The Great Escape - Scaling Rooftops in Barcelona!

So our new apartment isn't perfect.  And I've got an entry in the hopper about renting here versus at home but just haven't gotten it up, maybe now will be the right time after the story I have to tell you.  We're really lucky to have a rooftop terrace all to ourselves - we just bought new furniture for up there so we can really enjoy the outdoor space.  The downstairs patio is for the kids and the roof is for the adults.  We've got a great outdoor couch, a bbq (still needs to be assembled), a swing (also needs to be assembled), table and chairs and some lounges.  The perfect getaway in the middle of the city.

Some of our new outdoor terrace furniture

But wait, I should backtrack to why the whole renting here versus at home applies.  Here, we are responsible for fixing most anything that goes wrong unless it's structural to the apartment.  We had 30 days (in which we weren't here for about 15 of them) to let the landlord know if there were any issues with the apartment and then it was all our responsibility.  Initially the door to the terrace worked, or worked well enough.  Then one day it didn't open so easily and then not at all.  A friend of mine managed to jimmie it open but then we closed it again.  A week or two later, Josh and I together (how many college educated people does it take to open a door???) managed to pry it open and agreed that until it was fixed, we would not close it all the way, just enough to make it appear to be closed. I should also mention that there is no handle on the outside of the door, so if it closes (hindsight now being 20/20) you should make sure you have a key since the only way in is thru using the keyhole.  Yes, this is a bit of foreshadowing for the evening ahead....

See, no handle on the outside...so how are you supposed to get back in the house????

Because we didn't have a lot of space in our old apartment we didn't do a lot of entertaining, but now that we have this great terrace, we plan to change that.  And last night was our inaugural night for the roof and well, like any inauguration, there were a few bumps along the way.  Everything started off smoothly - it was a bit more effort bringing up bottles of wine and food up several flights of stairs, but all was good.  But then one of us said something to Liam, god knows what, that upset him and he ran to the door to go inside, slamming the door closed.  He's on the inside and we are all on the outside.  And within a moment, you could tell he knew the consequence of what had just happened - and he became hysterical.  And while we didn't become hysterical like Liam, we definitely had an "oh fuck" moment of what in the world are we going to do?  The inside of the door doesn't work so Liam certainly couldn't just open the door for us - after all, it took 2 adults to pry open that door, how is a 5 year old going to do it???

Stuck on the roof???  Good thing we have a few bottles of wine to keep us occupied while we 

wait for rescue!!

The next thought was, who has our house key and can they come over to open the door???  Great thought except my phone was in the house and Josh doesn't have their phone numbers in his phone.  I will be fixing that today.  Ok, so what's the next option???  I see Shawn looking over at the neighbor's roof and then down to our balcony on the next floor down.  It's too far to jump to our balcony.  So what to do???  He scales over the neighbor's roof and then climbs over the 4 foot gap from their roof to my balcony and goes in the house.  Josh, of course, follows suit... and as Josh is climbing over, Cristy whispers to me - "a fall like that you don't recover from".  Gee, thanks for that one!  However, on the flip side, Josh is planning on doing some cliff jumping in Menorca later this month that I was ambivalent about...I'm now feeling a little better about that since he managed this with no incident!

A view from the roof... Shawn and Josh climbed over from the right (the building next to us) to our balcony on the left.  It's a pretty big drop and while it doesn't look far, it's actually a good 4 feet between buildings.

So now Shawn and Josh are inside trying in vain to open this door.  Aidan has now decided that he needs to pee and of course, there is no where for him to go.  Cristy hands him an empty wine bottle to which he says, "what do I do with this?".  Cristy explained...only perhaps she missed one part.  He seemed to think that his penis actually had to go into the bottle, not just aiming for the opening.  Thankfully he didn't try to hard to get it in or the night would have ended with an ER trip and us trying to explain why our 8 year old has a wine bottle stuck on his penis.  Whew, got off easy on that one!!

Aidan ready to go with his wine bottle... and no, he's not actually peeing into it in the second picture...this is after he realized that he couldn't actually put it in the bottle and is just being silly.

Somewhere along the way, there was made mention of, is there any key???  But I think Josh and I were focused on the fact that the key doesn't work on the inside of the door and so we said no.  However, we didn't think about the fact that it might work on the OUTSIDE of the door.  That is til Shawn had been working for a good 20 minutes trying to get this door open.  Cristy and I, of course, took pictures through the window.  We were also plotting on what we would do if they in fact, can't open the door.  Do we call the police?  Nope??  What we would do is exactly what Shawn and Josh did and scale our way down, hand Aidan over the gap (and hope for the best) and let ourselves in the house that way.  Thankfully we didn't have to do that!!!

The boys trying to break us out!!!  Can you tell it's hot at the top of the building????

We did eventually have that ah-ha moment of "hey why don't you pass me the keys thru the window and I'll try it on this lock out here and see what happens?"  And of course, it worked.  After all that stress and damage to the door, all it took was passing the keys out the window.  Figures!!  Regardless, we all found humor in the situation and we laughed...hard!!  

And the keys worked!!!!

When everyone left last night, I was extra careful closing the door, making sure it wasn't closed the entire way.  WRONG!!  Turns out when Shawn and Josh were trying to get us out, they bent the door frame (they also broke the hammer) and so what I thought was partially closed was in fact entirely closed.  At least this time we were in the house safely!!  Of course, the keys were outside which wasn't going to do us a whole lot of good!

The hammer didn't make it through the lock out...

Our lonely keys outside instead of inside....now we've wizened up and one key is inside and 

one key is outside.  

This morning I was all stressed about what to do about the door.  But then while checking my email I saw that Dominic, our handyman, who was supposed to be on vacation, happened to email late last night about some projects we were looking to do on the roof.  I immediately called him this morning and said, not only do I need a quote, but I need you to help me open the door to my terrace!!  And so he came this morning...and of course, he opened the door in less than 2.3 seconds.  Figures right???  Ahhhh Spain :)

To Chris and Elaine who are coming over next week...make sure to wear rooftop scaling footwear just in case...you never know what may happen when you come to dinner at the Marcus' ;)

Besos,
Julie