"Home" is not found on a map.

Home for us, has become wherever we happen to be at any point in time.  This new life does not have a "home" anchored a specific spot on a map.  Home is a state of mind rather that a piece of real estate.  We have immersed ourselves in this new view of home and have found to our delight that we love it.

Having friends from the states come to visit was a rare treat for us.  We got to show off our love for and enjoyment of this particular new "home".

Granada was really starting to feel like home to us so we were very excited to share it with those we love.  Our friends were married in May but did not have time to take a honeymoon until September.

Brent and Paige were spending time in Europe and planned to swing by and see the Alhambra and visit with us in Granada for a day or two.

I am not sure who did the planning but they made the perfect landing in Granada arriving in the late afternoon in time for a bite to eat and a short nap before touring the Alhambra at night.  The Alhambra is always spectacular in many ways but the nighttime viewing is a special treat for those who can work it into their schedules.  

We met up the following day for a late breakfast at our favorite Irish pub, Hannigan’s and then headed out for an epic walk up into the Sacramonte and the Albaicin,

the really old areas of Granada that have become home to us.

 Suffice it to say that sharing our new "home" was a wonderful experience for us.

 We found ourselves explaining the unique history that we were learning and of course,

taking them to meet the people that have become so important in our home life here in Granada.

Enjoying the Tapas experience, sharing the new foods and wines that have become our regular fare now was a unique and thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Spending the late evening listening to our favorite Flamenco guitarist Wahdi,

over more tapas was the perfect end to wonderful day.  We can't wait to do it again!

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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.

New people, new friends, new language.

In these early days at Castila, we met Diana, an attorney from Baton Rouge who had arrived just three weeks before we did and Kelsey a vivacious 18 year old from Colorado doing her “gap year” in Spain and who, damn her, spoke Spanish fairly well.  

From Australia we had a classmate Lesley and a couple who were both physicians, another couple who had just spent 9 months in Nepal as observers in the electoral process were originally from England.

 We met university students from both mainland China and Taiwan, a woman from Singapore and a travel journalist from Hong Kong.

  Ricardo, a 22 year old from Florida who had just graduated and was headed back in the fall for grad school joined our class, and we got to know Ethan, a 16 year old high school student from Chicago whose Spanish was several levels better than ours and those are just the people we got too know in the first couple of weeks!

On Friday afternoons, after classes, the school would get everyone together for an afternoon tapas hour, occasionally it was hosted at the school with Victoria cooking but most often they would pick a local restaurant and off we would go “a tapeo”.  Most of the restaurants and bars in the Albaicin and many all over Granada are family owned and have been for several generations.  After our experience in the market at Plaza Larga we started going up there regularly to shop and also to grab a drink after class or to enjoy “comida” (traditionally the large meal of the day eaten in mid-afternoon) in one of the several restaurants in the area. 

Puerta de las Pesas (also known as Puerta Nueva) is actually a very special gate in the wall of the original city that dates from the 11th century.  It was a strong defensive position and the place where the people who came from inside the city would leave to go out to the markets that built up outside the walls and then return with their purchases.  As they passed through the gates the weight of the items that had been purchased would be verified by the authorities for the payment of taxes.  If it was found that a merchant had cheated someone (shorted the weight) then the merchant’s weights would be confiscated and hung above the gate, effectively putting him out of business.  Puerta de las Pesas in Spanish means Gate of the Weights. 

Every time we would go up to Plaza Larga we would pass through this beautiful reminder of what a wonderfully historic place we had chosen for this new beginning.  One afternoon, on the way to the open air produce market we stopped at the restaurant named Puerta de las Pesas, a family owned restaurant just beyond the gate itself.  We needed a drink and a tapa to ease the after school headache and they were offering a great “menu del dia” special of the day, for comida; an appetizer, main course, dessert and bread for 8.50 euros.  We chatted with Jose, the waiter, in our very broken Spanish and learned that the restaurant had recently changed ownership and had only been reopened for a month prior to our arrival. 

The school had activities of one kind or another almost every evening.

 We took a long beautiful hike above the Alhambra and got some of the most spectacular views of Granada, the Albaicin and the Sacramonte we had ever seen. 

This old city was really starting to capture our hearts.

We tried “movie night” and although we do understand that listening to Spanish is a great way to try to train your ear, we were so far out of our depth that we decided movies would be much more enjoyable after a few more weeks of lessons. 

Our interest in and fascination with the history and culture of this area was increasing daily, what a great choice Granada was for a first try at living overseas.