Getting some exercise (Part 1)

It is interesting how much more walking occurs when guests are in town. Once they head back home, the desire to explore the far ends of town definitely decrease. Actually, my personal desire to do any exercise at all took a drastic downward turn when some folks thought I should stop riding my bicycle around town. (I still miss it.)

I had sort of whimsically mentioned that the very posh hotel associated with our apartment is said to have a really lovely fitness center with a pool and that apparently our housing comes with membership to the center - but you have to ask for it. I probably would have asked, eventually, really... but I was egged on by the donation of a friend's swimsuit and then follow-up questions asking if I had used it yet. So about 2 weeks ago I mustered up my energy and prepared for the task of (dun dun duhhhhh) Talking To The Front Desk Staff. While these folks speak pretty decent English, non-standard requests can become lengthy and confusing conversations. But the bathing suit questions kept coming in, so I gave it my best shot and after 10 or so minutes of disjointed and oft-repeated questions and answers, I was told that I had to go to the desk in the hotel and not in the apartment building.

That pretty well used up my motivation for the day and it wasn't until this week that I attempted the hotel staff. They sent me from the concierge to the fitness center to the reception desk and then tried to send me back to the fitness center but after I told them I wasn't going back there instead decided I needed to go back to my apartment front desk. (Not so different from how we do it in the States really with a 30 minute game of pass-the-annoying-guest-around-until-hopefully-she-gives-up.)

My apartment front desk told me (unsurprisingly) that I needed to go to the hotel. After I explained that I had already tried that, a few phone calls were made, the result of which was a gentleman informing me that he had already issued me my gym pass.

Really? Hmm... Maybe Michael had picked it up and hidden it away in an effort to uh, hmm, well, really I could think of no reason Michael would not have immediately passed that along, but I still figured I should check before telling the mysterious man on the phone he was just plain wrong - which was exactly what he turned out to be. No pass had been given to us.

The next morning there was a note on the apartment door that there was something for us at the front desk! Apparently the nice man on the phone had also realized that he had perhaps slightly misstated the location of the pass which I had been told before that he couldn't give me and had moved to rectify the situation. Yay!

And on that happy note, we'll conclude today's post. But don't worry bat fans, tomorrow will conclude this fateful tale.