WorldTravelReynolds

Benalmadena Spain in the evening. Our view for the next 30 days.

We are a bit behind in our documenting. Its been a crazy week. I promise to post the last two stops, Alicante and Palma de Mallorca in the next couple of days and tell you a little about Benalamadena.

All our belongings for the next year. I have a feeling we may be downsizing before our next 2-5 years

This is our 3rd day here. First night we picked up a few groceries from Aldi because we thought it would be a quick stop since we have shopped at Aldi in the states before.

We rented an Opel Insignia for the drive from Barcelona to Benalmadena. Nice car. Diesel engine.

WRONG! Many items you can locate just by pictures and since the spanish language uses some english (and thanks to my 2 years of spanish in high school) we were able to get enough. Oh, and if all else fails, GOOGLE!

One of many tunnels we had to drive through to get to Benalamadena

But it was still a struggle. Items we refrigerate, they do not. Items we have in jars/canisters are in boxes or bags. But, we got just enough to get us through today. 

Miles of Solar panels on a solar farm

The apartment is cute. Small but perfect for us. And, we have IPTV, which gives us USA channels but yet to find current shows. Chuck was happy to have the “english” TV.

Snow capped mountains in Granada Spain. While driving, it was 78 degrees.

We have jet lag really bad. We have been struggling for the past few days. We made a promise to ourselves to get out tomorrow. We did venture out to the local market today and that was very helpful in helping our body and mind get motivated.

Many power generated windmills along the route.

The time change was daily on the ship and the 9 hour drive here was brutal. Chuck was a trooper. He drove the entire trip. We arrived at the apartment around 8:30 pm and the manager showed us around. We didn’t even unpack.

The design of the mountains reminded me of a mini-Grand Canyon.

We grabbed what we needed for the night and the suitcases sat out in the entrance. Yesterday morning, bright and early, we had to return the car to Malaga. Its about 30 minutes away.

Lunch for the day. It was at a restaurant inside the gas station. They served bread with every meal. Coke Zero and Quiche.

Successfully returning the car, we found the train station and after we finally convinced the attendant that we didn’t speak spanish and that we couldn’t buy a ticket, she helped us figure out how to switch the language to English. It was super simple after that.

This was the view on our walk from the train station to the apartment. Beautiful beaches.

Now why couldn’t she have shown us the first 2 times we asked her? The train trip was nice. Its a local train such as the DART rail in Dallas.

Crazy train ticket machine that was easy once it was changed to English!

It cost us 4 euros to get back to Benalmadena. We then had to walk about 2 miles up some very steep hills to get to the apartment.

Chuck getting ready to hop on the train!

After we made it to the apartment, we crashed. This was exhausting and it wasn’t even noon yet.

These signs here are so funny!

We unpacked some more. There’s not many places to store clothes here in the apartment. One of the main closets is locked because it has the owners clothes in it.

The afternoon sunset in Benalmadena Spain.

They live in Norway and visit once a year. It would be nice to have that much needed space. Most of our clothes are in cubes so we’ll probably just leave them in there. 

Chuck picked up a pizza at Aldi for us to eat when we arrived but we were so tired we didn’t even eat so we had pizza last night. What Chuck didn’t realize was he picked up a “tuna” pizza. It was ok. I guess when your’e hungry you’ll eat anything. I wasn’t complaining, just not my favorite.

Its beautiful here. Our view and the weather is amazing. A little cool in the mornings and sunny and warm in the afternoons. It gets dark around 9:30 pm. 

More to come. Stay tuned!

May God bless you all.

Chuck & Lea Ann