A momentous week - Tuesday 22nd May!!

The real vista from the front of our house, showing our nearest neighbour
approx 400 metres away!

Tuesday morning we were up bright and early as we had Next Communications coming early to de-install our internet connection and transfer it up to the new house. They had previously had the old owners as customers and had done the same for them the previous Wednesday. We had packed the car the previous night with more stuff to transfer up to the house and the plan was I would go up there and wait for the man from Next to arrive up there and do things up at the house while Stuart packed stuff up in the kitchen etc ready to be taken up to the house later that day. 


I set off at 8.40am and pulled out of the underground garage only to see the Next technician already there early! Result! I let Stuart know he was there then set off up to the house and called Stuart to let him know I had arrived and he said the Next man was already on his way up to us at the new house! He arrived within about 15 minutes and set to reinstalling the connection for us. While he was doing that I began my chores. I got two full loads of new dishware and cutlery washed in the dishwasher. Then I had begun washing the 6 loads of washing I was to end up doing that day - 3 lots of sheets, two loads towels and some dirty washing from the apartment. All of it dried the same day too - which is amazing! We have a natural sun trap with a 4 sided washing line erected there which is great for getting things dried in quick time! While I was doing all that Mer-K-Muebles called to let us know their driver was up in Bédar with our new dining table and chairs. We also thought he would have a TV stand we had purchased from their showroom too. When he arrived it turned out the specially made and ordered table with 8 chairs was only partially delivered. The company they ordered it from had only done 6 chairs despite the normal order being 4 and we had doubled it to 8, they did 6 - d0h! So they had to keep one chair back to send back to the company so they could make sure they put their mistake right with the correct colours! Also missing was the TV stand we bought. This despite it being a unique piece they had in their showrooms! So I called Stuart to let him know and he called their store. The problems with mobile telephone reception reared their head and the delivery man had no signal so the store called me to speak to their driver after Stuart gave them my number. They told him that we had to have it delivered as we had nothing to put our TV on! So it was arranged to deliver the stand later in the afternoon around 5.30. While I was there I made a little video out on the patio which I'll post here too!


After that had been done I locked up the house and left the machines going about their business washing dishes and now towels! I set off back to Turre to pick up Stuart as we now had to go and do a major shop to stock up the house with food. We went to a place we had found to pick up our new satellite TV box so we'd have something to watch later that evening. We also took a detour to Ferriteria Lopez to give them grief about the sun loungers we had on order as it was three weeks now and they were in stock and as we had now got the house we wanted them delivering. We had already asked on Monday but they had not arrived that afternoon. We popped into Trufi Bar for a good lunch before hitting up Mercadona. After we'd shopped we ferried all the food back up to Bédar, stocked the fridges and freezers and then set off back down into Turre to get another load of stuff to bring up that Stuart had packed that morning! By now we were beginning to feel like human yoyo's having done the journey to and from Bédar to Turre numerous times! We decided to sleep that night in the house. When it came to eating I said it was too much for Stuart to even consider cooking that night as we were both pooped. So we had a lovely snack meal of pate, cheese and ham on crackers washed down with Sangria! We watched a bit of TV and then hit the hay as there was another busy day to come!

A momentous week - Monday 21st May!

Casa Laurel - our new home!

This last Monday was the closing day on the house. We had decided to go into Mojácar Playa and buy all the stuff we needed to paint. We got paint brushes, rollers and trays, drop sheets, and 2 x 12 litre cans of paint. We also bought a ladder and various other items we needed. We had to be at our solicitor's office at 10 am we arrived in typical fashion at 9.45! We were excited after all! She had to go over some matters prior to going onto the Notary's office for him to witness the signing of the contract and confirming that all the agreed money had been paid and also that the sellers bank had been paid to release their mortgage from the property. 

We were there for about an hour, we had to have the whole contract explained to us and then the sellers had the same thing done for them by their solicitor. Once all this had been done we then waited to go into the Notary's office. Once in there he witnessed us all sign the contract in three places, confirmed the other details mentioned above and then we were out of his office! Once we got in there it had taken all of 5 minutes! We came out and our respective solicitors congratulated us all on an easy transaction and we shook hands all round and walked away with the keys to our new home!

From there we had to get up to Bédar to register at the town hall so we had our Padrón's in place as Stuart had to have his up to date to facilitate getting his shipped goods through customs which I am sure he'll make an additional comment on that subject! We got that done and dusted and walked away with them within the hour instead of the day after like in Turre! We had asked Tim the Estate Agent that listed the house if he wanted to come to lunch with us at the restaurant Miramar next to his office. But on the way back from the Town Hall we realised the Bédar post office was open (1.15 - 1.45pm Monday to Friday!). So we detoured there to introduce ourselves to the postmistress! We then called for Tim and got to the Miramar, sat down and ordered our food. Then Stuart's phone rang! At this point we had not even opened the door to the house as we'd gone straight up into Bédar village. It was our first delivery of furniture to arrive that day! Koala Muebles from Antas had arrived with the beds for the guest bedrooms, the headboards and a lovely mosaic inlaid patio table with 6 matching chairs. We had been planning on painting the walls where the headboards were going to go before they arrived but it was not to be! I no sooner opened the front door and they were in! We emptied the car of the stuff we had packed into the boot that morning and all the painting supplies while the people from Koala did their thing!

We also unpacked and unwrapped all the dinner plates etc that we had bought in Casa in Almeria ready for them to be washed in the dishwasher the next day. Along with that there would be lots of stuff to go into the washing machine too!

We had no sooner got that delivery out of the way and we had another company phone us. For them to find the house is a little tricky so we have been arranging to drive up to the outskirts of Bédar village and meet them in the car park and then escort them back down the hill and along the winding tarmaced track to our house "Casa Laurel". By the time we had got that delivery out of the way we were dragging a little and decided to lock up and make our way back to Turre to stay in the apartment on Monday night.

Coming into the home strait.....

The rest of the week has in comparision been much more relaxed than Tuesday was! On Wednesday after visiting the gym in Vera we went to Mer-K-Muebles to pay off the furniture we have on order there and make sure they were going to deliver when we expected. They assured us they would, but there was a possibility a coffee table we had on order might not be there by then. As we are in Vera at least three times a week and the table would fit comfortably in the car we said do not wait for that to come in before delivering! The TV stand and our main dining table and chairs were of far more importance to us than waiting for that to arrive!  On the Thursday we went into Ferriteria Lopez in Mojácar Playa and checked on the status of our sun loungers and cushions we'd ordered, plus we also picked up a nice electric blender as we'd missed that while up in Lorca!


Friday we managed to sort out a rather interesting option for getting UK TV channels, I'm not going to expand on this but I'll say it is very complete and extremely reasonably priced! We'll pick up the box we need for that on Monday or Tuesday next week which falls nicely for when we get the keys!


Saturday we had arranged to go up to the house with a local firm HealthyH2O to check it out for installing two of their products a "Scale Buster" which is installed in line with the water supply pipe and puts two filters in place to remove limescale from the water here to help protect things like our washing machine, toilet cisterns, pipes etc. The water in the area is supposed to be "potable" i.e. drinkable. It conforms to EEC standards set but doesn't always exceed them like water does in the UK for instance. What this invariably means is although it is safe to drink it has a funny taste and might contain minerals that might not always be easy on a non-native's stomach! So one of the other things we want to get fitted with is a "Reverse Osmosis" water filter. The water is passed through 5 filters including a very fine membrane which removes almost all impurities. This is an on demand system so it is great for drawing off perfectly drinkable water in the kitchen. This also means washing salad and vegetables, making our own ice cubes etc won't have to be from bottled water in the future then either! 

A new panorama shot taken today at the house 19/05/12

We had pre-arranged to make a call to the owners so one of them would be there to let us into the house. As it was Ann was there cleaning the place to make it presentable for us to come into on Monday! They had actually moved out all of their stuff into a rental property on the previous Wednesday so we got to see a very bare empty house for the first time! It was extremely echoey with nothing in it and gave us a very strange view as strangely the rooms looked smaller with no furniture in - an illusion as it is a decent sized house indeed! They had also repainted all the balustrades as we'd asked for so the external finish was looking very neat! While I was there I had finally managed to perfect using a panorama feature on my newly upgraded phone operating system so I took a real view of the view from our new driveway - I hope you'll agree it is a beautiful view! The coastline and sea is visible along with Mojácar Pueblo, Turre in the valley below along with lots of the hills and mountains surrounding our new home.

Another interesting week, sometimes for all the wrong reasons!

With Stuart fairly well rested we already knew we had to make this week count as only a week the following Monday i.e. THIS Monday coming as I write! We complete on our house purchase. That in itself isn't that remarkable, but having NO furniture, electrical appliances i.e. TV etc, kitchen gadgets, plates - in effect everything you need to buy for a home! - meant we had a lot of unfinished business to complete this last week.


We had already made some trips to furniture stores in the local area (Muebles is Spanish for furniture incidentally) and we had left deposits on orders in two places in Antas and one in Vera. We needed to go back into these stores to pay off the balance and get them nailed down on delivery dates. Although we will have the keys to the house on Monday actually moving in is purely dependent on furniture deliveries! We can't sleep there till we have beds delivered for instance, having a table to eat off would be nice too etc! So we managed to get assurance that our deliveries will happen Monday afternoon and Tuesday next week which works nicely. We aren't actually planning on sleeping there until the 24th though that might get brought forward if they do deliver the important stuff on time!


With all the above in mind maybe some of you might be wondering what we might be doing for other things that we might need to live there comfortably. We had decided on Stuart's return we'd go to Lorca to a big retail park to have a major shopping day out. Originally we talked about going to Antas and then onto Lorca but with some extra free time on Monday this week we managed to get that out of the way and leave Lorca as a trip on it's own. It was as we found out a wise thing for us to have done!


Tuesday morning we set off around 9am to drive the approx 80 kilometres from Turre to Park Almenara in Lorca. This was a very surprising destination as it was a very stylish retail park/mall. There were only three massive stores there, another (and best!) branch of "Casa" (who's sister store we'd visited in Almeria), Eroski (kind of like a Tesco, Asda superstore or Walmart for our American readers!), and Media Markt a German owned electrical superstore(like a Curry's/PC World or Best Buy store). Of course these are generalisations and as we came to find out, one in particular was nothing like it's UK counterpart! Other than that it was a mixture of what you might find in most UK places in major towns and cities in places like the Hounds Hill in Blackpool or the Arndale in Manchester for instance - for American readers a medium sized shopping mall.

Media Markt in Lorca - big impressive frontage!

Upon arriving at the retail park we reasoned it would make more sense to park closer to Media Markt as we potentially had more things to buy there. We went in for an initial look around and to note down some prices on things we wanted to buy so we could do some comparative shopping in Eroski. Online Eroski appeared to have a good electrical selection so we were hopeful that we'd get some price competition. Sadly this wasn't to be as their retail electrical selection was not as well stocked as their webstore was. So all we got in there on the electrical front - luckily as it turned out - was a 32" Smart TV for our bedroom. We still managed to fill a trolley/cart to overflowing buying up household items we knew we still needed so it was a fruitful visit indeed. We went back to the car to stash our Eroski booty and then went back into the Mall to get some lunch. By now we were really feeling the effects of the hot sunny day, it was by then about 29 Celcius and was making walking round the largely open air mall quite fatiguing! After lunch and some much needed "agua" to wash it down and refill our depleted reserves we went back to visit Casa before getting back to Media Markt for the main event!


Superficially Media Markt exudes retail style and gives a great upfront illusion of a swish well stocked retail electrical outfit. With it's Germanic roots you would expect great things from it for back end efficiency and stock ordering. Having worked in the UK at a Curry's/PC World Superstore I knew all about how a large store like that might be managed and how their back end should work for stock ordering etc. Just like in the big stores in the UK they have a General Manager to oversee the store and department managers for White Goods (washers etc), Computing, TV & Audio etc. Unlike Currys their management structure is ineffectual and cannot make decisions unless the General Manager does it! So many things that day needed the GM to sort it out it became the first time we really thought we'd begun to experience the mañana effect! Unlike Currys they do not have a distribution centre network to check stock with on their till terminals. We quickly began to find out that nearly everything we wanted to buy from Media Markt meant us taking display models on bigger items and even on some smaller items like food processors too! Now bear in mind in the UK if you buy the last one unboxed from a store you will usually be offered 10% discount, not here in Spain! Even when a food processor not only came unboxed but with no manual either they only offered a derisory 3 Euros off the price! Now bear in mind we weren't spending a small amount in the store, we were buying a LOT of stuff from many different sections. Of course like Currys I knew they would want to offer extended warranties as this is where they make a lot of extra money. As we were new in Spain and not knowing how good their after sales service might be, and given the recent EEC ruling on merchantable quality of goods and the 6 year expectation of usefulness we weren't going to go for any of those anyway! So as you can imagine we got next to no discount except two free HDMI cables out of them! One of the major purchases was a 55" Samsung 3D TV which we were dismayed to discover was another of the ex display only items. This was where I discovered their totally ineffectual service back end. In the UK if you go into a Currys (and I am sure to Comet too) you would have a sales advisor on a terminal and finding out which stores did have stock to have a stock transfer arranged in minutes or a Distribution Centre to check for stock for a home delivery. That is how it is done in the USA too I am sure! Not so in Spain in Media Markt in Lorca! The advisor could not make any calls to find stock, nor could any of the managers currently in the store, only the illusive general manager who was going to be out of the store till at least 17.30pm. Given that by now it was getting on for 3pm and we'd been shopping since just after 10am we were literally shopping and nearly ready to drop!


We had a few talks about changing to a different model or size of screen only to find that they too were only display models in stock and we'd have to have them wrapped in bubble wrap off the shelf! The model we wanted we were told might take a week or possibly up to 20 days to be delivered to us and this initially was what set us off on the search for an alternate model. Then I reminded Stuart that we had got the 32" in the car that we bought for the bedroom and we could use that till whichever TV we decided to go for arrived. He then said that in that case it would be silly to not go for the TV we wanted originally as we'd have to wait for a brand new boxed one to be delivered anyway! So we went back to our original choice of the Samsung 55" 3D TV and we decided to wait for however long it might be to be delivered to us in Bedar! By now we were really tired, and we had to wait for the other items we had decided to purchase to be bubble wrapped for us to take away with us! This store had nowhere for customers to sit, it appeared to have no area for people to be put through for credit applications which would have had seats! So by the time it got to 4pm we were seriously dragging, Stuart even more so with the still present jetlag too! 


We eventually got all our purchases put through the tills, and the car became a pickup truck for the day with a completely full boot/trunk and the back seats packed with purchases too! We literally shopped until we dropped. We bought the aforementioned 55" 3D TV and the 32" TV for the bedroom. We bought an extra 2 pairs of 3D glasses for the big TV to go with the two supplied and two extra HDMI cables. We also bought a Denon surround sound 5.1 system, a Samsung 3D Blu ray/DVD player, a Sony CD stereo and iPod dock system, a pair of Powerline home network adapters and network cables. We also purchased a Dyson vacuum cleaner, an electric knife, a Samsung microwave oven, a Moulinex food processor, a 4-slice toaster, and an Bosch electric juicer. We also bought bath mats, folding chairs, oven mits, throw pillows, mustard, and birthday card for Stuart's niece. We also bought more melamine plates to match the plastic ware we bought for the patio area in Casa. We also bought a microfiber dustmop since we need to clean up the apartment before we leave or have to pay an arm and a leg to have it cleaned! After all that we spent on this day we cannot afford an arm and a leg at this point!!  We got back to Turre for about 17.30 and then had to unload the car into our storage locker in the underground secure garage and by the time we got back up into the apartment we were honestly dropping on our feet!

Stuart and his Visado!

Stuart with his long awaited Visado!

Stuart arrived back safe and sound from his six day trip to Los Angeles to get his visa on Saturday evening. The trip went well and he used the trip as a buying trip to get some excellent quality 300 thread count sheets and pillow case sets for our beds we have on order. Although you CAN buy King Size beds here in Spain (smaller than US 193 cm x 203.2cm & UK King Size 183cm x 200cm) getting bedding for them is like looking for hens teeth! If you can find it it is inferior quality and quite expensive too! He also took the opportunity to stock up on some over the counter pharmaceuticals that are either impossible to get over here or on pescription only! Having taken my lightweight case to maximise his luggage allowance none of these purchases caused him any issues with having to pay extra for being over his allotted allowance.


His flight arrived from Madrid 10 minutes late at 8.40pm but that wasn't too bad when you consider he had been flying since the equivalent of 2.55am CET from Los Angeles (17.55pm PST!). To say that he had to overcome some jetlag was an understatement. Having only just got over his jetlag from going to Los Angeles then having to do it all again coming back the other way I have to applaud him for his tenacity! Within 2 or 3 days he had pretty much overcome his time issues and was back to firing on all six. Which was a good thing with the week we had ahead of us!


Incidentally getting the Visa isn't the end of the line for the hoops Stuart has to jump through. Within 30 days of arriving back in Spain he now has to apply for Residencia. He will be going to Almeria on Thursday the 24th of May to apply for this.

LA times

Cliff dropped me off at the airport in Almería at 5:30 a.m.  It was pitch black and there was no sign of life at the airport other than lights being on inside.  A few people started to arrive and stood behind me as they finally opened the doors about 15 minutes later.  All the check-in desks had electric signs above them saying "cerrado" which means closed.  One desk has a rope line in front of it.  So I stood in that area.  More and more passengers started arriving and standing in what was becoming a long line/queue behind me.  The flight to Madrid was scheduled to leave at 7:35 and at it was not until 6:15 that agents from Iberia finally showed up to check passengers in.  Other than the aisle seat I had on the first flight, I had not been able to get aisle seats for my other flights.  I was concerned about the 11 hour flight from London to LA since my bladder requires an aisle seat.  Fortunately I was able to get one through Iberia even though they can't access seats on British Airways readily.  The seat I was assigned was so far in the back of the plane that I thought I might be seated in the rear toilet.  Of course, that would have solved my bladder problem.  Fortunately, when I was in Madrid I was able to get an aisle seat much more forward and only two rows from the toilet.  Talk about living in luxury!  The British Airways flight from London to Madrid was fantastic.  The services and the meals were terrific.  Also, they did not charge for wine.  So I used some wine therapy and Benadryl to help me sleep.  I did manage 4 hours which is great for me.


The only downside in using British Airways is that have to go through security again at Heathrow even though you are in transit from one flight to another.  It took me almost an hour from the time I got off the flight from Madrid to get through security and to head to my LA flight.  I had an option of leaving Almería on a later flight but then would have had only one hour between flights in London so I did not want to take the chance.  I am glad that I did not.


I was pretty tired by the time I left LAX, got the shuttle to the rental car agency and made it to the hotel.  The Hacienda hotel in El Segundo is nice and very large. There are two major wings.  My assigned room was last one down the corridor on the 8th floor of the further away building.  I finally managed to lug my 3 bags to the door to the room only to discover that my key card would not open the door.  Of course, I do not have a working mobile phone since I have a Spanish sim card in mine.  With some trepidation, I left my bags outside the door and return all the way back to the lobby to get new key cards and a security guard to help me if those did not work.  I was finally able to get into the room.  I unpacked and tried to get on my laptop computer to let Cliff know that I had made it o.k.  For some reason I could not log on to their wifi system with either my laptop or my cell phone via wifi.  I finally collapsed and went to bed.  I slept for about 3hours and then tried to access the computer again.  For some reason, I could not get the password prompt using Google as my browser.  So I tried internet explorer and that worked.


Monday morning I took my life in my hands and faced LA traffic in driving the 20 miles to the Spanish consulate.  I did not have a GPS with me, just the Google map directions that I had printed off while in Spain.  Despite my miserable sense of direction, I was able to find the consulate without too many mistakes.  I dropped off my passport and evidence of my return flights to Spain around 9:30.  I was told my visa would be processed as a high priority.  So I left thinking that I would be notified as promised to return in 24 to 72 hours.  


In furnishing our new home, we bought the largest beds you can buy in Spain.  They are almost the size of a British superking bed which is a bit smaller than an American king size bed.  We checked into getting sheets and pillowcases for them in Spain.  The highest thread count for Egyptian cotton was 200 and for that you would pay more than one hundred US dollars or about 60 British pounds.  So I went on line and saw that I could get 300 count Egyptian cotton king size sheet and pillow case sets in Walmart for less than half of that.  So on my way back from the consulate I went to Walmart using my Google map directions that I had printed off in advance.  At Walmart I bought 3 sets of king size bedding and lots of over the counter medicines such as naproxen sodium (Alleve) which you can only get with a prescription in Spain.  Cliff had given me his over-sized very light weight suitcase to use.  I discarded all the cardboard and the wrapping from the sheets and have rolled the bedding up in the big suitcase.  Hopefully, it will still be  within the weight allowance limit.


Thusday I drove back to the consulate and made the mistake of taking the highways/motorways to do so.  It took me 80 minutes to travel 20 miles.  The good news is that my visa was ready.  Now I have 30 days to apply for residencia once I return to Spain.  This was a major hurdle and I am glad that it is over.


Staying in a hotel near the airport is convenient, but very boring.  I miss Cliff so very much.  Separation is so painful now that we are used to being together.  Today is my last day here as I write this.  So we shall be together again tomorrow.  It cannot come soon enough for me.

Bédar, Almería, Spain....info on our new chosen home and area.

A map showing Bédar and the nearby towns down to the coast.

I thought being as we have now confirmed that we are going to be buying a house in Bédar that I should give you some background on the place and the area then maybe you will understand why we fell in love with this place and chose to set down roots here.


Bédar is a municipality of Almería province, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. It is an authentic Spanish village, in existence since the time of the Moors and it nestles into the lower slopes of the Filabres mountains. It is approximately 15kms inland from the coastal resorts of Mojácar Playa and Garrucha.


As you drive up towards the picturesque mountain village, Bédar becomes a focal point sitting astride a pretty hillside setting in a quiet and calm atmosphere and it still retains many of the original cottages which line the quaint narrow streets and little alleyways.

All everyday needs are catered for including a Post Office, Chemist/Farmacia, doctor's surgery/office, and a supermarket along with many tapas bars and some good restaurants too. You can start your day with a walk to the bakery to buy freshly baked bread or croissants. The place is very photogenic; it is easy to be inspired by views of walls festooned with beautiful bougainvillea or pink and white almond blossom in January.

Bédar settled in the hills.

There are three good restaurants/bars offering a variety of cuisine so no need to travel far to enjoy the ambience of this lovely village, but at the same time it provides an ideal base from which to explore this little known and relatively unspoilt area of Spain.


According to Wikipedia the village is 404m above sea level, in 2011 the population was 1061 people! As you can imagine that makes for a very peaceful place to live! Of that figure 538 are men and 523 are women. Out of 1061 a staggering 630 foreigners have chosen to make this place their home. Major sources of settlers are expat Brits! This place was recently voted one of the best places to settle and live in Spain, it placed in the top twenty!

Bédar by night.

Our house is just outside the village on the road up to Bédar and you turn off the road up to the village by Kilometre marker 5 onto a tarmaced track that wends its way around the hillsides connecting various villas on their own plots to the outside world! It is very quiet and peaceful and offers great privacy, yet you are close enough to all amenities and the nearby towns of Los Gallardos, Turre, Vera etc. City life is not too far away either. We can be in either Almeria City or Lorca in about an hour so culture and major shopping is not too far away! Airports close to us are in order of distance, Almería, Murcia, and Alicante. 


We ventured even higher into the hills above Bédar to a wonderful Cortijo styled restaurant called Montana and had a wonderful meal there. The down side to going there is that the journey up to it is hair raising for most people and for a certain Mr Cohen rather stomach churning! The pay off of course apart from the wonderful food were amazing views across the valley to the coast and sea beyond. Some of these views can be seen in the gallery of pictures I posted yesterday.

Update 3 .....more pix I haven't posted before

Tio Tomas, a rural hostal restaurant close by the view from our table. 

Just to prove it really WAS the view from our table, Cliff with view beyond!

Outside in the grounds, the buildings to the left of the centre tree is our apartment in the distance!

A trip up above Bedar to eat produced some amazing views, I took these on the way down!

A trip up above Bedar to eat produced some amazing views, I took these on the way down!

A trip up above Bedar to eat produced some amazing views, this to the coast and Mojácar Playa!

Blog update number 2....a week on my own....

Of course you might possibly already have read elsewhere that Stuart's visa had been approved early. So Saturday 6/5/12 was largely taken care of by getting him prepared to travel back to the USA to pick up his visa at the Spanish Consulate in Los Angeles. An early night was appropriate of course as I had to take him to the airport to be there before 6.00am to get his first flight from Almeria to Madrid. This was only the first leg of course, Madrid to London was next then onwards from their to Los Angeles non stop with British Airways. 


Taking him to the airport wasn't an issue but it was tinged with sadness even though I knew this trip was essential for our future in Spain. Our being apart would of course feel strange as we'd been together 24/7 since we got to Spain and we do get on like a house on fire! Even when we have minor disagreements - who doesn't? - we are soon back laughing and joking! I feel so comfortable with Stuart, we are equals in our relationship and I am so thankful to have him in my life. I am being a little reflective here as it is now Thursday and I have been here all on my own since Sunday - yes I AM missing him a lot!


Well in his absence I have been able to take care of business which has been a good thing I guess. We got paperwork through for our home insurance sent via our solicitor. Our car only comes with a Spanish manual so our good friends in the UK Colin & David got us an English one from the Hyundai dealer in Warrington and mailed that to us, it arrived yesterday. 


In the meantime out solicitor got in touch with us to let us know the balance required for us to complete the purchase on our house to be in their client account by May 18th. I was also pleased to find that I managed to spur the bank and our solicitor to work together as it would have cost us a lot of money to do the bank to bank transfer and even a bank draft (cheque/check) would have cost us 60 Euros! So our solicitor opened an account with La Caixa (our bank) and it was a totally free transfer for us! I was able to go and do this from our account today and collect the paperwork and manual today from the solicitor. 


Before Stuart left for Los Angeles he had his mobile sim changed to a different company as the ones we'd got in Almeria on Day 2 didn't have good coverage in Bedar. Yoigo who we got in Almeria uses Movistar (Telefonica) masts for their signal. In Turre we only get 2G, in Bedar there is no signal at all! So we found out that Hits (cheapest pay as you go in Spain!) use Vodaphone and they have 3G speeds even up in Bedar! So it was a no brainer to change to them, Stuart wasn't bothered about changing his number but I wanted to keep mine. He got his done and now has his new one firmly committed to memory! I went today and put in for mine and for my number transfer which will happen by the early hours of next Thursday morning. I like my number as it is easy to remember like the one I had back in the UK which I kept for over 10 years!


When I got back I heard from Stuart, still waiting on the Consulate but I won't tell you too much about this as I have told Stuart he should do his own blog update to detail all his experiences on this!

Blog update number 1.....sorry for being tardy!

Stuart in Garrucha, May 1st 2012

Well it has been a little while since my last update and for this I apologise! 


I have been getting messages from people asking when our next update would be and I hadn't realised that we had such an avid number of regular blog readers! We are fast approaching 2000 page views which we can't believe - amazing!


Since our last up date with concrete news on the house we have had a few things happen over here as you might expect! May the 1st was the bank holiday here, they don't wait for things to be on a Monday like most of ours in the UK! You also get National and local holidays which obviously vary from province to province. We now have to be very mindful of both of those! As we are in an an area with tourism it isn't a complete shutdown as you might imagine and a drive down to Mojácar Playa or Garrucha can usually turn up somewhere where we can shop, plus there are also the regular street markets that always run, holiday or not!

obligatory dual tourist shot in Garrucha 1st May, 2012

To this end we went into Garrucha on May 1st to see the place and take in a walk on the seafront there. We also had lunch in one of the many seafood restaurants there too (see pics!). Garrucha is famous for it's fresh fish and seafood so as you can imagine all the restaurants are offering mouth watering choice of the day's fresh catch! They also offer special rice (arroz) dishes with Lobster and the like, plus the usual paellas in seafood or meat/seafood varieties - all very tasty too!

Lunch for two in Garrucha!

The big highlight of the week of the public holiday was that - subject to nothing going wrong due to Mardid having an extra holiday on May 2nd - we were scheduled to get our new car finally on Friday May 4th. The payment we had made for the car had to be transferred to Hyundai in Madrid and then the car had to be registered with Almeria to get the registration plates affixed to the car. As ever we were prepared for things to run a little later, we even had the time put back for us to return our hire car just in case to 4pm on the 4th. We originally had it on hire till the 1st but we had to extend it slightly to allow for the registering of the plates for the car. As it was our preconcieved ideas about the mañana reputation of Spain were again blown out of the water when we got a call midway through May 3rd to ask us if we wanted to pick the car up a day early! This suited us very nicely as with an early start on the Friday we could take the hire car back and get into Almeria to do some home shopping too! So we went to Cuevas Del Almanzora again to be given extensive tuition on using some of the new car's special features and then i set off back in the VW Polo hire car to Turre with Stuart following in the Hyundai i40. 

Back at the apartment with our new car - Stuart posing!

The next day we got up reasonably early and set off for Almeria airport to drop off the hire car. Again I drove the VW Polo stick shift to the airport, we both went via the garage at Los Gallardos to fill up both cars. I had to return the car full at the airport, I overfilled it with fuel and I was glad to see that after driving 80kms or so to the airport it still read full so I dropped it off as is! From the airport Stuart let me get behind the wheel to drive the i40 for the first time and it was into the city of Almeria. I had driven there in the VW Polo so actually driving in the city did not bother me. What I wasn't prepared for was the feeling of disorientation from being in a larger car and having to negotiate underground car parks with narrow entrances! As it was I managed to get parked in there unscathed and we trotted off to find "Casa" the home store we wanted to visit. As it was it was about a half mile walk to the store and there was a closer car park but we had already parked so we thought let's carry on regardless! Well we got into the store and we could only see small baskets to carry purchases around in. We asked if we could have a cart and an assistant said they didn't have any except one they were using to put stock out in. They gave it up for us and we trotted off around the store choosing purchases for our new home. Eventually the cart was literally overflowing with goods. We had only got hold of maybe a third of what we needed for the dining room, kitchen, patio/pool area etc. So we will be looking for more soon! As it was when we got to the checkout there was a young man making up boxes to pack our haul. I elected to walk back to pick up the car as we'd need it outside to pack the stuff into the boot/trunk when it was done. 


This was where the "fun" started! Now I'd recently updated our TomTom to the "latest" maps but the damn thing still kept deciding to try and send us the wrong way down one way streets which was at the best of times rather distressing. There is only so many times you can get away playing the stupid tourist card! Anyway I had oriented myself with the correct exit to get out of the car park and as all around me was pretty empty I thought I'd have no problems when I got back! Of course no such luck, we were in a city after all! All the spaces around me were now full. The car park was really built with Polo sized cars in mind. I now had to reverse out in a Saloon/Sedan sized car with no spaces free either either side or behind me! Thank god the i40 comes with parking assist on it. The indicators allowed me to reverse and go forward three times to get myself into the right position to exit the car park with no scrapes - I'm loving this thing! So I drive back up the main street towards "Casa" thinking that the packing etc would have been done by now as it felt likes ages had passed. I got closer to the store and no sign of Stuart. I got to test another of the car's features then! We had been shown the previous night how to pair our mobile phones to the car and make hands free calls by speech control - very cool! I had practiced on Stuart the previous night so I made another one to ask him where he was! He was still being checked out and parcelled up! We had put in over 600 Euros of good into the cart so it was taking time to pack up!!  So I had to go round another time around the streets, this time I am doing it off piste as it were and following my own instincts to get me back to where I needed to be! It worked out and the next time round Stuart was there with a man from the store waiting to help to quickly pack the car as it was stricly speaking a no stopping zone!


We set off with the car feeling more than a little sluggish due to the extra weight now in the car! By now my first time driving the car had proved to be more than a little stressful for me and as we had filled the car with no room for any other purchases elesewhere Stuart read the signals correctly and suggested we head for home! By the time we unpacked the car and ate a late lunch I began to relax a little!