BENIDORM!

We stopped at Benidorm for a couple of hours on our way back from Berlin... That place is incredible, you can understand why people go there to live out their last days. Its like some kind of 70's miami-esque skyscraper utopia, in technicolour, or maybe its just because we'd been driving for 2 days, what an amazing backdrop for films....

BYE BYE BERLIN....

We drove to Berlin from Granada (yes, through most of spain france and germany!) in a hired van to move ryan out of his lovely flat, boo hoo, but alas, it was time for a change.
We had market fun with CRAZY PRICES galore at fantastic Mauer Park flea market and left with our pockets full! Although it was a cold start we were blessed with clear skies and sunshine all day, halleluiah! it was also nice to see so many familiar faces (including Katie and gang from all the way over in blighty, what a lovely surprise) and to catch up later on for supper and merry cheer!

WHAT WE'VE LEARNT SO FAR...

+driving from london to spain, then from spain to berlin, then from berlin back to spain..takes a while, but its worth the trip.
+how to make concrete
+how to make a wet room
+how to monocapa (like icing a cake but with marble dust...on walls)
+thats its not clever to fall down stairs. you end up on your back for a week.
+making a house is hard work but rewarding
+buying a cooker, hob, fridge, freezer, water heater, in fact the purchasing of any appliances could be amoung the most difficult and stressful decisions you will ever have to make in your life. Appliance virgins be warned.
+you really do miss your friends when you move to a different country, but skype is our saviour!
+the internet is a wonderful thing!

HOME SWEET HOME

Semana santa processions passed by our house...
Here is a photo of the typical attire seen at these processions!



...a little scary if you didn't know what it was in aid of.

Semana Santa in a BIG deal in Spain, the processions go on all week typically consisting of the town or village population, a full brass and percussion band, folk dressed like the picture below and of course huge shrines to mary and jesus walked through the village by 20-50 men for the hours that it takes to do their route. Sometimes we would still hear the band outside our house at 2.30 in the morning!