San Cayetano, the village

You may be wondering where is these folks' penthouse???  Or where is San Cayetano????
San Cayetano is a village in Murcia, close to San Javier, not far from the coast of Mar Menor. I can't say San Cayetano is a little village, because otherwise you will think it is a hamlet with one church and one bar...


The answer is yes and no. "Yes", because there is only one church which I think it is very normal in a Romanesque European country to have only one church in a village and yes, it is of course a catholic church :-) I hope you are not surprised. But also "no", because San Cayetano has more than one bar...




We have a couple of bars, a number of places where you can have a tapas or sandwiches, one very good restaurant, a luxury bakery, a mini-market, a pharmacy, a health center and even a hairdressers.

So, San Cayetano is a very self sufficient Spanish village and, very important, a very lively village all year round. We don't have that symptom of  winter emptiness, which all the shops and cafes are closed... Thanks to the Spanish people and expats who are living here permanently, all the facilities are open all year round... you are never alone :-)

We really like “our” village. Our penthouse is in a new developed residential area on the edge of the village with enclosed car park and a nice community pool.

The village center is within walking distance, where you can find all the facilities. The residential area is a nice mixture of Spanish locals and expats. The village center itself is very Spanish, a good place to practice our Spanish :-) We like to go to those little shops, the services are excellent and people are friendly.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention, in San Cayetano we also have a very modern sport center with covered and heated swimming pool in the winter, which is something not very common in Southern Spain.






You can also play paddle tennis there. Since very recently there is also a small gym for work-out the extra kilos / pounds, we gained because all those good food and good life here. 








Opposite our penthouse is the village primary school. This brings also a lot of liveliness and activities around the area. Every morning before 9 a.m. while we are having our breakfast on the terrace, we see many parents bring their children to school, by car or by foot. It can get very crowded here. At 9, the school bell rings. 5 minutes later, the whole street is empty again and tranquility is back :-)




It is funny to see, as everywhere, there are always some children who are always coming late at school. And yes, mostly those are children who are living very close to school. As always and everywhere, people who are close by, come later than people from far away, even in Spain :-)

First weeks

More than 2 years have passed after our last blog. Many nice things happened after that. We still think it was a good decision to buy the penthouse. Although the house prices in Spain are still dropping, we have enjoyed our time in Murcia so much, that is something you can't buy with money.

Lets come back to our previous blog....... we arrived in Spain by car after 1950 km driving in 2 days, we checked in hotel 525 in Los Alcázares, had a nice dinner in town. We would get the key on the second day...however, we didn't know whether the water and electricity were connected. If not, we would have to stay in the hotel until we had the utilities.

Second day, Monday morning...I still remember, it was a such beautiful sunny day. We walked to Los Narejos beach, make some nice pictures. Although it was still early spring, there were already people on the beach enjoying the sunshine. I felt so privileged.

Around noon time, we went to our penthouse. The broker was already there waiting for us, and yes! the water and electricity were connected just that morning. We went into the house, the home planner did a good job. All the furniture was delivered. All the lamps were installed. However, there was still a lot of work awaiting for us. First of all, we gave the house a thorough cleaning, remove all the sand and dust.

After a week of hard work and buying dozens of new things, we felt here more and more home.








It surprised me how much household articles you need for a house. Normally when you leave your parents house, you got something from your parents. As time passes, you have more and more house hold articles in your house. It is a kind of “naturally growing”. But now, you need to buy everything at once and everyday it felt like I'm still missing something. Another thing is, when you are in your own town or somewhere where you are familiar, you know where to buy which things. This makes the purchasing very efficient. As we did not know Murcia well, before buying things we had to go to a lot of places to compare. You know.... go back and forth between the shops. But nevertheless, we started to know the area.

Now, after more than 2 years, we know the area pretty well. We enjoy the shopping, places to visit and we have our favorite restaurants. However, the neighborhood has so many restaurants, every time when we are in Murcia, we try some new restaurants hoping to discover some “new favorite”. Meanwhile, we love to share our knowledge about this area with our guests. We have collected the experiences in one information map “Owners Recommendation”.  Every time when we “discover” some new area or restaurants, we add it into the map with route descriptions and the GPS coordinators. So far, the map contents are growing and growing. We don't think our guests will get bored in Murcia, unless you are looking for discotheque or other wild nightlife :-)