Our New Home - Orgiva / The Alpujarras

We've been in a different hotel the last three nights, and I felt it was time to "settle down", so we reserved five nights in a farm community called Orgiva, in a region called Las Alpujarras.  The feeling I get here is that it's like the Tuscany of Spain.  Orgiva is pretty small, with a main street, a church (of course), and some small offshoot streets with a few shops on them.  About 5,000 people live here. The area is known for its bountiful produce, including oranges, olives, lemons and figs. And it has a hippie community (mostly Brits and French) who coexist happily with the Spaniards - so we're told. We are about 1000 feet above sea level, so it's hot but not oppressive.

Our house is great. It has a pool, three bedrooms, several decks and terraces, and it is really comfortable.  Our neighbors (who also care-take the house) have orange and lemon trees, and they invited the kids and I to pick some fruit so we could make juice.  We also borrowed some olive oil from them, and had our first home cooked meal in five weeks: pasta with anchovies, garlic and oil.  The olive oil here is some of the best I've ever tasted, and it turned my otherwise ordinary cooking into a mini masterpiece.

The kids picking oranges