Retiree on the Road – Wintering in Spain 2022 – #4 (Accommodations-Part 2)

So, let’s wander a little further back in time and check out the properties we rented in 2018 and 2017. Hopefully, this will flesh out what sort of apartments are available up and down the Costa and provide you with a clearer idea of what style of apartment might be of interest to you.

I would like to think that our experience renting properties on the Costa has included a bit of a learning curve… starting in 2017 and working its way up to where we sit today. We have learned what we like and need in an apartment. And we have learned about problems that can arise. I will be investigating both of those in depth in the next installment.

In this part I do chat about what brought us to the Costa the first time, so that may be of interest to you. Along with that there is a bit of an introduction to the “speed bumps” we encountered with our first rental unit – before I get to the nitty-gritty in part three. For now, just enjoy… or not… photos of our two earliest rentals.

Our 2018 Rental

1) In 2018, we rented a lovely little apartment in Nerja from this realty company. The monthly rental fee was €1050 plus €110 to cover electricity, so €1160 ($1677.12). Unfortunately, they have not survived the pandemic and are now officially out of business. Not to worry, there are other ways to find rental companies along the Costa del Sol that can help you out. It is not as easy as using any of the booking sites like Airbnb, but it is doable.

 

2) This is the complex we stayed in. Essentially what you have is two long buildings in the foreground with a passageway between them. Past that there is a long courtyard leading down to the Mediterranean, with another two long buildings on the other side. We were in the second building in the image.

The Love-goddess is walking towards that open gate in the fence. To get to our unit we simply walked into the complex through the gate turned right into that open passageway between the first two buildings, and then almost immediately turned left into the doorway of our unit.

This photo was taken on February 1, 2018. We had been out grocery shopping – a very important first day task. It was a little cool that year throughout the first week in February. As you can see, the Love-goddess has a jacket on – over a fleece probably. This is as bad as the weather gets. 🙂 The guy in the picture is headed into one of the many restaurants attached to that side of the building.

 

3) Here we are after turning into the passageway. That is our doorway on the left.

 

4) As you enter, you pass the kitchen and proceed into the main living area. Every time I look at photos from rental units, I always ponder whether Airbnb could exist without IKEA being in place before their startup. 🙂 I do not think we have rented a single place anywhere around the world that didn’t have at least some IKEA furniture in it.

 

5) This is a a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment. The kitchen is behind the wall behind the table, and the bathrooms and bedrooms are off to the left. Sorry, no pictures of those.

 

6) The terrace. You can get a better sense of the full size of it by looking at the one in the building opposite. They are all identical.

As you can see, we had a nice view down to the Mediterranean. I would have to say that the only drawback here was it that it would’ve been better to be on the other side of the courtyard… They got afternoon sun, while we got morning sun.

For some reason, I do not have more pictures of the inside of our apartment. I can tell you that both the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen situations were very acceptable. We were very happy with the unit. We will be happy to rent in this building again if we go back to Nerja.

 

7) I may not have any more pictures of our apartment, but I do have some of another apartment in Nerja that some friends rented. But first, let’s have a look around town. This is looking east off the “Balcón de Europa” … one of the major attractions in town. As you can see, the coast up here is much more rugged than down around Marbella and Fuengirola. It is a beautiful area.

 

8) This is Burriana Beach – the longest and most popular of all the beaches in Nerja. No one long continuous beach like down by Marbella. Rather, we have a series of smaller beaches all separated by rugged coastline.

 

9) Swinging the camera to the left, we find this very built-up residential area directly behind the beach. There are many rental opportunities here, most with great views out over the Mediterranean. This was where our friends rented. I think they quite liked their apartment, but found the hilly nature of the area a little irritating… They were constantly walking up and down hill.

 

10) Their location provided a full sideways view of the Mediterranean. They even had a nice little fireplace. Typically, on the Costa del Sol floors are tiled.

 

11) It was a nice tidy one-bedroom unit with a very functional kitchen as you can see. I am not sure what they paid for it.

 

12) I took this photo as we were returning from a walk along the waterfront. We have walked as far as you can go westward and are heading back. The boardwalk here is not as well defined, spacious, or as long as the ones in Marbella and Fuengirola. Those orange rooftops in the distance are our complex and where we were headed.

 

13) February 11, 2018, home again on a beautiful day. The “restaurant side” of our building. And yes, we did sit out on this patio noshing and drinking. 🙂

 

14) Just in case you needed proof. Cheers!

 

Renting in 2017 – Our First Trip to the Costa

2017 was the first year that we spent the month of February and March on the Costa of del Sol. Thinking back, I’m not even sure I can recall how we decided that we would head there rather than going back down to Florida where we had stayed for the first few winters in retirement. It may have been that we had been in Spain many times and liked the culture and the overall experience.

I do recall that we were considering going to Portugal, as we knew a number of people who went there in the winter and who were very positive about the experience. I came up with the idea that Spain might be a better choice because Spanish would be a simpler language to learn than Portuguese. We originally planned to go to the city of Cadiz, in the very southwest corner of Spain… probably because it was close to Portugal.

This plan was altered by a casual conversation we had on a train heading from Madrid to Seville in 2015. A local woman we were speaking with told us that we should go to Marbella and forgo the idea of going to Cadiz. She said it was just a gritty port city, and that it would probably be difficult for us to manage without a thorough understanding of Spanish. She said Marbella was a better fit for English-speaking folks. We took her advice to heart.

TECNICALLY, this was not my first actual visit to the Costa del Sol. During the winter of 1974–75 I was hitchhiking around Europe and ended up spending about six weeks during the coldest months in Torremolino’s “hanging out”. But that is another story entirely. 🙂

Our 2017 Rental

15) The following photo is the building we stayed in in 2017. I just took this picture last week though as we walked past it on one of our outings. We were in a unit at the very back of the building which did have a nice view out to the swimming pool and large garden area. We paid $3000 a month. We later came to understand that this was more than we needed to pay in the area.

The unit itself was fine, but its owner did present us with an “interesting and rich rental learning experience”. There were issues! I will mention some of them later in this article and will review them in greater detail in Part 3. That said, the rental did not start off particularly well. She provided us with the name and the phone number of the person who would meet us at the apartment. I responded to her saying we would not have a working cell phone and I would not be able to call the person, so we needed a different plan in place. She never responded to this.

Being good problem solvers, we took the bus from the airport in Malaga to Marbella hoping that there would be a payphone in the bus terminal there. There was no pay phone, but the station employees let us use the phone in the office to make our call.

As it turned out, the contact person did not speak a single word of English. Using a primitive form of Span-glish I communicated to him that we were at the bus terminal, would get a taxi and come to the building immediately. That worked. As it turns out, he was the superintendent of the building. If the owner had told me that, all I would have had to do was get to the building and find him.

 

16) This is the general living area, functional but not outstanding. It did serve our purposes though, so no complaints there. I took the following two pictures the morning we were ready to leave on the last day in March. So, the place looks much more closed up and littered with our “stuff” than normal.

 

17) The drapes are closed, the outdoor pillows have been brought inside, everything is neat and tidy. Just waiting for the owner to show up before we hit the road. Please note the seating situation… I will discuss this in part three… not as a problem, but an important learning around what to look for.

 

18) The very best thing about this apartment was the fabulous terrace, which we enjoyed virtually every day we were there. We ate on the outdoor dining table, and we lounged in the sun whenever possible.

 

19) A really bad photo of the main bedroom. Note the bed size for future reference.

 

20) Your standard bathroom, similar to those in many of these older buildings. Functional, but nothing more.

 

21) And finally, a picture from the Airbnb listing. As it turned out the unit had a really good kitchen. It was very functional and was well outfitted with culinary equipment. Perhaps the best we have had.

I remember looking at this picture for the first time and thinking “why doesn’t she show the whole kitchen?” Yes, this is a lovely “artsy” shot that shows how it leads out to the terrace, but it doesn’t really provide an idea of what the kitchen is all about.

 

Next Up: Part 3, where I will provide a bit of a discussion on things we look for in apartments, and things that can/have gone wrong. You need to be prepared for speed bumps in the rental process.