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!