Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Every morning after breakfast at the hotel, we drove over to the house and puttered
around for a few hours. We took lots of photos, made copious notes and generally started
getting the feel of our new space.
Then we headed to the beach. Every day.
By the end of the week we'd made a few crucial decisions. If we were going to get the
upstairs level of the house on the rental market in time for the coming season we'd need to
return to the island as often as possible in the coming months. This meant, essentially, that
we had no more than nine months (or, to put it even more alarmingly, no more than two or
three visits to the island) to get the upstairs ready for prime time.
Once we stopped hyperventilating, we told ourselves that this was do-able.
Maybe.
I chose a buttery yellow for the upstairs interior and not only painted a section of wall
with the color I'd selected but duly registered it (as promised) in the hardware store's color
book.
Oddly, once we were back in D.C. Daniel suddenly became more communicative. He
emailed us every couple of weeks with updates detailing what he was accomplishing, and
he even attached the occasional photo. In late March he emailed us shots of the great room,
after it had been painted and with the subject line,
Fabulous color
.
I was lying on the sofa watching TV when Michael opened the photos.
“Looks nice,” he said, pausing ominously, “but that's not the color we chose.”
I sat up and peered at the screen.
“It looks yellow to me.”
He stared at the image.
“Not really.”
This got me to my feet. He was right. It didn't look yellow.
“Maybe it's just the light,” I said hopefully, refusing to believe that my absolutely fool-
proof system for making sure the right color ended up on the walls had failed.
“Maybe,” Michael said, squinting at the screen.
“I'm sure it's fine,” I concluded, willing myself to believe everything was okay.
But I wasn't sure.
At all.
☼ ☼ ☼
We returned to Vieques in late April, just in time for my birthday. I couldn't imagine a nicer
way to commemorate not only my fifty-second year but also the second anniversary of our
introduction to our newly-adopted land.
This time Rod met us at the airport.
He was quieter than Daniel and seemingly much more pleasant. When I thanked him
for picking us up he smiled.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search