Here we are in September and it has been almost two months since my last entry. I have been remiss in not posting more of late but then we did get busy after a very boring July in terms of business. My sister MAria and her two teenage children came for a couple of weeks which was their (the kids) first visit to Spain and to my hotel. We had a nice visit which included a trip up to Madrid and vicinity for a few days to visit with Ivan's family broadening their exposure to Spain and being in Avila for the final of the World Cup which Spain won, of course!! Lots of fun and excitement!! We also took advantage of the lack of summer bookings to go to the beach a few times down in Marbella.
In July this year, our first bookings came almost three weeks into the month. But, however, things have carried on since then and have improved. The July weather was quite pleasant with no unbearably hot days. That did not happen until August arrived, right about 10 August. How can I be so sure, you ask. Well, our usual summer clients, Maria and Inocencio from Barcelona, arrived on 9 August; since our first summer here in Juzcar in 2005, Maria and Inocencio (also known as "the Catalans") have been coming to spend their August summer holiday with us and normally stay for 21 nights or longer. So this year, they arrived on 9 August and the day after, their friends Miguel and Luisa from Malaga, came up for lunch and it was very, very hot that day. The first day it was like that all summer, hot with hot air blowing making it feel like one was sitting in a sauna when one was actually sitting on the terrace. And we had a few more of those days toward the end of August as well, unbearably hot and into the night as well.
While we were getting busier, it was not as busy as last year and we attribute that to the state of the current economy. When the Juzcar fiesta began, the hotel was still not quite full and those that stayed in the hotel, aside from the Catalans, did not eat in the hotel as there was plenty of free food on offer from the village hall during the fiesta. But, one cannot complain as we had more business than we had been having.
Ivan's parents came down from Avila for a couple of weeks as usual during the Juzcar fiesta time which has become an annual visit. Paz, my mother in law, is a very good cook and helps Ivan quite a bit in the kitchen when we are busy. The irony this year is that we would have been fine without any assistance this year during the Juzcar fiesta but could have used a hand during the Ronda fiesta as we were very busy then. The Ronda fiesta began on 30 August this year and carried on until last Sunday, 5 September. This is the Pedro Romero Fiesta when the Goyesca corrida occurs once a year in Ronda; it is quite famous across Spain as it occurs in the the second oldest bull ring in Spain (the oldest being in Leon).
The hotel was full for the whole weekend of the the Ronda fiesta. We also had some friends that came for a short visit from Avila which was quite a nice distraction for a couple of days even though we were busy with work. We had return clients for the third year who love the corrida and enjoy staying here instead of in busy Ronda. And everyone was dining here in the hotel so we actually almost ran out of of food which does not happen very often so were were content.
And this has still carried on as we have had people in the hotel continuously now since 9 August. While that is quite nice to be busy and popular, it is also quite tiring as we have to be "on" all the time and our days are quite long. We are planning to have a few days rest before the end of the month at which time our American painters will arrive and be with us for nine nights.
We made some more minor improvements to the hotel recently as well. Spain introduced TDT television this year which means " Terrestrial Digital Television" so all channels have been converted to digital and there are many more channels to select from. When this happen in April and the analogue channels were discontinued, we wound up not having any TVs in the hotel that functioned as we had not bought the boxes for converting the signal. The reason for that was we had applied for a grant from the Junta de Andalucia as per usual in January requesting assistance in the form of some cash to buy new plasma TVs which are TDT ready. I believe I wrote about this when there were developments.... meaning I applied in January following all the guidelines to the letter, submitting all the requisite paperwork and waited the usual three months for a response only to be told "denied" yet again. We have applied five out of six years for grants and not once have we been granted a single centimo. The explanation we got this time was that we did not qualify for the grants because we are located in the middle of the countryside!! Clearly discrimination. If we had been located on the lovely Costa del Sol or even in Ronda, we would have been granted the funds or so we were informed. Frustrating and infuriating to say the least!!
Anyway, we finally worked something out and got eight new plasma 19 inch screen TDT ready televisions which were delivered about 10 days ago. I installed them all last week and found that we now have 42 channels, some radio and some visual. We can even change the broadcast language to V.O. (if it is available) which will be great for our non-Spanish clientele who come across an American program for example, and can then view it in English. And now we have radio in the rooms as well offering a variety of channels from news/talk radio to contemporary/classical music channels, and that makes me happy. But I still have to make a small card to inform clients how the TVs function... to be added to the "to-do" check list!
Well, that's a quick review of the last few weeks. We have a day free tomorrow and then more clients arriving on Friday. The weather has been perfect for the last few days, not too hot and quite fresh in the evenings perfect for sleeping!! And the stars, what stars are out there!!
