Our New Place

On the week of the 5th of July, it still took until Wednesday afternoon (remember that in Spain, the working hours go from 9:30/10am to 1:30pm, then lunch and siesta, then they open again from 4:30/5pm til 9pm) to finally sign the rental contract and get the keys to the flat.


As it is a new place, we had to start by requesting the connection for power, water, gas and telephone. Besides, the place din't even have light fixtures: they leave it with cables on the ceiling so you put what you want.



Fortunately, the water was connected by Friday, so when we moved in that day, we had at least that very basic utility. Gas was connected on Monday (not much use, since we haven’t figured out how to start the water heater…) and it was not until Wednesday that they connected power, so we had a few days of “camping” in the flat. Fortunately, being summer, there is light until almost 10pm, so it wasn’t a big issue.

We went to IKEA and came back with beds, shelves, light fixtures and a few other things to get started. I’ve been varnishing them while Micael has been putting them together. We moved our stuff from the rented storage to the little storage room here, so we’ve started digging for things, such as our camping table and chairs and my beach chair, which make up the dinning and living room for now, together with Micael’s work table. Very trendy minimalistic style!

Varnishing

Camping cooking

The bicycles have been very useful as a means of transport to do errands and with the paniers we manage to carry quite a few things (although we had to rent a van the day we bought the big stuff). They also serve as an excuse to start a conversation: the guys from a food stall gave us samples of their food while they asked about the bikes and our traveling plans – and also gave us some advise for a nicer route back home-, a kid came and asked Micael if he could join us “in our trip” (Micael kept saying: “but we are just going to our flat, a few blocks away!”) and the other day, while waiting for Micael outside a shopping mall, a guy came and sat down with me for about 45 minutes, chatting about the cycling group here in Málaga.

First romantic dinner at our new place