3rd time lucky!

Showered, changed and full of expectation, at 6.00pm we walked across the road to the restaurant, (it's the pink building with the arches - this is taken from our room, so not far to walk) careful of the Spanish traffic, not that we have found it to be as bad as some people suggest, but there is a roundabout with both a local road and a dual carriage through road to negotiate, it’s difficult to know where to look first.

We walked into the restaurant and we were the first customers in. It’s absolutely huge inside and at the far end there is the most incredible oven which looks like a wood burner where they just rake some embers level and then cook the food over that, it looks about 30 feet wide. It must be incredibly hot to work there. There is the head chef sorting the warm breads and olive oils out keeping a very cose eye on everything that's going on. No-one is allowed to stand idle. It was amazing how busy they all were considering we were the only 2 people in, but it was Saturday night, they were obviously expecting a busy night.

We were shown to a table, we were actually going to eat here – oh boy, it better be good or Dan will be getting an e-mail from me first thing Monday morning, this place has come with his high recommendation. We were sat not too far from the cooking area and it was incredible to watch them prepare the foods. We are both people watchers and this place just had so much going on.

It was an interesting experience. From the UK, we get the impression that the whole of Europe is fluent in English. Not so. The waiters in this restaurant knew about as much English as we knew Spanish, it was going to be a fun evening. High on the list of things to do, learn basic Spanish! It took a lot of discussion to sort out 2 glasses of house red! I could have ordered 2 beers, but fancied trying the local wine.

Having ordered a couple of drinks, we were given our menu’s, each of which had an English version and a Spanish version. This made ordering extremely easy, we indicated the number of the dish on our English menu and the waiter matched it to the Spanish menu – a very simple idea, but worked extremely well.

Neil ordered prawns in a garlic sauce and I had a variety of cold meats, we always try each others food anyway, as a lot of people do so we had gone for 2 quite different starters. We then had a sea-food paella to share, well we were in Spain.

When it arrived it looked fabulous and I really wished I had taken my camera, and it tasted as good as it looked. There were all sorts of stuff in there, mussels, crayfish, prawns and it didn’t take us long to finish it off along with the local red wine. We finished with coffee and had to agree with Dan, it is a very good restaurant and well worth the wait. He will be getting an e-mail on Monday, but only to say thanks for making us aware that it was a good place to eat.

It had filled up very quickly and there was a huge mix of English and Spanish family groups. It made for a lovely atmosphere on a Saturday night and certainly re-enforced our views of moving to Spain for a more family orientated society.

When we visit next, I may suggest eating there again and trying something else off the menu as it’s only a short drive to the airport and fit’s the departure time quite well.

We are next over in February, I can’t wait El Patio is well worth a re-visit.

This time we can play golf……….

We had planned 2 trips to look for property on the basis that we would buy the first trip if we really found somewhere we wanted but if we didn’t we always had the November trip. Now that we had decided on the house in San Juan de los Terreros, the November trip became a golf weekend. We flew out on the Friday night to San Javier airport and were booked into a hotel in Los Alcazares, that looked really good value and had on-site parking, which was important to us as we had the golf clubs to carry to the car, but had an odd name for a hotel, 525. We arrived late to find the car parking was secure underground parking, a good start. We took the lift up to reception and walked out into a beautiful marble floored reception. We checked in and went up to our room on the 3rd floor which had 2 balconies. It was still quite warm even though it was late at night so we went out onto the balcony to have a look around and to see if we were close to anywhere that we could get a drink. Neil recognised the square outside as the one we had sat and had lunch in on our 2nd day of the inspection trip, which meant we were near to the fish restaurant. This wasn’t planned when I booked the hotel but we had definite plans to check out dinner there on the following night. But tonight, we wandered further down from the square and found an Irish bar that was open and enjoyed a couple of drinks in there.

We had planned to play 2 rounds of golf, one on Saturday morning and one on Sunday. Both were in Murcia, but we did plan to travel down to San Juan de los Terreros to have a look at the development, take a few photos and to drive around the area again.

On the Saturday, we played La Torre. It’s a Jack Nicklaus designed course with a lot of sand. A par 5 where I was in the bunker from the tee, took a good 2nd shot and ended up in another bunker, took a good 3rd shot and ended up in a green side bunker – this is hard work. The course does not allow buggies on the fairways so you have to stick to the path, and carry a selection of clubs across to wherever your ball ends up. I took 3 clubs with me, my sand wedge to get out of the bunker, my chipper as I only expected to get onto the fringe as the bunker was quite deep and my putter. I dropped 2 clubs at the edge of the green and walked round and into the bunker, looked down at my club and discovered I had got my chipper in the bunker with me, not my wedge – I really couldn’t be bothered to climb out of the bunker and walk back so I just wacked it with my chipper. It came out of the bunker and landed 3 foot from the pin, and I knocked it in for a par. It was a tough course, but there was the odd hole where it just went right.

We left La Torre mid-afternoon and decided to call at the fish restaurant (one of these days I’ll find out what it is called) on the way back to book a table for that evening. When we got there it was closed but due to open at 6.00pm, that was ok, it was walking distance from the hotel and we had time to have a leisurely shower, and relax before coming back and trying for the 3rd time, surely it was 3rd time lucky!

Let’s make a list!

So, we have a house – that’s a good start. We now start to think about all the other things we need to find out about such as what furniture will we take, what will fit, what will we need, what will work, how will we get it out there, how much will it cost, how much would it cost to buy new in Spain?

Next to think about is the car, do we take our current car, what’s involved with that, do we want a left hand drive, what’s involved in that, how does the insurance work, mot’s, registration?

Then there’s the dogs, what’s involved with taking them abroad, how do we avoid quarantine, will their health insurance be valid overseas?

What if we want to work out there, what do we need to know, what do we need to do?

How does the medical system work in Spain, what do we need to know, how do we join their system?

How do we sort our finances out, what happens with our pensions (state and private), how do we sort out a bank account, how best to move money across?

And, where are we going to play golf?

Answers on a postcard!

No, seriously, we had a lot more research to do.

I also wanted to find a fun way to learn Spanish. I had taken ‘O’ level Spanish at school 30 years ago and could only remember a few words, one of which was ‘naranja’ which means orange – why that word? No idea! But I was hopeful that once I started on a program of learning others would come back fairly quickly. And of course, there is learning the words, but you then have to learn how to put them together to construct a conversation.

Lots to do, time to Google!

Back Home:

Once home, we had a good a good talk about our weekend. We had a really good time and had got on well with both Dan and Russell. They had looked after us well and had shown us a full spectrum of places and properties as we had asked. We were very happy with San Juan as a place to live and we were happy with the house we had reserved. Being home didn’t change our minds on any of the decisions we had made. Dan e-mailed a schedule of payments due on the house so that I could sort out our finances and I asked him to recommend a Spanish solicitor we could use.

If you read a lot of the forums about buying property overseas, a lot will recommend that you find your own solicitor through recommendations and don’t use any that your agent may recommend. Well, having worked in Estate Agency for over 20 years, I have to say my views are different. If you are comfortable with your agent, and the advice they have given you, why would they recommend a solicitor that is no good? It’s in their interest to get the transaction through and to keep you, the client happy. Providing you are not being charged fees over the norm, I’m happy to take an agents recommendation. Dan put me in touch with a local English speaking solicitor and the contract for the house was sent through to them with a copy to ourselves in Spanish with an English translation of the main parts. I spoke with the solicitors’ assistant who had a perfectly good conversation with me in English. Things were moving forward.

We now needed to make a list of other areas to consider in organising our move to Spain – I could see several more nights on the internet ahead.