The photography above is of me getting my feet wet in the Med for the very first time, hard to believe that it is in January.
When you go to live in another country, you will encounter many new things, some expected and some not. Some of the discoveries will please you, and some others, well not so much.
You will read over and over again, that living in Spain is not like being on holiday in Spain, that is because it is not. The location may be the same but your experience of it will be different. Why will it be different, because you are living here now and you are not a tourist any more.
This journey of discovery that you have embarked on is not just of a new country and a new culture, but it is also a journey of self discovery.
Before my husband had said that he wanted to move to Spain I knew next to nothing about Spain. Well nothing except the stereotypical things. Things like Bull fights, flamenco, Benidorm, and that you can't drink the water.
I picked up that last little gem about the water from a cousin who had been to Benidorm in the sixties. My cousin had ended up with diarrhoea and sickness, which she put down to the drinking water.
I had never set foot on Spanish soil, and here is my husband deciding that this is where we should move to live. As you may imagine I was not too keen to move to country that I had never been to, or knew anything about from a first hand perspective. Add to this the fact that I had no desire or inclination to visit Spain back then.
My husband had been to Spain in the sixties when he was in the Royal Navy, and he assured me that I would love Spain. His assurances left me unimpressed because they were based on a matelot's fond memories of runs ashore at Dirty Dicks in La Linea. I insisted that I at least visit Spain before we made that decision.
I got my way, we booked a cheap two week package in Benidorm in January so that I could see Spain. We left East Midlands airport at around 4am. It was cold dark and sleeting heavily when we sprinted across the tarmac to board the plane to Alicante. As I sprinted towards the plane I wondered what I would find when I landed in Spain.
We arrive in Alicante at around 6.30 am, it is funny what things make the first impressions, for me it was the number of people smoking. This was over ten years ago, so things have changed, but back then, it seemed like everyone in the airport was smoking. When I say everyone, I don't just mean the people using the airport. When we went to the desk of the company we were having our hire car from, the people working there were smoking too.
Later I would see Policia Locale smoking as they directed traffic, or on the beat, I even saw people on motor scooters smoking.
Anyway I digress, immediately we walked out of the airport, we had to start taking off the layers of clothing this was so not the UK. It was a bright sunny day not a cloud in the sky and we decided to take the coast road to Benidorm.
As we drove along the coast road, I kept getting glimpses of the beautiful blue Mediterranean. I had never seen such a beautiful coloured body of water in my life. We had not been on the road more than ten or fifteen minutes, and I turned to my husband and said OK, you are right, I love it, and I can live here.
The reality of Spain challenged all my preconceived ideas about this wonderful country. I soon realised that I had let my misconceptions keep me out of a country that I now love.
I was not prepared for the beauty I encountered in this country.
In the ten years or more that we have lived in Spain I have encountered many things that I love about this country, but also I encountered some things that I did not. In my next post I will tell you about one of these unpleasant things that I encountered and that you need to beware of.
The photograph below is us relaxing in a cafe / bar on Benidorm beach after visiting properties for sale in the surrounding area.
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