*UPDATE -This update includes some incredibly important information that didn’t make it into the original post. I need to tell you all about Nieves and Katarina, our hosts at Fuentes de Nerja. They are an awesome team, who provided us with continuous, professional assistance during our stay. I have added my write up about them to the end of this article.
This will be a bit of a “quickie” report on accommodation available here in Nerja, in that is strictly about the unit we are currently renting. I intend to do a much broader look at the various kinds of accommodation and price points available in town towards the end of our stay.
The other quickie element to all of this is that I will be showing you the apartment we are staying at in video format. I am hoping that this will give you a more complete, and immersed look at a Costa rental unit.
I suppose my principal goal for this piece is to present a place that is known to us, and that I can throw enough photos and video images at you, that you might get a sense of what it might be like to stay in a place like this. I discuss the actual rental pricing for the apartment at the end of the article.
For the record, we are staying at a residential complex sitting on the edge of the Mediterranean called Fuentes de Nerja. For the first half of our stay, we were staying in a ground floor two-bedroom “Standard” apartment. We are now living in one of their “Superior” two-bedroom second floor apartments. I discuss rental pricing at the end of the article.
Fuentes de Nerja
But first up, I’m going to do a bit of a photo walk around the complex inside and outside to give you a sense of what it is all about. I guess you could call it a gated community because we do have to use a key to get through the gate into where all the residential units are. I don’t THINK restricted access this is very common on the Costa del Sol. I believe the reason access is limited here is because the complex is located in a very public part of town.
Essentially, there are five buildings divided into three groupings. Groupings B and C are each made up of two long, three-story buildings with an open-air hallway/courtyard between them. The hallway is where you access the apartments and where the elevators and stairs are located. I think it is very well done, as you will hopefully see in the photos. Grouping A is a single, separate building of apartments. It sits above the shared swimming pool.
“Photo Carousel” – Once again, for the “photo” portion of this article I am using a “Carousel” format to present the photos in the best possible manner. If you click on the first photo (top-left) in a grouping, the whole thing pops up allowing you to click through the collection of images in a large format. This time I am making the photos appear on the page in a larger size to see what effect that has on the user experience.
A Walk Around
As you will see in the pictures, the complex is somewhat surrounded by very public spaces. There is no issue around noise or ongoing disruptions, but visitors to the area can provide some good people watching if you’re sitting out on the terrace enjoying the day. 🙂
Videos of Our Apartment
Here you are, a firsthand look at where we are staying. Most of the units in this complex are privately owned and occupied. However, someone owns a significant number of units and rents them out for short-term stays. This is very much a major tourist area in the summer, and they would have no trouble keeping the units full during the peak season. Winter on the other hand is the off-season, so there are many rental units to choose from if you were coming over here for a winter getaway. It is a bit of a buyer’s market.
My general observation about rental apartments here is that because they’re primarily short-term rentals, the furnishings and kitchen accessories are somewhat “Spartan”. The primary source of furnishings and accessories is clearly IKEA. 🙂 We often will make a purchase or two when staying for a couple of months to flesh out what has been provided. This is true of most places we have rented on the Costa that are not owner occupied, not just Fuentes.
One of the most intriguing features is that you rarely see pictures hanging on the walls. I think I will ask our two rental contacts here why that is the case. As in, would it hurt you to pick up some inexpensive wall hangings at IKEA when you are there next? J
So here we go! The walk-through is broken down into five continuous sections, starting at the front door. It is best to work your way through the clips in order.
Our Rental Costs
I would like to finish this off with a look at our rental costs. The original cost for the Standard two-bedroom unit, for the period we had agreed to rent (February 5-March 31), was €49 per night, or €2626 in total. At today’s conversion rate that is $3864.40 CAD – not too shabby for almost two months.
The Superior two-bedroom apartment we are in now costs €52.50 per night. If we cost out the dollar amount to rent this unit for both February and March (60 days) it would be €3090 or $4427.00 CAD… $2214 CAD per month. That is incredibly inexpensive compared to the usual places Canadians go in the winter, such as Florida. And this is certainly amongst the least expensive places we have rented on the Costa, although I know other folks who have rented for much less than this.
You will see Fuentes de Nerja’s current rental prices shown in a couple of photos below. In the first photo their pricing is broken down into four different seasons, all at different price points. In a second photo, you will see that if you come for an extended stay of at least 28 days in the low season you receive an extra 30% discount. This is how we ended up in the high €40s to low €50s cost range.
This certainly does not mean that I am encouraging you to stay at Fuentes de Nerja. When we checked upon arrival, there were no apartments available for next winter for the combined months of February and March, so we will probably not be coming here again next year. This “drill down” is simply to act as an example of one type of accommodation available here and to give you a sense of the cost. As I said, I will be taking a much broader look into local accommodation in another article in the weeks ahead.
Katarina & Nieves the Awesome Business Team at Fuentes
I have been interacting with Katerina and Nieves for close to a year now. Their helpfulness began during the booking process, which ended up with us booking a place in Spain much earlier than we normally do. A lot of that was because of their very professional responses to our requests.
When we arrived, I did not quite have enough euros in cash to pay for the remainder of what we owed because of debit machine cash withdrawal limits. Their response was, no problem, check into your apartment and bring the extra money around tomorrow. I was anticipating being sent to a hotel because I didn’t have the full amount, but they handled it with grace and tact.
Typically, when you rent one of these units that are mostly used for short-term rentals, one finds a bit of a shortage of kitchen equipment. When I mentioned that we would really like to have a drip coffee machine, and some new frying pans because the ones that were in the unit were warped and burnt, they appeared within 24 hours, no questions asked.
A similar request for blankets and extra pillows was also responded to Immediately. But they really came through for us when there was an actual major problem. The air conditioner/heater stopped working. The very same day I reported it, a worker appeared. He discovered a burnt-out electrical plug, and replaced it, and we were back in business on the very same day.
Perhaps the most wonderful thing they did was to inform us that a “Superior” two-bedroom apartment had become available, and we could move into it for the second half of our stay if we so chose. We did, and have enjoyed greater comfort, and outstanding views of the Mediterranean ever since.
And to cap it all off, they suggested we enjoy a late check out from our apartment on the day we leave just to make sure we were sitting outside for a couple of hours waiting for the car to take us to the airport. Wonderful stuff.
Nieves! Katarina! Thank you so much for everything you have done for us. Your employers should be very proud of you and the excellent assistance and service you provide to their customers. A job well done!
Next Up: A road trip to Gibraltar and other points west.
