Estamos viviendo en Menorca por seis meses.

Yes, we are living in Menorca now for 6 months! Well, it's now about 5.5 really. Today is Wednesday the 26th of December. We have the possibility of getting on line quickly this afternoon, so I thought I would dash off a blog entry, and take my USB key with us and see if I could give you all an update.
Well, we finally arrived very late on Friday evening. We wandered Madrid for the day and then headed back to the airport for our 8pm flight. We had a delay until 10pm, which meant we arrived at Mahon airport around 11.30pm. Amazingly all the bags made it in one piece which was such a relief. When you go away for two weeks, if you lose a bag it's a problem, but you can buy toiletries, a few clothes etc. We had so much important stuff packed across all of our bags that it would have been a major headache if anyone had gone astray. I think I had mentioned in a previous post that we had taken the plunge and decided to rent a car for a few days while we got sorted out. A nice man from Owners Cars was waiting for us at the airport, and within a few minutes we were winging our way to S'Algar.
When we arrived we had a little present outside our front door. Our friend Denise had left a sack of wood, firelighters and kindling for us, together with a beautiful Poinsettia, which is now our official Christmas tree. The apartment was cool, but not as freezing as we had feared. We tumbled into bed under some heavy blankets and slept. It had been a long day!
The next morning we had so much to do! Denise had left a note for us saying that she and her friend John were heading into San Luis, the nearest big town at 10.30am if we wanted to join them. We did, so we met up with them amidst lots of hugs and handshakes and headed off, following Johns' ancient yellow Renault in our rental Corsa. It was great to finally be here! We had coffee and Tortilla (a Spanish egg and potato dish) for breakfast and then just sat and chatted for an hour or so, after which we headed off to the scooter shop in San Luis to start our information gathering. I won't bore you with all the gory details, but after visiting many shops over a period of 2 days we still don't have it sorted. The island is much more expensive than the mainland, and scooters proved to be no exception. Being the off season there is a lack of second-hand bikes available and the new ones are much more expensive than we had planned. We still have to make a final decision, but it looks like we will be buying one new 125cc scooter. We have asked about resale value for it at the end of 6 months and everyone seems to think that we will be able to get a really good price for it, and have no problem selling it at the beginning of the holiday season. We have to make our decision and swing into action on Thursday. The car goes back on Saturday evening and it takes 5 days for them to have the scooter ready for us. So we will be transport less for a few days it seems as we can't afford to extend the car rental to cover the gap. So it will be walkies for both us if we need to go anywhere!
Internet access has been the next pressing issue as you know. We have checked out a number of options, including 3g service for our laptops, but the contract lengths and prices are not manageable for us it seems. We did find an internet cafe in Mahon that says we can use our laptops there for 1e an hour. This sounds too good to be true, so we are going to give it a trial run on Thursday afternoon. There is also an internet cafe in San Luis we have to look at as well.
We spent most of Sunday re-arranging the apartment to be more practical. It has only ever been used as a summer home, so it needed a good clean and we opted to move the furniture around to position it better. Sunday was also the day of our first fire! Denise came round and showed us how to set one. Sunday evening we tried and had limited success. We did, however, succeed in filling the room with smoke. Monday was a little better, so we are hopeful that we will get the hang of it eventually!
Yesterday, Christmas Day, dawned with lots of sun and beautiful blue skies. We made a quick trip to San Luis to have a drink with Sarah and John, some friends of ours who live in Pou Nou (just outside of San Luis), made arrangements to meet up with them on Wednesday at 12pm, and then headed back to S'Algar for lunch. We were meeting Denise and John at 1pm, and then heading up to spend the day with David and Jenny Nuttall. We had a super day! Wine, food, and good company made for an excellent event. I have never really spent much time with Jenny and David, but that didn't stop us all getting to know each other a lot better and a good time was had by all! We left around 10pm last night, so it must have been good!
So that brings you up to speed. We are doing fine so far, with progress being made on all of our challenges. The next few days should see more things being sorted out! James wants to start working on his stuff at the beginning of the New Year, and my classes start on January 14th. I have started to pick up my Spanish books again, so hopefully that will improve quickly! James, of course, is the star of S'Algar with his Spanish.....a tough act to follow!
We hope that all of you are having a super holiday and are safe and well. You have our Spanish number if you need us. We'll be back on line as soon as we can!
Lots of love,
David & James.