Europe 2012 - England/Spain - The House

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We take time out from the day-to-day adventures to give you a picture of the house that we are renting. Originally built about 10 years ago, it was designed to be a mini-hotel/bed and breakfast by Cuban-American couple that moved to Spain.  I don’t know all the facts but I suspect as is often the case that the couple found that running such a venture was more work than they wanted or that they were not getting the traffic they needed (not a surprise given how hard it is to get up here!) and they converted it to a full house rental.

I’m going to guess that this about a 7 to 8 thousand foot building.  One drives up through a gate (after the terrifying assent) and the house is above you to the right.   

 

You circle around into a very large parking area capable of holding a dozen vehicles.   

 

You enter the house from the opposite side of the driveway up.  A courtyard with a small water pond and a seating area is next leading to the main entrance.  Entering the house, there is a central hallway with stairs leading upstairs. 

 On the main floor before you as you walk in is a hallway leading out to a patio overlooking the driveway you just came up, the valley, and the town.  This is a spectacular view and it is one taken at all parts of the day.  There are tables and chairs enough on that patio that we take many of our meals there with this view.

On the main floor to the left of the hallway is a living room and to the right is a very large dining room with seating enough for all 14 of us.  

 Continuing on through the dining room (going back in the direction of the parking area) is the kitchen.  This is a professional grade kitchen with huge gas stove and refrigerator and big pantry and commercial grade coffee maker (important in the morning for this group).  

 There is another small TV room parallel to the dining room.  Another hallway going toward the parking lot takes you from that room by the kitchen into a laundry room with a large washer and dryer (Maytags imported from the US because evidently the owner didn’t think the European brands had enough volume).  You can go out another door that leads you to a walled courtyard where a charcoal grill is located.  If you had turned left when you entered the front door, you would find a hallway with a door leading to two of the bedrooms.  The remaining seven bedrooms are on the second floor.  All have either full or Juliet style balconies with great views.

There are extensive grounds with various seating areas. There are fig, almond and lime trees on the property.  The lime tree in the front courtyard is particularly popular to a group that loves gin and tonics. 

Local peasant breaking open almonds using rocks

It is very easy for people to get their individual space between the outdoor areas and the balconies.  The dining room, front courtyard and back patio have tended to be the group meeting areas.  Munchkin has had a blast going from room to room and exploring the various outdoor areas.  The house was very well provisioned.  We all chip in to buy food and eat our breakfasts and dinners in the house.  

 I like to get up early in the morning (my quiet private time).  I get the coffee going, put the dishes away from the night before, go out and watch the sunrise, and then put together a European style breakfast buffet with cut up fruit, cured meats, cheeses, yogurt, cereal, and bread.   

There are a lot of folks who in their regular lives are early risers in our group but there is something about this type of environment that encourages folks to sleep late.  One is that sunrise is very late.  We are at the far eastern border of the time zone so the sun isn’t coming up until around 8 AM.

After breakfast, there is coordination of where everyone is going.  There is frequent shifting of people from one sub-group to another depending on what they want to do (or not want to do since hanging around the facility is so relaxing.  We have a lot of people who cook so no one person has to do all the work in the evenings.  We tend to make things like stews, soups, pastas, etc. that are easy to hold since some folks come in late from their journeys.  But most of the time we are all there.  Because lunch is our main eating out meal and it is so late here (from 2 to 4 PM) we tend to eat late diner.  Then we all hang out drink lots of wine and talk about what we’ve done and are going to do next.