Arthur on the international phone, finally got it to work (dumb luck), who answered and said, "Oh, yes, they forgot to leave you the wifi information and felt very badly. I have it here." WHAT????!!!! At last, INTERNET!

Went back to bed knowing that the Internet was back in my life again, only to wake up this morning and discover that although all my devices were still connected to the local router, there was a problem with the external connection to the Internet.

And all of this is without Arthur to tell us what to do!!! We need an IT department!!

Mysteriously, the Internet was back up an hour later. Will it last? Will we survive our stay in Barcelona if it doesn't? This is now the great mystery of our adventure---not the fact of our limited Spanish, not pickpockets, but if we have Internet.

We are off to explore more of the city before it gets too hot and hopefully take pictures of something worth posting.