Picking up a box
Although we planned on being out in Granada in the morning, to visit both old friends, our moods were down the drain in the morning as it was an emotionally heavy day on Saturday. We canceled our first appointment to have a morning of movies and see how we felt in the afternoon. By the time it was 1 PM, we felt like we should head to Granada anyway to pick up the final box of old stuff left there as it was in their basement for so long already. No idea if that was worth staying there this many years as well as even picking it up, thankfully, the company was well worth the drive and time as it's always good to see them.
Hot day
From 32 degrees at "our" coast to 41 degrees in the Granada area was very noticeable, especially because we drove there in the middle of the day, in a black car. Nuts! It was less bad than I anticipated though, we both felt it was not that bad once the air conditioning finally started to actually cool the air in the car. At some point, we had to turn up the temperature to make sure we would not end up getting hit in the head by the heat when stepping out of the car.
Familiar areas
When we were close to where we needed to be, we first saw the familiar shopping hall "Nevada Shopping Center" in Armilla, where we used to live. My boyfriend said let's show her where we lived before we moved to Budapest. It was just a 15-minute detour, so he took the exit to drive to our old municipality square where all the magic happened. Good memories were made, some shitty ones too but mostly, I felt happier there than I felt in years. It was a good pitstop in our journey towards building again.
The statue at the square of our old town, I always thought it was cool.
The actual municipality office where we registered in our first rental together, a lot of festivities took place here.
On the left you see some greenery a bit further, and the buildings there on the left is where we used to live, one of these balconies was ours at the time, we could see everything very well from there and if you look in the background, there's the Sierra Nevada, we used to see snow on the mountain top while standing in the bloody sun on our balcony.
The other side of the building was this street, some cafes were there and the metro stop that they were testing for a long time, I didn't see any metros that day, I wonder if it's even in use right now.
Memories of our 1-year old
As it's a quite open square with no shade where we stopped, I quickly took a few pictures and jumped back into the car. While I was looking at the street where we lived, I remember our daughter running around in a walker with my boyfriend behind her to supervise. I can still see that little 1 year old running around in front of our balcony while I heard her yell from excitement being inside our apartment above. She had the cutest laugh!
We just had her first birthday in that apartment when we started to look for jobs outside of Spain as well, as things weren't progressing as quickly as we hoped. It's a good area to live in if you're not depending on working for a multinational or speak the language (read: have plenty of job options even outside your field), while otherwise, it can be hard to find something.
I remember how friendly the Spanish people were with children and I always loved that in Spain. It was no different in this area when we returned, thankfully. It's cool to see our now 7-year-old daughter have conversations in Spanish when we have tapas. The ladies working there love challenging her to see if she's getting better with the language. And when she does, you can see they're proud. These things make me feel at home, I appreciate the friendliness in people a lot, even more so after not experiencing this same feeling in another country.
We feel at home here
Even though where we live now is not our "home" I do feel very connected to Spain and I can see us living here for a long time. We have to admit that being back in the Granada area made us feel nostalgic, as it did last time when we visited the area. Back then it was discussed if we should head back to that area, and then life took over so I stopped searching for homes there.
Now I think we both lean a lot towards moving back to the area because we love how it's much greener over there, over here it's like the desert filled with greenhouses as soon as you hit the road that's basically all you see. We feel having a house with a garden is very affordable over there compared to here (at the coast) so we could expand our searches to homes with gardens and maybe even check villages outside of the city for more own outside space vs an apartment with a community pool. Over here, the desire for 3 bedrooms is nice to have, but hard to fulfill. It's not impossible but definitely more expensive than in the Granada area.
On top of that, it would be nice to be able to visit friends in that area more often because it's harder to visit when you have to drive 1,5 hours towards and than 1,5 hours back home. Thankfully for me, who will be searching for a new home, I have been granted a few other options to look for such as unfurnished and even inside the city (depending on the facilities).
First, we will enjoy the summer holidays, and then it's house hunting time.
. We are glad to see you using 