A Tour of My Piso

They’ve finally finished construction on my street, so I can, at long last, give you a tour of our new apartment. Aren’t you curious to see what kind of furnished apartment you can get for €350 a month in a small town in the south of Spain? Click on for plenty of photos and my first SketchUp model!

We’ll start with a quick tour of the neighborhood. What you see above is the plaza right around the corner from my apartment. My building is the red one with the black car in front of it, although we’re actually a little down the street on the left. I’m not sure what the statue in the fountain is, but it might be the Hermanos Carvajales (more will come on them later, don’t worry).

Here’s a closer picture of my newly renovated street. It’s pretty nice, actually. It’s small, and you see people all the time. Everything you need is near by – the alimentacion, the supermarket, a pharmacy, the bazar chino, etc. I also like that, since it’s such a small town, I live pretty much next door to a couple of my students. Sometimes I get to walk home with them.

And now, two stores that are kinda important that are right next door. First up, the carniceria (also known as the butcher). I go here every now and then for good meat and my dose of old women gossiping. Good times.

Y también, the fruteria. Chep, delicious fruit. It used to be that everything in Spain was bought at small, specialized shops like these. Now, it seems they’re a little less common. If I got to Mercadona – the supermarket – on a Saturday afternoon, I run into everyone. This place, even though it’s got better fruit and is cheaper, seems to only be filled with old people. Maybe I’m just picking the wrong stores? I don’t know. It’s definitely easier to buy fruit when I’m getting everything else.

And now, up the stairs…

Here’s my lobby. They love to use marble on everything…

…and when you get upstairs, you find this. Ok, maybe not this exactly. But just so you have an idea of where we’re going to go next (and also because I wanted to give it a try), I made you a SketchUp model of our apartment to explain. You come in from the stairwell to the Entry Hall, in that door right there in the middle.

Here’s the Entry Hall. Notice, if you will, the lovely old Spanish woman decoration. You’ll see plenty more of them.

Turn left and you’re in our living room. Here’s Dan, demonstrating how to use the couch.

And this is what you see when you look back. Dan and Poonam (who didn’t want her face shown because she wasn’t wearing makeup or something) are demonstrating the joys of our television by watching our favorite after-school program, Los Simpson.

Did I mention we have a balcony? We do! It’s right off the living room. This is it.

And this is what you see from it. Well, at least if you look to the right. We’ve got it all, the street, construction, the trash bins where we have to take our trash, a palm tree (Did you know dates come from palms? I didn’t. But that’s what the orange things are.), antennas… You know, a typical Spanish scene.

This is what you see if you look left. That little red store is 24 Horas con Alex, the only 24-hour store in Martos… It’s not actually open 24 hours a day, of course, but you can still get most things you need, from rum to bread to candy to a leg of ham or anything else, at pretty much any time you need it. Everyone knows where it is.

Right across the entry hall is the kitchen. It’s small, but it works. Pretty much everything is gas (cooks rejoice!).

Here’s the other side.

Inside the kitchen is, of course, a pantry. In this picture, you’ll see some bread… that’s me getting ready to make stuffing for Thanksgiving. Oranges, digestives, rice, etc. Just the basics. The supermarket we usually go to, Carrefour, has gotten rid of plastic bags, so we have a bunch of cheap reusable ones they sell there on the floor. On the middle shelf, between the digestives and the pot, you’ll find our toaster. It’s an open-faced toaster. More of an electric grill, actually, but it works. I’ve been making a lot of cinnamon toast lately, whenever we run out of cereal.

If you walk out back, you’ll find our washing machine. It’s kinda old, so it gets stuck and you have to keep an eye on the time to make sure it doesn’t run for four hours at a time. Also, the door doesn’t shut anymore, so we keep a buonbona in front of it to keep it from opening in the middle of a cycle.

What’s a buonbona, you ask? Why, this, of course. It’s a bottle of butane. We have three at any given time. One is under the stove, one is full and unused, and the other is hooked up to…

…the hot water. Every time we want hot water, we have to open the valve on the buonbona and light the pilot light. Then we’ve got to turn it off when we’re done. The buonbonas aren’t limitless, of course. Whenever we run out, we call the gas guy, who comes by and trades one out. Hence the extra.

Also in the courtyard are the clotheslines. We have to hang everything to dry. There are actually some more on the roof, but we haven’t had to use those yet.

There’s one really dark hallway running almost the length of our piso. There’s a bathroom on either end.

The small one, closer to the front door, is less useful. The shower is seriously about 2 feet x 2 feet. Not worth the effort.

We all pretty much use the other one for everything. Line for showers in the morning and all that.

About halfway down the hall is the Chair Room. We keep extra chairs and a sewing machine in there. Sometimes, it provides a decent place to study quietly, too, since it’s still sort of connected to the internet. Initially, they offered it to us as the third bedroom, but it’s too small and what would we do with two living rooms anyway?

Well, there’s only one thing left to show you.

My room! It’s pretty much the perfect size for me. And I’ve got a window, even if it doesn’t look out on anything in particular.

I bought a €3 rug so my feet don’t freeze on the marble in the morning. It’s better now that I’ve bought a heater, but still. Got everything I need right at my fingertips, including a glass of water, my bible and my travel alarm – which I need to reach quickly to toss across the room each morning.

And, of course, a desk piled high with stuff, my guitar, and a wardrobe.

Dan, Poonam, and Dietrich didn’t want their rooms included (their loss), but you can see where they are on the model.

So… that concludes the tour. Any questions?