Mobile Internet in Spain...

Is damn expensive! We have chewed through 2 lots of 1 gig top ups in a week and a half at a cost of about 20€ at a time! So having weighed up the options we have decided to go for Wireless Internet with a company called Next here in Turre. It is unlimited and costs €24.95 a month with 3 meg download speed and 1 meg uploads so it will be good for Skype and the like. This is being installed on Monday afternoon so till then we are limiting ourselves to mobile phone access only! So no major blog posts till Monday!


Tomorrow we are seeing some houses a little bit further away to the west of Almeria. They will have to be very special to top the two current faves that we have!


Tomorrow we also get our NIE numbers too so that opens the door to us opening bank accounts, getting a car, all major purchases in fact and also utilities etc! So as you can imagine a big part of our relocation!
We have also scheduled a second viewing of our favourite house from day two of the search for Tuesday morning. There is a good chance we might have found our potential new home!


For American readers a Euro currently is $1.31 to the Euro

*Updated with Pix!* House search day 3.....

Well today we went out with two different estate agents and saw 4 different houses bring our total up to 13 viewings so far.


After the success of the last two days with a major front runner from each day we had high hopes for today. But sadly it was not to be! I don't suppose you can expect everything to be great, today didn't even have houses that could come up to the standards of some of the ones we rejected over the last couple of days! Amazingly enough there was some major red flags with all of them that made us reject them which was a shame as on the web they looked really promising.


What we have found is that obviously the Estate Agents only want you to see the great features and not stuff that might make you rule them out immediately. Some houses are being shown with 4 or 5 pictures that cannot hope to show you all you'd want to see from the homes. Plus asking the awkward questions of home owners is fun too, one today admitted they were in no man's land at the moment for their version of council tax and when they do decide which town they are part of they will be liable for 4 years back tax, cue awkward looks!


I'm not going to waste bandwidth upping pix today, that's how disappointed we are! ;) I changed my mind after getting proper internet on 16/04/12!

Mojácar Playa house - redeeming feature the kitchen!

Cramped lounge, know all agent!

Original kitchen makes up utility - tired!!!

Cramped master bedroom!

Small pool area overlooked as you can see.

Beyond that arch was a dirt track you needed a 4x4 to drive over!!

Not a bad looking house....

Nice tile and decent sized lounge leading to confused bedroom layouts!

Not too bad a kitchen.

Nice pool area, showing off it's best looking features.

Day Two of the house search....

Well day 2 of our property search and if there is one thing I can honestly say we have learn't already is to expect the unexpected! We have spent a lot of time looking online at properties. We have looked at places again and again and applied our criteria against them, looking at them from the point of view of somewhere we are going to live for the rest of our lives not somewhere to buy as a fixer upper or somewhere that needs structural work to make it into what we want it to be.


To this end we whittled down our list to take in places that have the master bedroom on the lower floor IF it was more than one level, but preferably a one level home with as few steps as possible - none preferably! Places of good build quality and well maintained obviously are a plus, a bit of redecorating wouldn't be too bad but not somewhere really tired that needed revamping in the kitchen, lighting etc as well. The thing that has come from the search so far is that what you see in pictures online can really be distorted by the angles used, lighting or just by omission! While Estate Agents want to present a property at it's best to encourage viewings the thing we already knew and have had confirmed is that seeing a place in person tells you far more than seeing 1,000 pictures online!


So far the two places we have both loved have been houses we were initially unsure of from their web listings. They photographed ok but other places photographed far better! On seeing them in person they were completely in a different league and offered different things. One so far is all about the views and probably better finish, the other is spacious, and has a more flexible layout.


Today we saw houses in the mock Moorish enclave of Cabrera that on the web looked amazing, a HUGE property in Vera that had an amazing footprint but needed so much work to make it really livable and a property in Los Gallardos that online offered a nice size and facilities but didn't photograph well in terms of kerb appeal! 

Cabrera - Lovely views! Yes!

Cabrera - Lovely views! Yes!

Cabrera - Awful Entrance! No!

Cabrera - Pool overlooking neighbours immediately below! No!

Vera - Interesting outside, nice space!

Vera - Interesting outside, nice pool space!

Vera - Interesting outside, like a mini South Fork!

Los Gallardos - the main entrance, lacks kerb appeal/imagination

Los Gallardos - the spacious lounge/dining room

Los Gallardos - a second bedroom with master features! All 3 are en suite.

Los Gallardos - the master with built in storage, has a full bathroom

Los Gallardos - a view of the spacious kitchen

Los Gallardos - the view from the garden 

Los Gallardos - the pool area, very spacious looking towards 1 bed room granny flat

Los Gallardos - the granny flat/pool room wet room

Los Gallardos - the granny flat bedroom looking into wet room

House viewings begin.....day one

Well today we went out looking at houses for the first time. To say it was a day of mixed reactions and emotions is an understatement! We went out and looked at 2 in the area of Vera that were like chalk and cheese. One was in amazing condition if a little overpriced and the other to be kind was a little tired! Following those two we went outside our search area to see a house that we both adore and still do but sadly it is just too far out. After that we came to see on paper a house that completely fitted all our wants and a few more but the downside was motorway noise!

Nice house......over priced!

Best thing was the pool!

We adore this house, it is a bargain too, just so far from civilisation!

Not an imposing frontage....

Lovely poolside area.....

A view to DIE for!!!

Jacuzzi bath.... ;)

Hydro massage shower in the master en suite... ;)
.

Lovely large kitchen

The view from the lounge is to DIE FOR! ;)

Later on in the afternoon we went to see a house that was smaller in square metres than we had set as our minimum but had other things to recommend it! To say we had our breath taken away by the view and then the rest of the house lived up to the view was an understatement! It was one of those houses that gave you the gut feeling that "I could live here", so the score card is 1 nil so far and onto day two of viewings tomorrow!

Easter Sunday in and around Turre

Papping the band as they came up the street towards the square!

After over indulging the previous night for our Indian meal we got up on Sunday and again Stuart was still feeling more than a little stuffed from the night before. So I had breakfast and he got ready to go out, then I showered and off we went into Turre to get a good spot for the parade. We were told it would all start happening at approx. 11.30pm. So we got there for about 10.50 to get a good spot. 

It's all happening now....

Well the square then apart from the band giving us and a few 
others a musical march past was pretty much deserted. The only people milling about were balloon sellers, cafe owners and the churros stand workers!


We got a place on the corner which gave us a birds eye view up the street and around and down the next, we were kind of in the corner of an L if you follow me!


Well 12 came and went, we heard distant rumblings from the band occasionally but no parade, then 12.30, then 1.00pm minutes ticking by peppered with musical punctuations from the drum section of the band. Then without warning we saw one of the carried religious platforms appear and we thought right this is it! But no another 20 minutes went by and Stuart and I said well this is Spain after all! Eventually the band appeared again and they slowly made there way past us and some of the religious platforms appeared in distant view then stopped.....By this time it was going on for 1.30pm and I was getting hungry even if Stuart was still saying he didn't want anything! So we beat an early retreat vowing to go to Lorca next year and see a real parade! Given the amount of people waiting going early was wise as I think there would have been gridlock later!

The band approaching coming up the street towards the Turre town square at approx 11.00pm

The drum section with the Churriteria behind! Think of doughnuts but not in rings!

The crowd building up down the bottom of the L

Cute little boy with toy! That suit made him look adorable!

The band finally makes it back down to us! They stop started a number of times before eventually...

They made it past us to stop and disband in front of the people at the bottom of the L

They came to a stop and filed past the distant Jesus effigy which weirdly came in from the opposite direction to all the rest!

Once we got to the stage where we decided to leave we went on to our next place which was Mojácar Playa to the local Ideal Home Exhibition which I thought might be useful for us. On the way I said I'd like to stop for lunch, Stuart still insisting he'd not have anything except an Agua con Gas (fizzy water!). I said that as I'd missed out on the Tapas the previous Sunday in Almeria that I would like a Tapas lunch and we stopped at this swish looking cafe that is on the seafront near Spanish Property Choice (one of the local estate agents we are viewing with). So I chose 3 dishes, one with cooked prawns, a lamb dish and a chicken wings one and ordered drinks for us then went to the toilet. In the meantime Stuart added half a plain toasted baguette to the order for him. When they began serving us we also got a bowl full of olives, three small Spanish sausage rolls and some mixed fruit and nuts. Then the Tapas arrived with 4 good sized chunks of bread as well. All of this lot came to the total of 7.50 Euro which is a damn good value tasty lunch!! That will be another place we will more than likely visit again!

We then went onto the exhibition and after registering and being given a nice bag to carry things around in we touched base with the Consortium Estate Agent's stand where we found out about a new property we might be interested in, then we made our way upstairs to the main stands area. We saw Spanish teachers from Vera, Next Communications for Wireless Broadband (literally around the corner from us too!), a Reverse Osmosis drinking water company, Indigo Gym in Mojácar amongst others plus we gathered lots of business cards which will help us when we get into our new home!

So another productive day, tomorrow the home viewings begin!

Easter Sunday

Yesterday we continued buying household items at an enormous ferreteria (hardware/home goods store) in Mojácar Playa.  After which we had another wonderful walk along the beach boardwalk.  We then drove into Vera and shopped at a British frozen food store called Iceland and a Spanish grocery store called Día.  The former was frequented by Brits and was much more expensive.  The latter was frequently primarily by Spaniards and had a much greater selection and more reasonable prices.  So our effort to continue to learn Spanish is paying off already.


That evening we went to a very nice Indian buffet.  The food was excellent, but we both overindulged and are paying the price for it.  Easter morning I still have enough heartburn to heat our home for a week!  Later this morning we shall drive into Turre to see the main Easter parade and then attend a special home furniture showing in Mojácar Playa.


We wish you a very Happy Easter

Saturday in Mojacar Playa

Tonight we visited Karma, an Indian restaurant by the beach and had a wonderful meal!