Husband's birthday trip - 26th - 31st January
First of all we must say that this was not like all of our trips so far. It was completely different. The reason behind this is that primarily we decided to go to Spain due to the fact that it was my husband's birthday and he haven't seen two of his close friends in about a year since they moved to Spain. So,I arranged a trip to go and see Jamie and Ellie (his close friends) for his birthday.
As many of our regular followers may know, in this section we usually discuss: accommodation, transport and airline, but in this time it is going to be a bit different since we were not exactly 100% tourist mode there. Well as for airline to be honest, we used Ryanair as the flights were relatively cheap. On our way To Valencia we paid €30.28 each and on our way back to Malta we paid €28.78.
As for accommodation, we crashed at our friends place. In order to make it to their place (Alicante - Quesada) we had to catch a 20 minute underground, a 2hrs train (€16.30 per person for each trip) and a 1.5hrs car ride. We should add that unfortunately almost no one spoke English at the underground station at the Airport, which was very confusing for us. Not only that but even when we arrived at the train station, no many spoke English. On the contrary, in Alicante, many people did speak English, because that area is quite new and a considerable amount of foreigners live there. What we really liked about this place is that parts of this area looks like out of an old american western movie.
When it comes down to the standard of living and if it is expensive as a place, this is our answer. Basically their wages (pay) there are approximate to those of Malta (as we are residing in Malta right now we always compare other countries to it), BUT things like groceries are very cheap. Not only that, if we take it a step further and take a look into property,both rentals and sales are quite cheap (obviously we are only discussing this part of Spain). For example; our friends were renting a three story house comprising of a front porch and a small storage area (with private entrance), open plan (kitchen/ living/ dining), small back terrace, 2 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms (1 with a balcony), another terrace at the top and and extra storage place at the top too, which can be converted into another bedroom. Complimenting this property was a communal pool. All this for €500 per month (excluding bills). In Malta you pay much more than that for just a 1 bedroom apartment.
Eating out was also very cheap, but that will be discussed in the next blog :)
All in all, this was a great place as basically you have everything you can wish for close by, lakes, beach, stables (which we will also discuss in another blog). But then again, keep in mind that we are not really looking at this from a tourist perspective, as even for transportation, during our stay we were driven around the area - we only made use of public transport from the airport to the location and back - thus, we cannot really give our own first hand feedback about that. Although we were visiting friends we thought we should still share our experience with you and share places we have been to, both touristic sites and restaurants in the following blogs.
So all we can say now is - stay tuned to find out more about our trip to Spain! :D
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