The $75 Starbucks Latte or “Vacation Win/Loss Ratio”

In every vacation there are are days that are “wins” and there are days that are “losses.” It’s good to understand this in advance – expectations of perfection in vacation just leads to vacation not meeting expectations. We’ve just learned that there are also some days where losses become wins…(see photo).

Win Some, Lose Some

Those keys in the door? They are on the INSIDE of the door. Which is how you engage the door’s deadlock when in the apartment. The keys on the hook, that’s the extra set of keys. That document on the right in the photo, we’ll get to that. Before continuing though, I’d like to take a moment to point out that excessive caution can sometimes result in exactly the types of things you are being excessively cautious about. But let’s get back to the keys. Our first morning in the apartment we decided to make a quick trip to grab coffee from the Starbucks located conveniently around the corner (really, it’s like…75 yards away).

Wait, before we go on I need to make another point: I am not in charge of the keys. There’s a long history and many stories behind that one but let’s just leave it at “I don’t even bother to touch any hotel or apartment’s keys any more.

OK, where were we? Oh yeah, STARBUCKS. So, Jon grabs the keys off the hook (see photo above) and out the door we go. Are you following? If you are, you probably already know where this is going. The OTHER set of keys remained in the door (see photo above). So once we are on the other side of the door the more excessively cautious of the two of us (NOT ME) decides to double check that the key we have works. Of course the door is already shut at this point and we’re on the other side of it (the NOT IN THE APARTMENT side) so how cautious was that over all? Anyhow, key doesn’t work. Door won’t open. I’m going to skip the next 15-20 minutes of this story because, well, nobody wants to re-live that especially not me. As filler, I’m including a photo of the stairs up to our apartment. Which we went up and down approximately 54 times in this one day.

67 Stairs of Hell – Yes we counted

So, 20 minutes later we’re sitting at Starbucks with our crass American coffees madly texting the lady who rented us the apartment. No response. We realize it’s 8:30 am. We remember that last time we were here it appeared as if NOTHING much of anything happens in Spain at before 10am. We decided to finish our coffees up and visit Barcelona Cathedral until the rest of Spain is up and moving. Unfortunately the more “directions oriented” out of the two of us (NOT ME) is completely checked out and can’t think about anything but DOOR until DOOR is resolved. It’s just how he works. Which means the less “directions oriented” out of the two of us (ok this one is ME) took charge in getting us there.

While we were “completely lost” (not my definition) we get to the “win” part of today’s “wins and losses”…bet you thought we’d never get there? Down some street we (apparently) weren’t even supposed to be anywhere near, we found a small church selling tickets to “Art De Guitarra.” For 20 euro it’s classical guitar concerts in historic church settings. While we were standing there trying to decide whether or not to buy tickets (since there was technically some possibility that we were homeless) we received a text from Lina the Friendly Landlord. Her English is super good when she let’s us know “you cannot leave a set of keys in the door and then try to open the door, the door doesn’t work that way.” NOPE, we can confirm it doesn’t. She indicated that she would arrange for a locksmith and text us when he was on his way. Seeing as DOOR is now resolved and Jon’s brain is therefore back on board, we promptly bought tickets to the guitar concert and then headed back to the apartment. The locksmith met us there and opened the “super secure and deadlocked” door in about 3 seconds using what looked like a piece of sandpaper. He then handed us his bill for 60 Euro (see photo above).

At the current conversion rate that “quick” cup of coffee only cost us $74.37 and an hour’s wait listening to XMAS (!) music in Starbucks. What we got in return was an amazing guitar concert that we attended that evening in a beautiful and historic church setting. The space only held about 30 people and was completely sold out. If we hadn’t been a)locked out of our apartment b) lost and c) lost at 9:30am we would never have found the concert nor would there have been tickets available for us to buy.

Some photos of the our Art de Guitarra concert setting: