We are staying at a B&B until we leave Saturday a.m. (We leave the building at 4:00 a.m. Saturday!) Today is our "goodbye" day, walking around the old neighborhood, because tomorow we have Covid tests and one last Goodwill trip, a meeting with our real estate agent, the sale of our car, and other last minute "stuff."

But I want to put in a plug for Amber House on 22nd Street between M & N. It's really wonderful, and I wish I had time to post pictures. I'll take some to post from Portugal, as downloading and posting them is the time-consuming part.

The B&B is split between two old houses (and we love old buildings), one on each side of the street. The main one was built in 1905, and the one we are in was built in 1895. We are in room 13 (which I've always considered my lucky number), called "the Beethoven Room." (We love Beethoven, but that's just coincidence.) We priced out other hotel rooms, but they all charged extra for breakfast, for parking, for all kinds of add-ons that made them more expensive than a B&B, and Amber House is walking distance to two of our favorite restaurants through the years: Tapa the World and Kasbah Lounge, side by side with shared outdoor "courtyard" dining.

I'll take some pictures of Amber House today and then post them after we get settled in. Inside and out, both buildlings are beautiful and artistically rendered, with an aura of bygone eras. I'll leave this little teaser of a bedside table and our room telephone used to call the office.

Time is flying and still so much to do!

How about you? Do you like old buildings? Classical music? Beethoven? And . . . what is your lucky number? (Do you have one?)

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men (and Women)

🦋🦋🦋 Changes have been happening lately: Our buyers pulled out. They were a young couple in Seattle, and I think they got cold feet about moving to Sacramento. So now the condo is on the market again. But the good news is that it is generating interest again. We had one viewer earlier this week and another is coming tomorrow. 

🦋🦋🦋 Meanwhile, the airline called to say the flight of one leg of our journey was cancelled and had to be rescheduled to another date. Now - toca madera (touch wood) that it isn't re-scheduled again - we leave here on February 24th instead of 21st. The good news is that there is one stop less.

🦋🦋🦋 So those two things have called for a lot of scrambling — paperwork to cancel the sale, emails to friends in Portugal, new arrangements for dropping off our car to the woman who is buying it, changing the dates of our stay at the B&B, the date of our Covid tests, etc. All of that is done, now, and we had a nice zoom conference with our immigration attorney in Braga, who . . .

💗💗💗 . . . informs us the flat will be ready for us when we arrive: newly painted (she showed pictures, beautiful white walls), basic furniture we asked her to pick out for us - bed, bookshelves, dining table, chairs, sofa, chests - all good. The heating/a/c will be in. And we have changes of clothing in our suitcases until the shipping arrives next month.

So that leaves time for taking more walks around Sacramento (which we have always loved) and taking pictures of more murals and a couple of sculptures. There is quite a range of styles. Enjoy. 

This is called "Peace" 

This stylized dragon
is also a bicycle rack.

The next three murals are all part of the front of the regional transit building on R Street:

                    

I don't remember the name of this building, but it also is on R Street:   Cool, huh?

And then the next two walls. The first is in the R Street Corridor. The second is just before the R Street Corridor on the side of the 515 Grocery Store and Deli. It's a sylized ocean/beach scene.

The next three were on S or T Street. All by the same artist and marvelous.

And these last three were somewhere on Q Street (I think). Sorry I can't be more specific, but I vary my walks and then put the camera aside for a couple of days. 

                                    

I've become addicted to finding new murals. I think they beautify an area so much. How about you? How have you been using your lock-down time? Are there many murals in your town or city? Do you like them? Or do you prefer unpainted walls? (These murals are all samples of artists who take part in "Wide Open Walls" (whose acronym spells — appropriately, I think — "WOW.")