No longer homeless!

Well, we managed to achieve our goal of finding a place to live within our first two weeks here in Granada – thank goodness! Despite sending out several dozen inquiries and requests, we only got three responses from owners who were willing to consider a lease with a 6-month term (apparently a year is the expected minimum around here). The first place we looked as was not in our ideal neighborhood and was pretty run-down, and I was surprised at how much they were asking for rent. We told the agent we’d think about it, and I was starting to feel like we might have to take it since we were getting desperate. Then we got a response from the second agent, so we went out to look at the next place. This one was WAY outside our target neighborhood, since I apparently read the listing wrong and got Plaza Nueva and Parque Nueva mixed up…putting us ~45 minute walk away from the lively area where we wanted to be. The upside was a great price that included parking, a pool and a play area in the complex for Coco. Tempting, but not really what we wanted.

Our final response came from another agent saying that the place we’d inquired about was no longer available, but he had something else with 3 bedrooms in our target neighborhood that was a little over our budget (at least, I was pretty sure that’s what he was saying on the phone!). We set up a showing, and thank goodness it was great. Very spacious living/dining room with 2 balconies overlooking the plaza, our bedroom and Coco’s bedroom also have balconies overlooking the plaza (which can be a little noisy when we’re trying to fall asleep and everyone else is down there having dinner), guest bedroom and kitchen are downstairs facing the interior courtyard and I’m slowly getting used to the process of hanging laundry out there to dry on the lines. If Eric writes a blog post one day saying I fell out the window and splattered a few stories down, it’s probably legit.

There was some minor confusion about what the address of the flat actually was, which caused a bit of a headache since we realized that AFTER we’d gotten some residency card paperwork stamped (oops!). We’re still working on getting TV/internet/phone set up, and getting the electric and water bills in our name (perhaps not possible until we get our Spanish bank account?) but we’re feeling MUCH better about things now that we have a home again :)

The other big thing that we were able to do was find a school for Colette. It’s a 10-15 minute walk from us and has ~20 kids age 3 and under. She has only gone 1 day so far since everything in Granada has been shut down for the big feria of Corpus Christi this week. Let’s just say it didn’t go very smoothly :( She was pretty scared for us to leave her in this weird place with lots of loud kids who spoke a different language and wanted to inspect her, especially after being with Mom & Dad 24/7 for the prior 2 weeks. Fingers crossed that it will get better when we try again on Monday!

Weather here has been a BIG improvement over the chilly rain of the first days – it’s been non-stop sun with high’s in the 80’s. We took a quick 1-night road trip over to Córdoba last weekend to see their thousand-year-old mosque/cathedral…Eric and I thought it was pretty amazing, Coco just wanted to go back to the hotel pool. Tomorrow we’re going to head into the Alpujarra region of the Sierra Nevada, known for its picturesque ‘white towns’ in the hills, and explore there for a few days. Again, I’m guessing Colette will find the hotel pool to be the biggest draw :)

We’ve got a few visitors booked now for June and July, so really looking forward to seeing one of Eric’s buddies (who’s tacking a few days onto a work trip) and my sister/brother-in-law who are meeting us in Barcelona before we all pop over to Croatia and Italy. It’s probably going to sound a little bit ridiculous, but Eric and I haven’t been able to find the time to lay out our 2-month train journey that we have slated for August/September…hopefully we can get that planned in the next few days so we can start getting reservations booked before the trains are all filled up!