Lifestyle

Daily life in Spain — cultural differences, routines, pace of life and the quality-of-life considerations that make Spain worth the move.

August 15, 2026

Dogs in Restaurants, Shops and Beaches: What Spain’s Law Allows

Watch two restaurant terraces on the same village street for an afternoon and you'll see it. One server greets a dog with a water bowl already in hand, the next points at a non-existent sign and shrugs. Both reactions are common and both come from the same source. A law that changed the rules in 2023 without notifying the businesses affected by it. That inconsistency is the whole story of dogs in shops, restaurants and beaches in Spain. This post will save you an awkward moment or two once you're settled in Spain.

July 9, 2026

A Field Guide To License Plates In Spain

After a while in Spain, you start noticing license plates differently than you ever did back home. Spanish and European plates carry a surprising amount of information once you know what you're looking at — and once you start seeing it, you can't "unsee" it. Here's a quick guide to what's actually on the road around you.

June 30, 2026

Concrete Walls, Hammer Drills And Tacos: Hanging Things On Walls In Spain

One of the first things you'll want to do after moving into a home in Spain is make it feel like yours. You start hanging things on walls. Some art. Put up a mirror. Mount a shelf.

Simple enough — you've done it a hundred times in the US. You grab your drill, pick a spot on the wall, press the bit in and... nothing. The drill whines, the bit spins and the wall laughs at you.

Welcome to the land of concrete walls.

March 31, 2026

Les Freses Winery: A Small Winery With An Unusual Origin

Les Freses ("the strawberries" in Valencian), sits just outside the village of Jesús Pobre on the edge of the Montgó Natural Park between Javea and Dénia. The owner acquired what was a strawberry farm in the 1970s and when the strawberry business didn't pan out, it was converted into a winery.

March 27, 2026

Spain Beyond Spain: Enclaves, Islands and Hidden Territories

Markus Trienke. https://www.flickr.com/people/102769624@N02

We've traveled quite a bit around Spain in years past, but still need to check out a few parts of the Spanish mainland such as southwest Murcia, the La Mancha area and the southwest around Cadiz. Once we are in Spain permanently, we're looking forward to doing a lot of those trips and going back to areas we've been to before to stay longer and explore further.

March 24, 2026

Adjusting To The Metric System

We learned about the metric system early on in school. We did the worksheets, memorized the conversions, passed the tests and then as most US students do, promptly forgot about it. Moving to Spain means it’s time to reach back into the recesses of our brains and get comfortable with it again.

March 17, 2026

Alicante Airport: Gateway To The Costa Blanca

As we plan our move to Jávea, we need to figure out where the best airport is for us to travel in to and out of whenever we go on trips. Luckily, there are two each about 75 minutes away. One is Alicante Airport (ALC) and the other is Valencia Airport (VLC). We want to travel through both of them to decide which might be best for us. During this last house hunting trip, we flew in and out of Alicante.

February 12, 2026

Food Culture In the EU

One of the biggest differences between food culture in the US and much of Europe is in how people shop, not just what they buy. In the EU people shop for food more frequently and in smaller quantities, often every few days.