Sleepless in Spain

I have been debating what to label this entry. At first I thought "Ladrones in Espana" sounded good, then "Nightmare in Malaga," came up, but I settled for "Sleepless in Spain" because that's exactly what happened the first 3 days of the trip.

After flying for hours from San Francisco to Frankfurt to Madrid we landed in Malaga, tired, but happy to be in Spain at last. We picked up our luggage and a rental car and drove to our hotel in downtown. We had plans to spend the next three days driving the Spanish countryside on our way to Granada, Seville and if we had time, Torremolinos and Marbella. Well, we did not do those wonderful things because as we were checking into the hotel in Malaga, someone stole my backpack! Of course the backpack was filled with all sorts of wonderful goodies, including my camera, computer, lots of electronic toys and tools, a bit of cash, some jewelry, tickets for the ship and subsequent flights home, and a sheet of paper with copies of all of my credit and debit cards.

Instead of seeing the Spanish countryside, we saw a police station and our hotel room where I could make calls to the US to report what had happened and sort things out. We filed a police report, called different insurance companies in the US and in the end we cancelled the cards, collected some much needed cash from Western Union, and we hoped we would be able to board the ship (as the tickets were in the backpack). Hence a few sleepless nights worrying about what was going to happen next!

Boarding the ship was a bit of an adventure. Since we did not have our tickets, I showed the security team the police report that said they had been stolen. The security person wanted to take the police report to the "back room" to see if we were on the manifest. Needless to say, I did not allow that police report out of my hands--so WE all went to the "back room" and found our names on the manifest. We were allowed to get in line to board the ship. The first hurdle was passed.

Then came another tricky detail. A credit card is needed when you board a ship and all of our credit cards had just been cancelled. I gave them a defunct debit card and crossed my fingers it would work. It did! And we were given a "sea pass," a map to our cabin, and we boarded the ship. That was easy. However, the next day, when they ran the debit card thru their system, they discovered it was not valid. It took a trip to the Pursor's Desk to tell them our problem and that we would be settling the account with cash (of all things) when they said, "this happens all the time...don't worry, we know what to do." And they did know what to do.

After 3 days of running around getting things squared away, we were finally able to get some sleep! The next 12 days were great. The Navigator of the Seas is probably the prettiest ship we have cruised on. We were surprised at how much we liked her as we really like small ships, and Navigator had 3100 passengers and about 2000 crew. She's hardly a small ship. If I had my camera I would say, scroll down and see some pictures...but alas, no pictures (so I guess we'll have to take another voyage on her).

(As an aside, throughout the cruise, I would stop at pretty places and say "click" "click" and take an imaginary picture. It was so strange not to have any record of where we had been or what we were seeing and doing. I can however, tell WeedWoman that the travel sweater had a good work-out, visiting some new and interesting places...see below.)

We stopped in Funchal in Madiera, Tenerife and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, and Nassau in the Bahamas. We had 8 wonderful days at sea. It was one of the few cruises we've taken where we did not go on any shore excursions (remember...no credit cards...) It was also one of the few vacations we've had recently where we did not check email...for the same reason. Nevertheless, we enjoyed being away from the hassles that were going to greet us once we got back to land.

On Saturday we disembarked the ship, collected e-tickets for our flights and flew from Miami to Chicago to San Francisco. We over-nighted in SF and drove home on Sunday arriving about 3:30 PM. This morning I started the next round of calls, following up what I started back in Spain on the 6th of November. I think I was on the phone about 6 hours today. All the cards were successfully stopped. NO one tried to use them! I have filed insurance claims with my home and travel insurance policies. New cards are being sent to me as I write, and soon we'll be back to something that will resemble normal.

Since my computer was stolen, I needed a new one, so the big ticket item I bought today was a Macintosh MacBookPro 15. It's the new version of what I had and it seems to be a very nice replacement. I still have to figure out how to get my backed up files into the new computer and I hope my iTouch is successfully sync-ing with the computer right now. Next item to purchase is a camera! I thinking of updating my Canon G9 with the G11 model that came out in August, but then I'm also looking at the Canon S90. The reviews on both are good, so I have to see what I like the best when I can get my hands on one.

There are few more loose ends to tie up, but I know what needs to be done and it will take a few more days. We learned a lot of stuff from the backpack misadventure. I had never made a collect call before and I discovered that in Spain, you need to have a collect code. The hotel gave me the wrong code, so my calls did not go through. Out of desperation, I just dialed the numbers from our hotel room and charged them to the bill, and the calls went through. We should have had an international calling card to use, it would have made the "collect call" fiasco disappear. I learned that Western Union will transfer funds to you, but you need a Transaction Number to get the funds. My insurance company forgot to give me the Transaction Number. You also have to have the funds sent in your "passport name" not your first and last name. The funds were sent to my first and last name, but my passport has a middle name too...so at first Western Union was not going to give us the money. That was an interesting call to make, and another story, and this is getting far too long.

I'm pleased I had a little bit of Spanish. Between my "broken" Spanish and their "broken" English, we were able to communicate. By the third day, I was getting pretty good at coming up with the words I wanted to say WHEN I wanted to say them. I even expressed anger at a taxi driver! I was surprised when the correct Spanish words just came flying out of my mouth!

We're going to be on dry land for awhile. The next big adventure will be a 32 day cruise that starts in Bangkok at the end of December. We'll be very ready for that adventure, but right now, we are licking our "wounds" and thanking our lucky stars that we did not get hurt and only things were taken. We are stronger than we were....but why did this have to happen in the first place? I don't think anyone has an answer to that question.