Our little home in Granada.

On Monday, the day after we returned from the beach, we contacted the friends of a friend about the little house they were renting.  It turned out that they were moving out on Wednesady!  The house was in the Sacramonte, the gitano (gypsy) neighborhood just above the Albaicin known for its Flamenco schools and restaurants.  We arranged to meet with the young Australian couple who were living there later on that evening.

The Sacramonte is a family neighborhood and is known for the cave houses located there.  These cave house are really quite incredible, some have been around for a few hundred years.  There is a very specific method that has been developed to properly excavate a cave and if done correctly, the rooms created will be safe and long lasting.  Caves also have the advantage that they remain at a constant temperature (about 25 degrees Celsius) so they are cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  Today, cave houses generally have a more traditional looking house built in front of the actual cave itself so many of the houses in the Sacramonte are much larger that they initially appear.

Unfortunately, the house we went to look at did not have a cave but it was charming nonetheless.  The house was small, around 80 square meters, the plumbing was not ideal, the water heater leaked, the oven hadn’t worked in years and the small second bedroom above the garden appeared to be an addition that had been built without permits. 

The stove worked well and it and the water heater required bottles of propane gas (another learning experience).  Of course, we fell in love with it right away, primarily because of the little private garden.  Private outdoor space is at a premium in the Albaicin and this looked perfect for us.

What now ensued was the most unusual lease arrangement I had ever been a party to.  The owner was living elsewhere in Spain, the young Australian couple were leaving the following day and their deposit covered more than the utilities but there was no way for the owner to give them their remaining deposit back because they had no Spanish bank account (neither did we of course).  To further complicate matters, we did not yet speak Spanish well enough the complete a transaction like this.  The woman who owned the house had left many of her personal belongings behind in the house.  This was not a sterile apartment rental but rather we felt that we would be moving right into a completely Spanish home.

Using the Australian lady’s Spanish we negotiated a rental rate for three months, paid in advance and that we would make up the deposit difference and buy out the Australian’s unused deposit from them.  Sound complicated?  All this based on a discussion we only partly understood but confirmed in an email in a language we couldn’t, at the time, read.  We also arranged to purchase linens, towels and pillows from the Australians for a discounted price since they weren’t going to need them in Spain anymore.

On Wednesday morning we met with the Australian couple one last time.  They had loaded their belongings in a taxi and over a quick cup of coffee we gave them the money for the share of the deposit and the other items and they handed us the keys.  We had been given the landlady’s bank account number in order to pay the rent and the rest of the deposit which we did a couple of days later.  All that was left for us to do was to move; easier said than done.

An hour later a taxi dropped us off at the bottom of the long, narrow and very steep stairs leading to our new digs with our 120 kilos of luggage.  Four hot, sweaty trips later I exhaustedly collapsed into a chair in our new garden.  We had done it.  We had found our own place to live in Granada, it had everything we were looking for, the price was right and the location ideal.  Now, we just had to learn to speak the language.