To wheels!

Friday, January 11, 2019 – It’s been up and down with the gut disease. 

Wednesday was a write-off. Karen and I both felt too lousy to stir much from our seats, or from under our blankies. I did go out to the supermarket at one point, and over to the nearest Valenbisi station to try and activate my subscription. It didn’t work. The machine wouldn’t accept my subscriber number. Oh, good. $40 down the drain?

Thursday, after a surprisingly good sleep, we both felt much better, thought we were over it. I did sleep for awhile in the morning, but we ate three normal meals, even had a couple of drinks in the evening, and went for a nice long walk into the centre in the afternoon. Lovely sunshine.

Plaza de la Virgen - in front of the Neptune fountain

We hit all the tourist spots – city hall square, Plaza de la Reina, where the cathedral is, Plaza de la Virgen, where the basilica is, central market, the edge of the bohemian Carmen neighbourhood. We tried activating our Valenbisi subscriptions at a couple of different stations along the way, just in case some of them were malfunctioning and that’s why they wouldn’t do the activation. No such luck.

Plaza de la Reina - cathedral spire, orange and palm trees

We were interested to see what had become of the Metro extension project that at one time was going to add a station behind the market. The first year we came here, 2011, it was under construction. The next year, it had recently been cancelled or postponed – we weren’t sure which. Apparently it was cancelled. They’ve now repurposed the underground excavations as parking, with elevators and steps down to it where the roughed-in Metro station entrances used to be. How much tax payer’s money did they sink into that project before pulling the plug, I wonder.

Carmen - wall mural by Julieta, one of the stars of the local street art scene

Back at the ranch, we researched the Valenbisi situation further. Karen thought to log in to her account at the website. It said the account was unactivated pending receipt of “documents.” We had included images of our passports with the online application. So what else did they need? I fired off an email, but the address was at a French company that apparently manages the computer systems for Valenbisi. It seemed unlikely I would get a very speedy response. We’d probably have to go back to the office.

Near Mercado Centrale - wall art down an alley

Today, Friday, it was my turn for a bit of a relapse with the gut disease – not back to square one, but definitely not quite right. I slept again in the late morning. Then we walked down to the Valenbisi office. Weather today: sunny but cool – 14C.

The same very nice young woman confirmed what I had begun to suspect, that the system would not allow us to activate until it confirmed we really were over 55. I think somebody eventually would have looked at the images of the passports we’d submitted and okayed the subscriptions, but the woman in the office could do it right there, and did. We took our Mobilis cards to a nearby Valenbisi station, activated them and rode home. Yee-ha! We’ve got wheels.

Not sure if we’ll get out after siesta today. We’ll see how I feel…