Al Andalus Thalassa - A New Community

Easter 2007 - It Rained persistently all weekend that we (my sister Annmarie & I) were in Vera, Almeria on our inspection trip with the Irish owned agents, who shall remain nameless.

We travelled on the 6am flight from Stansted on Good Friday, which meant that we had got up at 2am (remember that bit, it becomes important later on) & we were met at Almeria by Lee in his BMW. Alongside Lee were Diane & Paul who were our travelling companions for the weekend, although we had all been told that we would have our own dedicated driver/salesman/ exaggerater/liar for the duration, this was not to be.

Now, I have to explain that neither myself or Annmarie resemble Twiggy but fortunately the 4 of us got on very well. It would have been an absolute nightmare if we hadn't. It was also quite fortunate that we had all brought quite small suitcases because if they had been any larger, we would have had to carry them on our laps.

First stop was our hotel in Vera. We were told to go to our rooms, drop off our luggage & meet back in the coffee shop in 10 minutes. We then set off for our first visit to a development near Murcia. Anyway to cut a very long story short, we looked at a mock up of apartments in a show place & we looked at another that was just a pile of dust & debris.

Next stop San Javier to see the mortgage guy. What a spiv! - More on them another time.

Another off plan development then back on the new motorway that had only opened the previous day. Arrived back at our hotel at 8pm - so back to the bit that you needed to remember - we have now been up for 17 hours & most of those have been spent travelling.

Poor Annmarie was nearly in tears because she was sitting on the middle of the back seat which basically has no padding just a hard cardboard type filling. At the hotel Lee gets a very strong message that all is not well - " Lee, if you turn up here tomorrow with one car, forget it , we are going nowhere".

Exhausted, we grabbed something to eat & tomorrow is another day.

At this stage we are a long way from the "Community Shenanigans" but this & the next few posts will set the scene & will hopefully prevent even one person making the same mistakes that we did.

Noreen