Apartments, Phones, and Room Service

I really like the NH Hotel, don't get me wrong, we just need more space for our 200 lbs of luggage! Yesterday was a very very frustrating day. We looked at a few apartments that were okay, but they were pretty far away from everything that I want to be close to. Specifically, the PwC office, the beach, the outdoor pool (see my last post) and every single La Coruña tourist destination. Since I will most likely not have a car, I need to be able to walk everywhere I want to go during the day while Juan is at work. I was pretty bummed out that we weren't finding anything after being told that apartments are so easy to find.

Things started looking up today. After calling all of the agencias inmobiliarias in La Coruña and looking at about 100 websites (literally), we decided to just start walking in to every apartment locator office we stumbled upon. I am trying to be cautiously optimistic, but I think it might have worked! We have an appointment at 7:00 tonight to go and see another apartment. It is in the perfect location and the landlord has already agreed to a 5 month lease for just a little bit of extra money (which is okay because it was well below our limit to start with). This apartment is near the Tower of Hercules, pictured below. Also nearby are my dream swimming pool, the beaches, and the boardwalk! Keep your fingers crossed for us - it would be a huge load off to have a place to live.

While Juan and I were looking for apartment locators, we stumbled upon an awesome fruit, vegetable, fish & meat market. I didn't have my camera, but I'll go back and take pictures tomorrow! It inspired me to learn the names of fish Spanish. I actually found a little fold-out chart of fish names in Spanish/English/German/French at the La Coruña tourist information stand! What luck! Juan reminded me that even though I know the names of the fish, I still won't know what the fish look like... He had a point. I mean, really, does anyone know the difference between a Queen Scallop (Volandeira) and a Variegated Scallop (Zamburiña)? In English, you could get away with just saying Scallop and pointing - but in Spanish the two names are so completely different.

Not to brag, but I did order room service for lunch today and I think she actually thought I spoke Spanish ;) I prepared by writing down my order and my room number in Spanish (just in-case I panicked) and by looking up in my Spanish/English dictionary how to ask "I'd like to order room service" (thanks for the dictionary Manuel, we've used it a bunch!). The best part is that I actually received what I ordered.

In other news - Juan and I both got cell phones yesterday. You can call us now if you want :) We will send out the numbers to friends & family. We also opened a bank account without too many problems - even though, at the time, we didn't have an address or phone number... They put in the bank's address as our home address. I just sat there thinking about how many fraud red-flags were being raised as he submitted our form online.

I'll write tomorrow about the results of our apartment search!