Team Leip Travels

Thursday, November 5, 2026

1 November 2026 Torreblanca: Moving On Up to a Deluxe Apartment in the Sky

We headed out of the AirBnB around 10 AM. We had to pick up the keys for the new place from a lockbox on our way at the realtor's office. Once we got to the apartment we were super lucky to snag a parking space right in front of the building. Near as we can tell, there is no garage for the building and so we were extra lucky to be able to park right in front. There are a set of six steps to get to the main gate and then there is a ramp to roll the bags up to the pool level. From there we wheeled them over to the entrance to the building where another four steps were in the way. We split up the work in the following way. I would get something out of the car, get it into the building waving up at Leslie along the way. Then I would load everything into the elevator and send it up five stories where Leslie would grab everything and bring it into the apartment. Each time I took a roller bag, I hung as many bags off of it as possible. In this manner we unloaded in only five loads. Then we drove the 15 minutes back to the AirBnB where we loaded the last bits of stuff. This load included the plants, hanging clothes, food from the fridge and food from the cabinets. We brought the empty granny carts back the AirBnB and used them to load the food into. We also emptied one of the big blue bags so we could stuff things into it and then roll them into the apartment. While I was loading the car for the second time, Leslie was staging things by the door and cleaning up as she went. This time the loading process went much faster and we were able to get all the plants and other items loaded into the car in an hour or so. We exited the building via the elevator, drove to the apartment and repeated the unloading process. I took the first load up while Leslie sat with the car because there were no spaces open. By the time I returned, she had manifested a parking spot right up front right between a couple of long term travel vans. We noticed that the vans that liked to park in this area. We finished up by 3 or so and had a great evening looking out over the Mediterranean sea.

Before I knew it we were finishing the second load and were almost done, too busy for photos

The pool was looking inviting

A big roomy diniong area

Surveying the poolscape

It was chilly so I decided to go in from the side. It was 7 feet deep here

Refreshing!

Gotta get out and dry off, it was too cold

Folks like this little jetty especially at sunset

Getting the last rays of the day

Lots to see at sunset

Our slice of the pie

It has been 4 years and 148 days since we began our Migration

Tuesday, November 3, 2026

31 October 2026 Fuengirola:Lets Get Moving!

Since we get the keys on 1 November, a Sunday, we rented a car one day earlier and parked it downstairs in the underground parking lot. The car rental places are not open on Sundays and this was a very smart way to spread out the manual work. I was apprehensive as the car had to be driven into an elevator, lowered one floor and then parked inside. To leave, one must also use the elevator and space was very tight both in the elevator and in the garage. However this time it was much easier than the last time. We were able to load the car in about 2 hours, taking it nice and slow and getting as much inside as possible. Moving day is tomorrow! We left the car downstairs for the morning and we did some cleaning of the AirBnB. We watched the folks from our balcony but Halloween must not be much of a thing and we only saw two kids dressed up in costumes. This was a small sample and we may find that it is mush more popular as there was no end of costumes in the local hyperfu market.

We put stuff in the luggage to muve it

We also finned the granny-carts

When I started loading I noticed this full bottle of wine!

It was still chilled

The loading was an exercise in spatial awareness

Using the bags to fill in the open spaces

Getting close

Closer

Full!

Forget the rear view mirror!

It has been 4 years and 148 days since we began our Migration

Monday, November 2, 2026

29 October 2026 Fuengirola: UOCAVA and Technology

One of the things we did not really plan for, before we began our migration, was the voting process. There is a law, the UOCAVA act, which is the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Any American Citizen can vote from anywhere in the world as long as they are registered to vote. That is the law in theory. In practice it is a bit harder than all that. First we had to request the ballot, download it, print it, fill it out and then from there we had a few options. We could mail it back in the mailing envelope that we did not have or we could fax it back to Broward County. Previously we were able to fax in our ballots from Canada. Australia and England. We got some funny looks as we wandered the various cities looking for faxes. Those looks got even more animated when we explained that we were faxing our ballots. After some research we uncovered why a fax is considered "safe." It is a direct end to end form of communication that does not use the internet and that is what makes it more secure. Spain on the other hand has phased out the use of faxes. This presented a dilemma, as most print shops and internet cafes still advertise fax service. Yet when we visit they say that they no longer have a fax. That was a problem and after the third attempt we decided to try another tack. We looked into internet fax services but feared that if the fax arrived from a US number it would invalidate our international status. We remembered that the clerk at the first place we visited said that he mostly ships many ballots. That is what we decided to do and we shipped both sets of ballots in the same envelope. It cost us 50 euros which is pretty steep, but what is a overseas couple to do? We felt triumphant and that lasted three days before I got an email from DHL, the shipping company, telling me that the package could not be delivered. More research led to the hypothesis that DHL will not deliver to a PO Box. So I changed the address vie the DHL portal and that did the trick. The next day it was marked delivered and two more days later we showed up as voted on the Broward County website.

Fax attempt #1

We needed to carb load after all that

Walking to another "fax service"

The pharmacies always seem to have nice tilework

Fax service #2 had flags from Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay

No faxes here!

Maybe we can spice thing us

Lots to choose from

I like the looks of these pepper powders

As we were leaving, this tiny dog was not happy with being left outside

Se we went out to say hi!

Packing up the ballots into seperate envelopes

50 euros later it is ready to mail

We passed a flower shop on the way home

So I get this text that says the package can not be delivered to the address provided

I changed the address online and waited a couple of days

It got delivered the next day

Two days later we got the good news!

It has been 4 years and 146 days since we began our Migration

Thursday, October 29, 2026

25 October 2026 Fuengirola: The Local Theater Presents Oliver

We are always on the lookout for small, local theatrical productions. We came upon a small theater in Fuengirola that is called the Theatro Salon Varieties or just the English Theater. We had already been to this theater for the talk on Art Theft and we were aware of the slightly dilapidated nature of the place. The seats were quite plush in the day. Now the patrons just sink into them. They sink in so far that it is difficult for them to get back out of the seat. Leslie wisely brought a pillow to sit on and as luck would have it we got lucky with a pair of fairly decent seats. Unfortunately that was not a guarantee of comfort, as we squirmed about trying to get comfortable. I also got a little overheated by the time the intermission came around. We headed to the WC at intermission and soom found ourselves outside cooling off. We found ourselves weighing the the enjoyment of the second half of the show against the comfort of our apartment. For the first time since we can remember we chose not to watch the second half. We might have missed some more "marginal" English accents and a song or two, but we made the hard choice and headed back to our place.

Do you need insurance for your brain?

Halloween is coming so maybe we can get a ghost from somewhere out in the world

We made it and the Oliver banner is on the outside

Fancy swan knockers at the door by the theater

On the way back we saw more activities advertised

Back at the house our flower and herb garden ig going gangbusters

It has been 4 years and 133 days since we began our Migration

Thursday, October 22, 2026

18 October 2026 Seville: Sebastian Yatra!!!

When I was teaching at the Sagemont School,in Weston Florida, the classes I was teaching advanced from algebra 1, to algebra 2, to pre-calc and then on to calculus and AP calculus. This did not happen every year, but when it did some students advanced with me. I even had some students for three consecutive years. When you add my physics class, many students were in my class for two hours in the same day. Sebastian was one of those students that I really got to know very well having been his teacher for multiple classes. He was a plucky student and joyous young man, always humming a tune and jotting down lyrics both in class and in the hall ways. He had a great voice and we talked singing as I shared with him my high school concert choir experiences. In his senior year he was in my AP Calculus class and I saw less and less of him. Little did I know he was working on something huge. In the intervening 15 years he has won a Latin Grammy, been nominated for a Oscar for his song from Encanto, acted on Broadway, been a judge on the Spanish version of the Voice, acted in and starred in telenoveles and much more! Once we got tickets, I started working my social network to see if we could get a message to him and maybe even get to meet up. First a message to his brother a month ahead of the show. Next I put out a FB post and another on Insta two weeks before the show. This time I got a response from a former student. After multiple back and forth messages, finally he says that our information was shared with Sebastian's manager and he will be in touch. So we anticipated a message from the manager right up to the day of the show but nothing. So I sent more messages. It was aa flurry of back and forth messages and low and behold a message came from the manager. We can see Sebastian around 10 PM before he goes on at 10:30. We parked ourselves at the designated meeting point by 9:45 thinking they may be early. However we were in Spain and they did not get to the venue until 10:25. We saw the van drive up but there was no time to stop as he was on stage singing five minutes later. It was a great show and the attendees really loved singing along to his songs. There were pyrotechnics, blasts of fog and lasers to top it all off. The manager did send another message saying that he will try to get us backstage after the show. With renewed optimism, we headed back to the designated spot after his set was over. We were soon joined by Sebastian's mom and about 15 other folks who wanted to see the star. We were shepherded backstage to a circle of shipping containers that had been converted to trailers. He was still in his trailer letting his voice rest. We talked to Adela, the mom, and found out that she is going to live up the road from us in Malaga. Sebastian had just bought her a nice house there and she was moving in the next day. Once he came out of the trailer, he saw me and bust out into a huge smile. I got to talk with him first, we hugged and I got the most time of all the folks that were there. To top it all off, it was his birthday and they brought out a cake!