26 March -
The clock moved one hour ahead this passed weekend here in Europe. That was a rude awakening on Saturday night at 1.30 AM when Ivan told me. We had a hotel just about full and had been very busy all evening so I was tired and looking forward to a good night's rest... but that was not to be; we changed the clocks and by the time the lights went out it was close to 3AM!! And we needed to be here for 9:15 at the latest!
So what's been happening here in Juzcar of late? Well, first off, today it's raining with lots of fog; I awoke thinking I was hearing rain but imagining it could not be rain. Wrong! Rain and lots of it.
I was having problems with this PC last week and so did not take the time to make a blog entry, well, in fact, I could not as the computer was driving me mad last week. It decided to become very slow, blank screens, tower making all sorts of clicking noises, slow internet connection, maddening really! I did a system restore (which appeared to do nothing to help), a virus screening (with zero results) and nearly slammed it to the floor in frustration! Then suddenly, it was functioning like normal. I just don't get it. There does not appear to be a bug or anything like that in it but now it is O.K. again.
Anyway, what's been happening here in the hotel. For St. Patrick's Day weekend, we had the lads here from London for a stag weekend. They arrived Friday, a smaller group than we expected but friends of ours. The groom, Rob, is a former colleague of Ivan's. He wanted us to attend his stag but thought it might be difficult for us to come to London so he brought the party to us here in Juzcar. We all had dinner at the bar here in the village Friday evening and then partied for a while in the hotel bar. Ivan prepared two whole suckling pigs for dinner on Saturday for the nine of us and he made Rob a special cake, the torso of a nude woman!! It looked so real and it was delicious, chocolate with a sugar topping. We all went up to Francisco's finca on Sunday for the views, his liquor and to hang and then went into to Ronda for dinner. A very nice weekend all in all with friends. The restaurant was closed to the public for this event so that we could participate as well.
We had not planned on having any other guests in the hotel that weekend but there was a slight disaster with one of the adventure company's, called OcioSport! They are based in Malaga and had asked us a few weeks ago if we had some availability for a group of 130 odd people coming to the valley for a 4X4 event. We explained that we would not have any rooms available that weekend but we would check in the apartments next door. They sent us an email with a list of 6 couples asking for rooms....I book all five units for them in the apartments and sent them response explaining the prices and room sizes. They accepted the price quote, transferred the payment to Paul, the owner, and then never bothered to follow up with a list of names of the people who would be staying there. Of course 7 couples turned up for 5 units at 6PM Saturday and I had to deal with the mess this company made; all of them had prepaid for their lodgings. So I had to explain to them that there were only 5 units available and I had a list of names and I crossed off the ones I could not fit. In the end, we had to rent two rooms to this group as we had them available and they had no where to go. Obvious to say we won't be working with this company in the future.
This was the same company that put us in a brochure put out by the Junta de Andalucia for package offers for seniors without out permission. We have no agreement on pricing, payment method or booking procedure... but we are in the catalog and are expecting to get some enquires. we've told them we are not happy with this but they have not bothered to come and speak with us.
After the lads left on Monday, we had a couple here from Monday through Friday; one of them was a friend of one of our guests from last month and his German girlfriend. They travelled around the area including Ronda, the coast and the Cueva de Pileta, a cave with 25,000 year old drawings and a 25,000 years old calendar as well.
Then we received a booking though one of the on-line agents, something that does not happen very often (we wish for more of that of course) for Friday and Saturday. They turned out to be a Scottish couple with a place on the coast. Very nice and interested in providing ideas for promoting the hotel. In fact, Campell suggested we try to get on a radio talk show based in San Pedro aimed at the English speaking community on the coast to talk about the hotel, our services and the restaurant. He said that he's been on the program a couple of times himself and he would recommend us to the producer who I've already emailed. We'll see how that goes.
On Friday (23/03 which was my birthday), a couple of Dutch ladies dropped in asking for a room. Turns out they live in Amsterdam so we had a jolly conversation with them about the Netherlands, one of our favorite places! And they then decided to stay for one more night as well. On Friday evening, while we were in the bar with our four guests, Ivan came out with my birthday cake and we all had some which was very nice.
Strangely enough, there were 5 other people in the hotel on Saturday with birthdays in these few days starting with one each on 20 and 22, me and one other on 23, another on 24 and one more on 26 March! All Aries, as I went through their IDs upon check in and saw this, I asked myself, what's going on here?!!
On Saturday, the hotel was nearly full with seven rooms booked, first time since New Year's that we had so many rooms at once. That's why I was running so much on Saturday evening. we didn't expect so many people at once and so it was just make and Ivan. But in the end, all were happy with the food and the service. The English family of four who left this morning told me last night that they thought all went very smoothing on Saturday evening even though I thought they waited (patiently I add) for their desserts. They said service was so bad back in England that this was quite well run! We also had an American in the hotel Saturday night, a guy living in Cadiz with his English fiance.
Yesterday, most guests checked out. It was a gorgeous clear day as well. The Dutch ladies were walking to Ronda or hitching if they could get a ride.
Now we are starting our preparations for Semana Santa. Guests start arriving for that on Friday. We have quite a few bookings but still have one double available for the weekend itself thanks to some screw up by someone. This guy called on Thursday last week asking for rooms, we had a suite and a double left at that point. After speaking with his wife, and calling me twice more with questions, he booked the double as he did not want to pay 80 Euros for the suite. Someone else called right after that and took the suite. This guy then called again the next morning to cancel because his wife wanted a room with a balcony or terrace!! Meanwhile I had turned away two other queries for the same time because he booked and was going to make a deposit the next morning. Now I still have that room free and am very annoyed at this man for having jerked me around. The trails of being in this business I suppose!! There is still time to book the room nevertheless still annoying!
Well, I need to go and get myself ready to run into Ronda as we have some shopping to do. Maria Jesus just arrived to clean the rooms and feed Diego (who I still need to tell you about in another entry).
Hasta luego.
