So, I think you should move to Malaga too!

NOW, I live in Malaga, happy and free prancing around daily in the sunshine. My boyfriend lives in dreary cold London, I always vowed never to get into a long distance relationship because they’re just too hard,fortunately this one is worth it!

I know better then anyone Life has one of those very annoying ways of throwing you a curve ball and expecting you to just adapt and over come it.

One perfect example, I was happily single last summer, planning my new life abroad, the idea of getting a new boyfriend didn’t even enter my head. Typically one thing lead to another and, I went from being a happily single to being very much happily un-single.

Usually this would be great news, a new relationship, all the exciting things to come, the dinners, the dates, the gifts… if only it wasn’t six weeks before I was due to move to Malaga!

Neither of us were particularly worried about it, we just spent the six weeks as if there was no deadline. I couldn’t change my plans because everything was already set in motion, and who changes their life plans for a six-week-old relationship anyway (hopefully my boyfriend isn’t reading this and if you are I totally take back that last sentence).

This trait clearly runs in the family, when talking to my sister-in-law about it, she told me the story of how she was supposed to move to Spain weeks before meeting my brother, she did however change her plans and ended up staying in London and marrying him!

I don’t think it even entered my head to change my plans, my brother has only ever given me one good piece of advice (again sorry if you’re reading this but it’s true bro) he said, make a decision and stick to it, it may end up being the wrong decision, or the harder one, but you’ll deal with the consequences and learn for next time.

So, I stuck with my decision despite so many people not having faith that I would, which always took me by surprise because surely I know myself better then anyone else, as it turns out, I really do.

Obviously you can’t go your whole life living in separate countries so something will have to change at some point in the future. I thought he was oblivious to my secret plan which was to get him to move to Spain instead of me moving back to London, which it turns out really wasn’t that secret because he knew my thought process within two weeks of us actually meeting, clearly I’m more transparent then I realise.

The first step was to invite him to Spain, let him see the sites and what I get up to on a daily basis when I’m here and he’s slaving away behind his desk in London.

When I say I live in Malaga everyone always assumes the Benalmadina, Torremalinos or Marbella areas which are completely different from Malaga city.

I try my hardest to explain the area and vibe where I live but the message never quite gets across unless you actually come and see. It’s like putting a face to a name, you can only fully experience what the other person is doing if you go there in person and see it for yourself.

Pictures and videos are great but they’re just a slight caption of life, my friends only fully felt comfortable about me moving after they had been to Malaga and experienced my daily routines.

Along came my boyfriends arrival date, clearly I was blinded by my excitement because I mistook the 50-something-year-old Chinese man walking through the barrier as my 34-year-old Brazilian/English boyfriend and it wasn’t even from that far away!

When it comes to showing people around, I clearly think I’m some kind of pro despite not too long ago saying to my friends that had come to stay “no guys I live here I know exactly where we’re going, the hotel is this way”, turns out I lead them onto the beach instead of the hotel which was in the polar opposite direction and yes it was in the middle of the night and no we weren’t wearing flat shoes, genius!

As I was saying, I clearly think I am the single most experienced Malaga tour guide (when it comes to my local bus route I really am, when it comes to anywhere else in Malaga , I’ll admit a blind donkey could find their way better then me).

As we were travelling on the bus I was happily rabbiting on about this place and that, where our local beach is, what bank I use , our local coffee shop…. the next think I know, my boyfriend pops up with “hmmm I feel like I’ve been here before , I’m sure we’re about to drive under a bridge and there’s a really nice jazz restaurant just here on the right”, and lo and behold he was correct!!!

It’s not like we live in the city centre where all the tourists go, we live up a mountain, through lots of narrow windy roads and minimal shops, it’s just not somewhere in Malaga you’d go unless you’re a permanent resident here. It turns out he came to this particular area quite often when he stayed in Spain years ago, how typical, and thanks for stealing my thunder, it’s not like I’d been planning this welcome to Malaga speech for an entire month!

This trip I thought I’d make sure it was a really relaxing trip, nothing strenuous, not expensive and very insightful. I figured if I did so, when I subtley hint at the idea of moving it wouldn’t seem so far fetched for him.

Malaga is such a great city to relax and keep busy at the same time, you can visit the tapas bars then head over to the beach for a few hours, then back to the centre to do the cultural side of things, the Picasso Museum, the Market and the Gibralfaro castle, there is so much going on you can do this routine for an entire week and never get bored!

We tried out a few tapas bars, the chiringuitos,even the local pizza place, without a doubt my favourite place to eat not just in Malaga but anywhere, is El Pimpi. I literally can’t even explain in words how amazing that place is, the salads are out of this world, I may even go as far as saying I challenge any non-salad eater to go there , taste it and not convert! If anyone has been to Camden Lock in London, El Pimpi has a similar vibe, when you walk through the inside, it’s so cosy yet filled with a unique personality and the decor is amazing!

Obviously when your boyfriend is in town he has to take you shopping if not it would be a complete waste of a trip, so we went to the Larios shopping mall which is one of my favourites, simply because everything you could possibly want is under one roof , there is a huge shop on the ground floor which reminds me of Costco in the UK, it has everything from cake to nail varnish to puzzles to blenders! I think the correlation here is I’m just very lazy so anything under one roof gets a thumbs up from me!

Naturally during our very relaxing week I’d slip in every now and again, so you know if you lived we could do ‘X’ and if you were here wouldn’t this be a nice place to live… I’m defiantly not the most subtle person, I am more of a… ‘you really need to go and change your clothes you look ridiculous’ type person. As you can imagine he got the idea that I want him to move here.

I think it may take a couple more trips to fully persuade but I think I’m definitely on the right track.

When I went back to London last week, he said out of the blue I’ve been thinking about what I’d do if I moved to Spain…BINGO! Now this may have been during a slightly drunken conversation, but the words still came out of his mouth, I’ve planted the seed one might say, let’s just see what the next few months bring !