It’s the three year anniversary of our landing in Spain when we were so looking forward to travelling & exploring Europe. For various reasons, mainly Brexit & my pulmonary embolism, but also because we fell in love with Spain, that particular adventure didn’t happen!
But we’re so happy at the way our lives have turned-out. Pleased we left the UK & have no plans to return. Love the lifestyle we have in Spain &, when the CV-19 pandemic has settled, will likely holiday elsewhere.
We’ve been in Oliva for more than a year & our current house for six months now & actually have no plans to move. We’re happy here.
I mentioned in a previous post that a rental with swimming pool was essential for a Spanish summer, but that didn’t happen in 2019!
Due to needing to find a long-term home quickly, we settled on a town house in Oliva old town. This actually came with other benefits such as a great view from the roof terrace & being within walking distance of the town centre & the variety of shops & bars Oliva has to offer. It was also great to be in the midst of the local community though loud, as our neighbours & their kids were enjoying socialising outside to gone 2am each summer night.
However, not having a garden was a test & we realised that not having much outside space wasn’t ideal for the dogs. The red coating on the unshaded roof terrace was blistering hot & burned their paws.
Having plenty of time to find alternative accommodation, we were delighted to find a small rustic house very close to the sea in Oliva Nova. Used for years as a holiday home for the owner’s family, it was basic, but sufficient for our needs.
In Malaga, we had a kitchen outside of the main house in a separate room across the terrace. Here, it’s the loo & shower room!
In Malaga, I built an extra worktop using bricks, here we’ve propped-up a worktop on bricks to raise the height from the original very low installation & added a sink which drains into the old granite one below.
In Malaga, the electric in the kitchen often flipped off. Here, we lost power to the whole house!
There’s definitely a pattern to our housing choices here… Love living in Spain!
After suffering 10-12 hours without electric in the height of summer a few times & many calls to Iberdrola (after long waits on-hold) I did manage to persuade the landlord to persuade Iberdrola that the wiring in the meter box was dodgy. They then accepted that the overhead wiring wasn’t connected safely either! So all is now fixed with new meter wiring outside & new fuses indoors so we can use more than one electrical appliance in the kitchen at the same time – yeaaay!
We moved-in the day before the Spanish state of alarm & although we couldn’t go on the beach, being able to walk the dogs to the end of the street to releive themselves & see the sea made our lockdown experience more bearable.
The neighbourhood was quiet with just three other houses permanently occupied on our street. Owners of the others gradually returned as lockdown was reduced & cross region travel allowed. By the end of June there were residents everywhere! I thought the coronavirus situation would affect holidaymakers, but we’re in an area of Spanish owned holiday homes so I think we experienced a relatively normal summer season.
July & August were busy with people walking everywhere, the roads jammed with parked cars & a packed beach complete with Chiringuito. We’d put net around our front terrace & Woody happily perched out there chattering & whistling away. He was quite an attraction & people stopped to look, but then he shut-up, much to their disappointment.
We thoroughly enjoy our daily swims in the sea & made use of the aircon. The house may be basic, but does have an aircon unit downstairs to serve the living area & our bedroom.
We’re happy here & apparently our Spanish landlord is keen for us to stay (as he wants long-term tenants rather than the hassle of holiday-makers) so we intend to stay put.
We’d never be able to fit everything we owned into the car & roofbox now anyway, we’d have to sell items, or get a trailer! But then our ping-pong table would still be too big & we’re also on the lookout for a table football or pool table 