So what’s it really like here, living the dream? Firstly I have asked the question of our
intentions – is this lifestyle choice to spend the winters in the warm or is it
to travel Europe and see as much as we can?
Well it’s both really.
So the plan is to stay here for a while and then spend a couple of
months travelling back to the UK, probably getting back late June. We both
fancy going a bit further south and seeing Granada, the Alhambra and the Sierra
Nevada before we come back this year. I
can promise you however that after doing the Ardeche Gorge in France a few
years ago, we won’t be doing much mountain driving.
Apart from Iain’s return to England and our going back on
Monday for a few days we have been here for just over a month now. We’ve never spent so long on one site before,
even on holidays we usually moved on at least after 7 days to make the most of
the time available.
Still I don’t know if we’ve been spoiled, landing here at
first or if maybe it’s like this all over Spain – I suspect the former.
Every morning when we walk the dog we are greeted by the
sight of the sun rising up over the sea and the beautiful Spanish marble
promenade and palm trees. I feel so privileged to have been dragged here to
experience all this and even first thing in the morning the temperature is
somewhere between 11 to 14 C and it is only likely to get better. The highest it’s been during the day is 23C
and everyone here is moaning about how bad the weather is. Well all I can say is that the ferries from
Santander have been cancelled due to bad weather (it’s 6C there) but we are on the Mediterranean coast so it’s
pretty good here. Quite windy though and
sometimes you need a jumper during the day – but I’m still refusing to wear a
coat.
 |
| It's official - 22C and still January - Albir seafront - just along the road from the campsite |
The campsite is full and we’re hearing that all campsites
around here are full. That’s why we have
decided to stay until the end of April, certainly until after Easter. What is the point of leaving such a beautiful
and friendly place and moving on to find that maybe we don’t like the place as
much, the pitch is awful or the campsites are full. After all, we’re not in any hurry to be
anywhere particular.
As I’ve said before we’re not really into “Brits Abroad”
stuff but we have found a nice bar that is mainly filled with British people. It’s really friendly and the campsite people
are welcomed by the ex-pats here. Gill
and Mike have been very welcoming and they are going to look after Connie the
dog while we return to England.
Iain has been playing a bit of pool at the bar, but he’s a
bit rusty and this hasn’t gone too well so far, being “7 balled” after just a
few days. So his photo is now on the wall of shame – still wearing the beret of
course. However this doesn’t bode well
for his new career as a pool hustler.
As for me, I brought so much stuff with me to while away my
time with but I have hardly touched it, I just don’t know where the time
goes. I’ve also managed to get myself an
invitation to a private gym and fitness class so at least I’m doing
something. I feel a lot fitter than when
we left as we’ve been cycling and walking quite a lot – but we could still do a
lot more.
We still haven’t cycled into Benidorm yet, the actual town looks horrible but I’d at least like to see it.
We’ve decided to wait until we get back from the UK, go out in the morning and get a full English Breakfast in Benidorm – you know just for the fun of being Brits Abroad. Trouble is that there’s no hurry to do anything so we’re not doing much at all.
We still haven’t cycled into Benidorm yet, the actual town looks horrible but I’d at least like to see it.
 |
| View from the Church in Altea, across to Albir and on the horizon (right-hand side) you can see the horrible high-rise hotels in Benidorm some 5 miles away. |
We’ve decided to wait until we get back from the UK, go out in the morning and get a full English Breakfast in Benidorm – you know just for the fun of being Brits Abroad. Trouble is that there’s no hurry to do anything so we’re not doing much at all.
 |
| Old town Altea |
We do like to eat out, preferably authentic local food, but
here there’s so much choice of different types of restaurants and we haven’t
yet found any proper Spanish tapas restaurants so we have rather been availing ourselves
of what we can find.
We understood that it would be cheaper to live here but we
can’t believe just how much cheaper. If
you look around, it’s so cheap to eat out that we’ve hardly cooked
indoors. You can get fish and chips (yes
I know that’s typically Brits abroad but they are really tasty) for 6 Euros (or
just 4 for a smaller size portion) and we went to a Chinese and had two
courses, coffee and a bottle of wine for 10 euros 40 – yes that’s for both of
us. That’s cheaper than cooking ourselves.
Again if you go to the right places, just a couple of
streets away from the seafront you can get good prices – beer at 1Euro a pint
and wine at 1Euro 50.
Wine in the supermarket is anything from 79c a litre, and it’s
pretty good, I’ve been splashing out and buying expensive wine at 1.10 Euros a
litre though as I rather like that stuff. But even that’s less than £1 a litre.
We also found that 8 cans of lemonade is more expensive than 12 cans of
beer. How can that be right? I wonder
what we’ll be filling that space under our bed with when we do come home – well
it certainly won’t be lemonade. Whiskey is about 8.50Euros as is Brandy (for
the better stuff) and having consumed some of the former, we’ve bought a bottle
of the latter, however haven’t tried it yet.
Well the time is now 4pm and Iain has gone to the bar to
watch the rugby so I’d better walk the dog, deliver her to the bar and then go
and get a bit of shopping for tea, but on the other hand, perhaps we’ll eat out
– again!!!!!!! As I said - it’s a hard life.
