It’s Wednesday…David has his last Spanish session with Diego, we go to lunch with a friend, and I go to painting class. Rather an uneventful day.
Thursday, however, is quite the opposite. Early afternoon we leave our apartment and just around the corner, we see barricades lining the streets. Crowds are gathered and we realize today is the funeral for Raul Alfonsin, Argentina’s President from 1983 to ‘89, who died earlier this week. His was a landmark Presidency, as it symbolized the return of democracy and ended more than 7 years of a repressive military dictatorship that left thousands of people dead or “disappeared.”
He is being buried in the Recoleta Cemetery, only 5 blocks from where we live. While we don’t see the actual procession, we’re right outside the cemetery with throngs of people as the eulogy is being given...the Jablons witness a piece of Argentinian history!
That evening we have dinner with Angela, who David met at his Spanish class, and who turned us onto our personal trainer and our gym. We see Angela at the gym 3x per week as she warms up the personal trainer for us!
After dinner, she heads home and we walk back to our apartment building. The doorman lets us in, we go to the elevator, push the button for our floor, and nothing happens. Not a problem, or so we think! We speak to the doorman, who tells us the elevator isn’t working and won’t be fixed until tomorrow! He suggests we use the service elevator to let ourselves in through the back door of our apartment.
Sounds logical…but we never carry the key to the back door of our apartment. So using the service elevator won’t help. And since there’s no staircase to the front door of the apartment (only the elevator, which opens directly into a vestibule where you can access our apartment and one other) we are stuck. More specifically, we have no place to sleep.
Shoot…now what??? As we leave the building we realize there are only two options…bother our friends (who have their own guests in town) or go to a hotel…so we choose the latter. It’s already 1:30am when we check in, and we have no luggage. Can’t imagine what the desk clerk is thinking!
Since friend Jim lives around the corner from the hotel and we’re wide awake, we go over to say “hi” (although the party he had is winding down) and get some toothpaste before calling it a night. It’s really so easy here (when your friends all keep the same crazy hours) .
The next morning, the elevator has been fixed and the 1st thing we do is put the back door key on our key ring. Our friends tell us they have all had this happen to them…welcome to the club! Won’t let that happen again!
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Hi there - Glad to hear you're having adventures down to the last minute. At least, you didn't find yourself in that situation as you were trying to get all the luggage out of the apartment. I had visions of you on the first floor with part of the luggage and the rest of the luggage trapped in the apt. and you with a plane to catch. Intersting building design! love, annette
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