Cold feet

One of the most notable things you would spot in any given Spanish casa is lack of carpet. Anywhere.

The Spanish, at least here on the South coast, have done away with carpets. I'm not completely sure if this is a decoration thing or it is to keep mi casa y frio casa in the scorching summer months.

A desgin flaw in these tiles is that they become freezing cold in winter months. Like ridiculously cold.
Cold enough to hurt your feet.
Cold enough to make me wear these when wandering around the house and sunbathing on the balcony...(And as I work from home I do A LOT of wandering around the apartment.)

Somewhere back in the UK and old man looks for his slippers

Although they ain't all too bad...

Proud owner of a new pair of slippers. No more cold feet for me. Plus I feel about 5 inches taller in these.
3:40 PM Feb 12th from Me

But it's strange that over the past few decades that the Spanish have had this same recurring problem once a year that nothing has been done about it. I mean the Spanish like to keep their houses cool, including not having ANY central heating all this time (and they've only just discovered ovens-don't get me started on that). And it's not like this is a colder then normal winter here.

So I have only one question, how are they getting away with the cold floor problem?

Personally I suspect the Spanish have evolved these....

Penguin feet. For the coldest of cold casa floors

Now I just need to hatch a plan to get a Spanish person to remove their shoes...

air strike

we dont often see planes in these parts
perhaps now and then we might see one cross-atlantic (???) jet high above but we never hear it
in fact just after we moved here we went a few months without seeing a single jumbojet or trail

we do get a lot of other different airborne travelers

there are alot of very low flying helicopters that pass right over us

this one hung around for a little while circling

i also see, more often in the summer, low flying single/double seater small engine planes
the biggest plane ive seen was a fire plane that was skimming just over the sea

it made some pretty huge waves

i even once seen a hot air balloon parked on the beach

and we very frequently get power paragliders
like this guy who has been hanging high outside for the last 10 minutes

seen here with a winged friend

and alot of the time i wonder what it looks like from up there
above everything else but still low enough to hear all the sounds

but most of the times i wonder where did they come from and where do they plan on going next?

and ive just popped my head out the window and paraglider man is still there

End of the storm

Sat out on terrace watching the football. Lovely weather. Hope the wind stays away.
about 20 hours ago from Me

So the heavy rains and strong winds have died down now. I even had time to catch the Arsenal/Tottenham game AND catch up on some work while sat out on the terrace in some lovely weather.

It seems that it wasn't just me that was enjoying the end to the bad weather.


The seagulls were acting suspicious




This guy was topping up his tan


This ladybug was a little overcome by the good weather


These holiday makers had a great start to their cruise


And the clouds looked liked they had given up
After a week of bad weather the clouds were looking like creamy blobs resting on top of the mountain peeks.

Update on house move and more

So we are in the new apartment now and all is going well.

The place is lovely. It's bigger, more spacious. It has a big patio window/door opening out on to the terrace so we get much more light in the apartment then the last place did.

What tea time will look like.

One slight downside is the kitchen and living room are together

We wanna be together

This kind of combination is bad when you are either cooking(smell, noise) or using washing machine (noise). I'm sure I'll adjust.

And here is the new office.

I get a decent window view now

Some other good points are I've exchanged this carpack view...



For this beach/town/moutain view...



But now we can see much more of the outside, which having been "locked" up in an apartment with a tiny window and no balcony is fantastic.


The Moon and Venus


Sunrise over the beach


Fishermen packing up after a nights work


A bird taking a rest

All taken from the comfort of the balcony




In other news

We've had some strange weather the last few days.
A day or two after moving in we had a sea mist that covered the town for most of the afternoon, lasting a few hours.



It was very strange as the neighbours mentioned how they had just got back from Malaga and the sea mist was only over Nerja and no where else.

We've also been battered by storms the last few days. Non-stop rain. A few times being woken up by thunder. Once slightly after the alarm goes off so that was a strange snooze alarm.

There are also some new additions to the house.

There is a new toilet. Well a new flush system on the toilet. Rather the the old fashioned "pull up" flush handle, we now have a current fashion push button. The 'fontanero' did demonstrate for us how to "push to flush" button. Just incase we hadn't seen a push flush before. Although it's very nice of him to go that one step beyond.

The other newer edition to the house is a brand spanking new 32 inch flat screen TV.


Very pleased with the birthday present


Its very fancy and has lots of hightech stuff on it

I'll be able to play Mario Kart wide screen now and also being a modern flat screen I can connect the laptop, which means we can watch all our DVDs and stream films and American TV right on to the big screen. No more watching The Office US on a small laptop hooked up to ipod speakers for us!


Watching Seinfeld big screen style/You can compare the previous laptop screen that we used to use too.

And finally some GREAT news. I read this article in the local magazine.



It appears that one of the supermarket/deli places down on the beach front will now be having a "london style" deli counter for sandwiches. This is possibly the best news I've heard in a long time and especially looking forward to being able to pop out on dinner hour to get a proper sandwich. Rather then just using the same 5 ingredients I have been using for sandwiches for the last 11 months.