Moving on.

On Tuesday morning the lady in the bread shop was already wishing her customers a good weekend; “another long one this time,” she added. Well, of course, Wednesday was Asunción and today, Thursday, is San Roque, two religious feast days, and on Friday just about everyone will be making a “bridge”. If you get a día festivo - feast day – on a Thursday, you take Friday off and have a long weekend. Or, in the same way, if Tuesday is a día festivo, you take Monday off and have a long weekend. No wonder they have to have meetings to decide which saints have their days celebrated in any particular area of Spain. 

Anyway, this week, instead of TGIF, Thank God it’s Friday, they had TGIT, Thank God (and San Roque, whoever he is) it’s Tuesday. Tuesday, and the weekend starts here!!! 

 

Tuesday for us was moving day, out of the bijou residence and into a place with a view all along the estuary, out to the Rande Bridge and beyond in one direction and as far as the Islas Cíes in the other. 

Naturally, as we packed our stuff up it started to rain, in that special Galician way, where it comes down in bucket loads. So we had to put everything in a taxi and off we went. 

Originally we had planned to move on Wednesday but our landlady was having some problems with the people who help take care of her aged mother (probably because of the días festivos and the help having days off) and so we moved a day earlier. It was just as well, because we needed to pick up various items from the “bazar chino” before settling in and managed to do so on Tuesday evening. Had it been Wednesday we would have found everything closed. Serendipity strikes again. 

However, serendipity was not working totally. We have a number of keys on our new key ring for which we have yet to find a use. We were hoping they might give us access to a place to hang the washing to dry. No such luck. We still have to discover if there even is such a place, or if we need to get a collapsible “tendedero” and dry everything on the balcony. 

And then there was the small matter of the swimming pool and garden. Looking out of our window we can see the grass but it’s rather along way down from the seventh floor. Walking up one of the side roads you can see the pool, but it would be rather undignified to have to scramble over the fence. The young lady who showed us around had some difficulty finding it when we visited the first time and we seemed to go up and down so many floors that we were totally confused. Her mother, who owns the flat, confessed to having no idea. Apparently she just owns it but has never lived here. We had the impression that you get to it via one of the in-between floors – there are three “entresuelos” – but none of them led us to the outside, but enclosed, world of the garden and pool area. At the end of Wednesday it remained a mystery. 

Today, however, we accosted a neighbour in the lift and found out that you need to go from the first floor up some steps or from the second floor down some steps and there it was. Easy peasy. It was probably the going up and down steps that confused us. 

Last night we were treated to an amazing fireworks display, probably from the San Roque district of Vigo, judging by the direction. It really was very impressive. Crisis!! What crisis? If London can put on some good fireworks for the end of the Olympics, the barrio de San Roque can surely do almost as well for its saint 

Today the shops remain closed, of course, because of good old San Roque, even though the streets have been full of people and stalls have popped up on street corners, selling candles and fancy bread. 

No chance to buy household equipment, though. But having no sweeping brush is a good excuse not to sweep. 

 

I’ll think about it tomorrow. After all, as Scarlett O’Hara would say, tomorrow is another day.