Wrong Time For House Hunting
Everything on our trip went to plan. We flew into Barcelona, had dinner at our favorite restaurant, Cañete, and left the next morning for Valencia. We split the four hour drive to Valencia between the main high-speed highway and the smaller, slower coastal one. We wanted to get a closer look at all of the little towns that dot the coast. August is prime vacation time in Europe, so traffic along the coastal highway was extremely busy, especially in the small coastal towns.
We arrived in Valencia, checked into our hotel and went to have lunch with our friends. After a typical paella lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening getting a personal tour of Valencia. It’s a city we can easily see visiting often given its close proximity (1 hr) from Jávea and Dénia.
We started early the next morning with the drive to the Dénia/Jávea area, where we based ourselves at Hotel Mi AlmaZara, sitting right at the foot of the Montgó between the two towns. It put us 10–15 minutes from just about anywhere in either place, which made it an easy base for the rest of the trip.
With a few days to get oriented, we spent a lot of time just driving through both towns at different times of day, getting a feel for how long it takes to get around, checking out restaurants and coffee shops along the way. We had dinners at Da Giulia and Restaurante Portitxol in the Old Town, plus Cocina Nikkei at the hotel. Lunches at Cala Brisa Beach Club in the Port and La Fontana in the Arenal. On day trips out of town we went to Artesano in Moraira for lunch and El Palleter in Benissa, with ice cream after at Jijoneca. There isn’t one of those we wouldn’t go back to. For coffee — and we need coffee to get through the day — we loved Nostro and Caffe Milano in Jávea and Pichi’s in Dénia. Check out more about them here.
Jávea in particular turned out to have three distinct personalities depending on where you are. The Port has that coastal village feel with rockier beaches. The Old Town is all narrow alleyways and historic character, with a lot of evening life. The Arenal is the daytime social hub, with a sandy beach, wide promenade and the busiest stretch of cafés and restaurants.
One of the first things on the docket was to meet with VillaLux, the real estate agency we wanted to work with. We spent an hour with Romy and Max and knew right away they were the right people to represent us and help us find the right home. They set up a couple of showings for us to get a feel for what homes are like here. One was an older home from 1970, close in to Jávea that would need a major renovation. The other was a newly completed modern build about 8–10 minutes from town. Seeing both back to back was useful for getting a real sense of scale and layout, and how different Spanish homes actually feel compared to photos online.
With it being August and key vacation season in the EU, it was next to impossible to see more than those two houses. Agents are on vacation, houses are rented, owners are impossible to reach to set up showings, etc.
While it definitely was insightful and not a waste of time, we wish we would have planned a bit better and maybe moved our trip back a few weeks into September. We also stopped into the Pellicer & Heredia office in Jávea to introduce ourselves to the lawyers we wanted to work with, but most of the office was on vacation too, so we set up a video appointment for when we got back to the US.
It was valuable to be in the area in August anyway. It gave us a sense of what the towns would be like (traffic, crowds, etc.) at the peak of European vacation season. The good news is, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Once we move here, we’re also planning on being elsewhere during August just to avoid all of the crowds and traffic.
After a few days in the area, we continued the one hour drive down the coast towards Alicante. We looked at a few of the cities and towns in between, which really solidified our thoughts on Jávea and Dénia. The towns on the drive were a lot more crowded, density of houses was greater, traffic was much worse and it just didn’t have the same relaxed vibe.
We stayed the night in Alicante and left the next morning for Madrid to fly back to the US.
Properties viewed on this trip: House #1 — Jávea, Les Cansalades