And I’m not talking about technology…that’s a whole ‘nother story.
No. I’m talking about something else altogether.
Man, oh man, locking doors around here is too much for my simple mind.
Technology, much criticized as it is, made life so easy on the Queen Mary. Tap your card, and bingo, the door opens. Tapping a card did a lot of other things on the Queen Mary too. Most of them expensive, but I digress. Again.
The same tap-a-card technology worked just fine in Haarlem, The Netherlands too. . . A tap of the card opened the door to our room just fine. But slight complication: to turn on the lights, we had to insert the card in a slot. No problem. This was technology I had conquered in the past. I’ve done that before.
But wait.
There’s more.
Just like that ad on TV. There’s more.
If you want your technology to recharge while you’re out, not gonna happen because you’ve removed your card from the slot so that you can get back into your room.
Simple solution. Ask for a second card. Asked. Granted. Whew.
The pace of complication picked up in Brugge where the room key was a big clunker of an old-fashioned thing. I never did conquer it. It had me defeated right from the beginning, and feminist me played the polite lady of old expecting her parter to lock up and unlock doors. Which he did. Damn doors.
Keys in Europe are often big clunky things. Old, and I mean hundreds of years old doors, equal equally old, cumbersome keys. You don’t want to lose one, because it would mean mortgaging your current home to get a new key made. In Venice, to prevent loss, keys are often attached to floaters so when you fumble them and they fall into the canal you happen to be crossing, they at least float. Fortunately, this event did not occur in our presence.
Onward to Gorges in Normandy, France. This house, Normandy Nest was a treasure, filled with the owner’s favourite things. A published author and a London (UK) bookstore owner, her treasures consisted of an eclectic collection of art, prints and books. Every surface filled and covered. Birdsong filled the air as beautifully as the art filled the walls. Along with the scent of countryside and flowers. Lovely. Cows and sheep grazed feet from where we sat enjoying our evening coffee or libation.
We could charge two pieces of technology at a time, a challenging event. Our tech inventory: I-pad, I-Phone, apple watch, e-book times four plus hearing aids = time on the recharging plugs highly valued and competed for. So a bit of a technology challenge.
But nothing compared to the doors. I felt quite clever, as I was the one to find the key safe and I was the one to unlock it first try!! Smiling, I handed the key to someone else, who opened the door first try.
Me? Not so lucky. These doors are a real challenge. Hold the handle up, insert the key, turn the key in an undefined direction, which seems to change on a whim. With luck, one hopes, the door will open. It did for others. Never for me. I guess my tongue wasn’t properly positioned or my appeals to “Hope” weren’t strong enough. I never did succeed in unlocking any door in the house, besides the WC.
Sad sigh.
Now we’re in Britany and I am again challenged by the locked doors. This house has three keys and a fob. What hope do I have? The fob operates the electronic bollard at the end of the street, which apparently lowers and raises to allow us one-time, short-term access to the front of the house. Handy with all the luggage we’re travelling with.
Because I’ve talked about life being complicated, I feel safe writing that we arrived in town on Fete de pain day. Not a parking spot in town anywhere. So plan A was jettisoned. We found a spot blocks and blocks away, walked into town, found the address of our house and what did we find?
A book store.
Oh no, the landlord, who sent us detailed and very colourful descriptions of how to get to the place was obviously scamming us. Ask someone in the book store if they have any idea where the property we are searching for is.
No idea.
A stroll down the street of maybe 10 feet brings us to a small green door (Oh no, my mind is singing a 60 year old song “Green door”…Midnight, one more night without sleeping. Watching, till the morning comes creeping. Green door, what’s that secret you’re keeping…There’s an old piano and they play it hot behind the green door. Ooops, sorry) Apparently “bis” after an address must mean close by or next to, because there it is. A key safe. It opens. The keys fall out….Yay.
The three keys are for various levels of entry. And there’s a fob. OMG. I have no hope.