Download or read book Dreaming of Retiring to the Costa Blanca Read This First written by Yvonne Bartholomew and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2014-07-12 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We moved to the lovely Costa Blanca North around eight years ago, and I can honestly say that we have had no regrets at all in leaving grey, cold, crowded England. Life here is as good as it gets; the weather is kind, the people lovely, the food and drink excellent, the whole lifestyle an object lesson in how life should be lived. Sounds wonderful? Take my word for it, it is! Before we moved, I thought I had done as much research as it was possible to do. I thought I had all the answers at my fingertips; and bear in mind I used to work for the British Library, so if I could not be confident that I had done my research well and thoroughly, who could? I read numerous “how to” guides, haunted the internet, made sure I kept up with all the Costa Blanca local papers on line. It was only after we had made the move, alas, that I realized that I had neglected the one, vital thing that all expats don´t understand, and it´s a real Catch-22 situation. You see, when you make the move, when you finally get over here and start settling in, you suddenly realize that whilst all that research is lovely, you still don´t have the key to living here.Why? Simply because you don´t know what the right questions are to ask! You really do have to live here to know how true this simple fact is. The manuals and the internet articles are a help, of course, but they are far less than half the story.Until you move here, you have no real idea of how differently things are done in Spain. Everything from buying to your house, to everyday living is not as is done in the UK! But you can get there, you just need to know what to ask, who to ask, and how to ask it! And the answers are here. Basically, this is a Guide to Questions I Wish I had Known About 8 years Ago, when we moved over. Together, of course, with the all important answers. I do not - not for one second! - regret making the move, but Oh! - how I wish I had had someone to tell me these secrets at the time.In any event, here it is, and I look forward to raising a glass of something nice to you when you arrive in the lovely Costa Blanca, to enjoy your well-earned retirement.Bienvenidos a Costa Blanca!

Download or read book Dreaming of Retiring to the Costa Blanca Vol 2 written by Yvonne Bartholomew and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-07-23 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My husband and I got home quite late last night, around 10:30, after enjoying a delicious 4-course meal with wine and a complimentary liqueur, which cost us 12.50 each. We sat on the terrace in moonlight bright enough to cast shadows, listening to music for a couple of hours. Before we turned in for the night, we took a dip in the pool; why not? The water temperature was still a very pleasant 32 C. This may sound like something out of one of those glossy Sunday supplement lifestyle magazines, but I assure you it is not. This is normal summer life for those of us lucky Ex-Pats who live here on the wonderful Costa Blanca. And no, we are not millionaires, nor are we in possession of huge pensions - I wish. My husband is not even a retired bank robber - the amazed response from an English tourist we were chatting to a few weeks ago, when we told him we had lived here for the last 10 years! Tempted to join us? This is what Volume 2 of "Dreaming of Retiring to the Costa Blanca?" is all about. What you need to be aware of. What the pitfalls are, and how to avoid them. Basically - together with Volume 1 - all the information you need to make life here as pleasant and hassle free as it possibly can be. Because trust me, if you just leap in to the move without doing your research, hassle is exactly what you are going to get. Spain is not England with sunshine, it has different laws. Different ways of doing things. But get it right, and there is no reason why you shouldnt join the growing tribe of Ex-Pats who know they made the right decision. Volumes 1 and 2 of "Dreaming of Retiring to the Costa Blanca are written to give you all the information you need to make the dream a reality. Volume 2 contains a mix of totally new information that has arisen from the huge amount of feedback I received after publishing Volume 1; it also contains updates on all the vast amount of legislation that concerns Ex-Pats which has been enacted here in Spain in 2015. The majority of this legislation benefits us Ex-Pats, but it is complicated and can be very confusing; I have done my best to iron out the jargon and make it comprehensible. Enjoy, and enjoy the lifestyle that waits for you here even more!"

Download or read book The Vulture on Paco s Roof and Other Tales of Everyday Life on the Costa Blanca written by Yvonne Bartholomew and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-11-14 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten years ago we made the decision that was to change our lives forever. It was now or never; if our courage failed us now, it would be never. So we went for it; we both took early retirement from our jobs and announce to friends and family that we were upping sticks and moving from our suburban semi-detached to start a new life on Spain´s glorious Costa Blanca. The reaction was the same from almost everybody. A gasp of "Oh, you lucky things!" was followed by a more cautious; "But what are you going to do with yourselves all day? You´ll be ever so bored when the novelty wears off." A few, less polite folk simply doubted our sanity, and warned us we would be back within a year. Perhaps we are lucky. The novelty has never worn off. We find as much excitement in each new day as we did on that very first day we stepped off the ´plane into glorious sunshine. Because this is the reality of the dream. We wanted no more than what virtually every wanna be ex-pat dreams of; like most people, our ambitions were modest. We wanted a new life in the sun, without the restrictions of work and weather. We had no ambitions to buy a house with a garden big enough to start a zoo in the garden. We didn´t even want to start up a Bed and Breakfast business. We just wanted to be happy in our retirement, in our new life. In our own little corner of paradise. And these memories are a reflection of that dream; the dream that came true. And for those we left behind in the UK, and especially those friends and colleagues who doubted our sanity a decade ago, I can only suggest that they take a look at this gentle amble through our lives. At memories of lions kept as guard dogs; of stolen electric meters and intransigent officials. Stories of forest fires and fiestas. Of wild boars and lollipops. And, of course, that pesky vulture on Paco´s roof....And a special "thank you" to the many kind people who have contacted me after reading my "how to" guides on moving here ("Dreaming of Moving to the Costa Blanca?" Volumes 1 and 2) asking what it is really like to actually live here on the Costa Blanca. It was their curiosity that prompted this book; for this is the most popular question I have received, from readers as far afield as the USA and Canada and the Philippines (not to mention West Yorkshire!); the information on how to do it is great, but what´s it like? Really?Enquire within.....

Download or read book Life as a North Sea Tiger and Beyond written by Terry Thomas and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2020-06-08 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Terry returned from Saudi Arabia in the May of 1978 after a year in the Kingdom, with a spring in his step and over flowing with enthusiasm, feeling that he could secure a job using the experience he had gained during his time in operations engineering in the Eastern Province of Saudi. Having cut his teeth in a demanding environment and coming out the other end full of ambition to move on in the Petroleum industry and how soon he was to discover it was not to be as easy as he first thought. Experiencing an educational system of the 50’s and the inadequacies of that system made Terry realise at an early age that things don’t come simple and if you really want something then you had better be prepared to work hard to get it. Coming back from Saudi Arabia after soaking up so much experience in the petroleum industry he expected to walk into employment without any problems. When that was not the case, it was like another wakeup call and reasserted what Terry had previously experienced, that nothing comes without an inner drive from yourself to make it happen. Originally his wife and himself had agreed that he would work in Saudi Arabia for two years but at the end of the first year and in the fifth week of his six weeks leave period after which Terry was supposed to return, they realised that neither relished the idea of being apart from each other and Terry being away from his family for another year. He was only too willing to agree that he needed to seek work nearer home and so the search began in July 1978. After many interviews and rejected contracts he finally found his dream job in the North Sea Petroleum industry and his career takes off with an engineering construction company he remained with for over thirty years. The book tells of the projects and people he was engaged with including many adventures and events that transpired over the span of his career.

Download or read book Amanda in Arabia written by Darlene Foster and published by Central Avenue Publishing. This book was released on 2010-04-13 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Be prepared to learn a lot about the culture while you follow Amanda on her adventure.”—Laura Best, author, Bitter, Sweet “What a great way for a young person to learn about a culture and to be inspired to experience other countries themselves."—Irene Butler, author, Trekking the Globe with Mostly Gentle Footsteps Amanda Ross is an average twelve year old Canadian girl. So what is she doing thousands of kilometres from home in the United Arab Emirates? It's her own fault really, she wished for adventure and travel when she blew out those candles on her last birthday cake. Little did she know that a whole different world awaited her on the other side of the globe, one full of intrigue, mystery and folklore. A world with a beautiful princess, a dangerous desert and wonderful friends. Join Amanda on her first adventure as she discovers the secrets behind The Perfume Flask. Be sure to read all the books in this exciting Amanda Travels series! 1. Amanda in Arabia: The Perfume Flask 2. Amanda in Spain: The Girl in the Painting 3. Amanda in England: The Missing Novel 4. Amanda in Alberta: The Writing on the Stone 5. Amanda on the Danube: The Sounds of Music 6. Amanda in New Mexico: Ghosts in the Wind 7. Amanda in Holland: Missing in Action 8. Amanda in Malta: The Sleeping Lady

Download or read book The British on The Costa Del Sol written by Karen O'Reilly and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Brits in Spain' first achieved notoriety during the 1980s - popularly imagined as a group made up of exiled criminals, drunken hooligans and leathery looking pensioners - welcome to 'Little England'! The British on the Costa Del Sol is the very first book to study this British expatriate community in any great depth and, through use of interviews with members of this community, paints a far more complex picture of its members. In doing so the author explodes the popularly held stereotype of 'Brits in Spain'. What emerges is a rich account of who migrates, their reasons for migration and the day to day realities of expatriate life.

Download or read book More Ketchup Than Salsa written by Joe Cawley and published by . This book was released on 2012-04-11 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Marjorie and Claudette written by Elaine Somers and published by eBook Partnership. This book was released on 2022-01-03 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Marjorie Fitzpatrick is forced to leave her teaching post in Jersey due to the outbreak of war, she finds herself working for the Admiralty in their London headquarters. It's there she meets Captain Tristan Melville, a young officer waiting for his ship to be fitted with revolutionary new guns. They fall madly in love and Marjorie agrees to marry him when he returns on his first leave on shore. On New Year's Day, Tristan takes Marjorie to the London apartment his father has given them to begin their married life. There they plan their lives together, but it's wartime and Marjorie's dreams are shattered when Tristan's ship is attacked at sea.Years later, Marjorie meets Claudette Gilbert, a teacher from Rouen in France. Claude, as she is known to her friends, is vivacious, stylish and modern, everything Marjorie is not. Their friendship takes them from a cottage in Portbradden on the North Coast of Ireland to an apartment in Paris. Marjorie is feeling alive again and the arrival of Philippe and Madeleine in their lives provides her with the family she never thought she'd have.

Download or read book International Living written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Spain a Global History written by Luis Francisco Martinez Montes and published by . This book was released on 2018-11-12 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Hispanic Monarchy was one of the largest and most diverse political communities known in history. At its apogee, it stretched from the Castilian plateau to the high peaks of the Andes; from the cosmopolitan cities of Seville, Naples, or Mexico City to Santa Fe and San Francisco; from Brussels to Buenos Aires and from Milan to Manila. During those centuries, Spain left its imprint across vast continents and distant oceans contributing in no minor way to the emergence of our globalised era. This was true not only in an economic sense-the Hispano-American silver peso transported across the Atlantic and the Pacific by the Spanish fleets was arguably the first global currency, thus facilitating the creation of a world economic system-but intellectually and artistically as well. The most extraordinary cultural exchanges took place in practically every corner of the Hispanic world, no matter how distant from the metropolis. At various times a descendant of the Aztec nobility was translating a Baroque play into Nahuatl to the delight of an Amerindian and mixed audience in the market of Tlatelolco; an Andalusian Dominican priest was writing the first Western grammar of the Chinese language in Fuzhou, a Chinese city that enjoyed a trade monopoly with the Spanish Philippines; a Franciscan friar was composing a piece of polyphonic music with lyrics in Quechua to be played in a church decorated with Moorish-style ceilings in a Peruvian valley; or a multi-ethnic team of Amerindian and Spanish naturalists was describing in Latin, Spanish and local vernacular languages thousands of medicinal plants, animals and minerals previously unknown to the West. And, most probably, at the same time that one of those exchanges were happening, the members of the School of Salamanca were laying the foundations of modern international law or formulating some of the first modern theories of price, value and money, Cervantes was writing Don Quixote, Velázquez was painting Las Meninas, or Goya was exposing both the dark and bright sides of the European Enlightenment. Actually, whenever we contemplate the galleries devoted to Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán, Murillo or Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid; when we visit the National Palace in Mexico City, a mission in California, a Jesuit church in Rome or the Intramuros quarter in Manila; or when we hear Spanish being spoken in a myriad of accents in the streets of San Francisco, New Orleans or Manhattan we are experiencing some of the past and present fruits of an always vibrant and still expanding cultural community. As the reader can infer by now, this book is about how Spain and the larger Hispanic world have contributed to world history and in particular to the history of civilisation, not only at the zenith of the Hispanic Monarchy but throughout a much longer span of time.

Download or read book Free Women of Spain written by Martha A. Ackelsberg and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With fists upraised, Mujeres Libres struggled for their own emancipation and the freedom of all.

Download or read book Tourism and Dictatorship written by S. Pack and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-10-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following WWII, the authoritarian and morally austere dictatorship of General Francisco Franco's Spain became the playground for millions of carefree tourists from Europe's prosperous democracies. This book chronicles how this helped to strengthen Franco's regime and economic and political standing.

Download or read book Country Life written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Day of the Jackal written by Frederick Forsyth and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 "New York Times" bestselling author Frederick Forsyth's unforgettable novel of a conspiracy, a killer, and the one man who can stop him... He is known only as "The Jackal"--a cold, calculating assassin without emotion, or loyalty, or equal. He's just received a contract from an enigmatic employer to eliminate one of the most heavily guarded men in the world--Charles De Gaulle, president of France. It is only a twist of fate that allows the authorities to discover the plot. They know next to nothing--only that the assassin is on the move. To track him, they dispatch their finest detective, Claude Lebel, on a manhunt that will push him to his limit, in a race to stop an assassin's bullet from reaching its target.

Download or read book Thinking in a Foreign Language written by Paul Hellgren and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study tested hypotheses concerning thinking in a foreign language. Specifically, it looked at whether (1) inferencing in a foreign language relies on mental models and propositional thinking; (2) the three stages of the theory of comprehension apply to understanding foreign-language discourse; and (3) propositional thinking manifests native language influence. The subjects were Finnish secondary school students with nine years of English language training. The study analyzed false responses to a cloze test to examine the processes underlying them. Results supported all three hypotheses, but the cloze procedure was found to be a limited tool for measuring comprehension. (MSE)

Download or read book Acid Dreams written by Martin A. Lee and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a social history of how the CIA used the psychedelic drug LSD as a tool of espionage during the early 1950s and tested it on U.S. citizens before it spread into popular culture, in particular the counterculture as represented by Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, and others who helped spawn political and social upheaval.

Download or read book Bolt from the Blue written by Jeremy Cooper and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A crystalline and poignant epistolary novel from the author of ASH BEFORE OAK.