Mapping Spain Monthly Recap July 2024.
Summer is tough here in Spain and I’ll admit it gets us down sometimes. August was a rough month and we didn’t do much (as reflected in this shorter than usual recap). We’re hoping September will be the start of cooler weather and us being more active.
I touch on a few things in this monthly recap: Heat / the Olympics / the cost of Airbnb and short-term stays / Travelling around Spain and seeing highlights for free / back to school (and why its the most wonderful time of the year).
Heat
Summer is wearing on us. The temperatures in Granada rarely broke outside the 35 – 40C range this month. Just relentless sun and heat. We had one night earlier this week when we had thunder and a short rainstorm in the early hours of the night. But that’s it, otherwise it’s been the same sun and constant heat.
I don’t know what’s worse, the heat or the constant sun. As Lissette said yesterday, it’s like eating your favorite cake…but eating that same cake day after day after day. It doesn’t take long until you end up hating that cake. This was our 4th summer now in Spain and each summer gets hotter and longer. Even the locals talk about it, the constant heat and the longer summers. Everyone complains.
And you can’t really do anything but stay in. During the afternoons, the streets are deserted. Nobody is out, everyone is locked up at home (I’m probably the exception – I like to do my shopping at Mercadona during siesta time because there’s barely anyone there). Around 9:30 people start to come out for a walk or to go for tapas in the neighbourhood bars.
It’s actually eerie and you wonder what it’ll be like in 5, 10 or 15 years from now. Will going out during the day be a thing that nobody does anymore? And will that expand from the summer months to maybe 6 months of the year?
I’ll be honest, sometimes I wonder if Spain was the right choice for us. Lissette has always had a hard time with heat and can feel nauseous, fainty and get bad headaches because of heat. A week ago we went to the Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) next to the Cathedral and she got dizzy and had to sit down. I can take it a lot better and won’t get sick. But I’ll get miserable and bad-tempered. It sucks.
Next summer we have to do something differently. I’m thinking of travelling somewhere in the Southern hemisphere. I’ve been telling Lissette than maybe it’s time to go back to South Africa for a few months (still the favorite place I’ve ever been). But we definitely have to do something different because we’ve not living in this heat. We’re just surviving.
The Olympics
So what to do when it’s so hot?
We watched the Olympics most of early August and are now watching the Paralympics. As mentioned in my July Recap, you get very good basic (free) cable in Spain and we had 1 channel (channel 4) that had 24 hour Olympic coverage. Channels 6 and 7 periodically had coverage that was different from Channel 4.
A lot of people trashed the Olympic ceremonies. They got a lot of criticism. I personally think the Opening ceremony was a mixed bag: there were some cringeworthy moments but there were also a few exceptional moments that really gave me goosebumps. Overall though, for me the biggest takeaway from the ceremonies is that Paris really showed itself off well. A few days ago, watching the opening ceremonies of the Paralympics: “Oh look Lissette, they’re doing it at Place de la Concorde. You can see the Arc de Triomphe in the background”. I felt I now know Paris, the Olympics really showed the splendour of the city. See this cool video of the Olympic Marathon route if you want an example.
I came out of it wanting to visit Paris. If a city hosting the Olympics manages that it means they’ve been successful.
Besides that, I love the competitions, camaraderie, and the personal stories of the athletes. Best moment that didn’t happen: the US Men’s basketball team losing to Serbia. It almost happened. Sorry, I lost respect for Lebron James and the US team the way they handled themselves. The good news is that in the past the Dream Team would blow teams away. Now the rest of the world has (almost) caught up. That’s exciting to see.
The cost of short-term lodging in Spain
It was an observation I made that became an interesting subject of conversation on our FB group.
I remarked that back in 2016 we had come to Seville and stayed 2 months in an Airbnb. The cost: the equivalent of 900 Euros per month. I further mentioned that, looking at Airbnb now, that prices for the same period and city average about 2500 Euros per month. The market for short-term lodging has turned on its head since Covid.
A lot of people responded that the cost of Airbnb has really screwed up their plans. They want to come to Spain on a scouting trip or they want a temporary home while searching for a long-term apartment. They’re finding few options on Airbnb and the options that they are finding have crazy pricing.
The reasons? It seems to stem from higher demand post-Covid as well as less supply due to more government regulations.
So what to do?
Booking.com has apartments on their site now as well and there’s more options and they’re about the same price as an Airbnb. When we travelled the Costa del Sol back in February we paid an average of 60 Euros/night (that’s an average over 10 nights).
One of the things I’ve done when really stuck is to deal with the owner directly and to cut out the middleman (Airbnb or Booking). Example: you can book an apartment on Booking.com for a few days and then talk to him/her about extending that stay and just paying him/her cash. In the case of Airbnb, you can take that off the books as well. When we came to Granada in May we did exactly that: I found an apartment on Airbnb, contacted the owner, then we did a private rental. Paid 650 Euros/month. Owners often like that: they’re being gouged by Airbnb and they like a fixed amount of income for the month. It has it risks though. In our case, we have a long history with Airbnb with great reviews so that helped her trust us. On our side: she was a Superhost and, looking at her profile, we felt that she wouldn’t disappear on us (we gave her a 250 Euro deposit). In the end it worked out.
Other than that, I don’t have any suggestions. Renting short-term (meaning 1 to several weeks) in Spain has gotten a lot harder. I’d actually say that’s the truth in a lot of places: in the past we stayed 1 or several months in places like Prague, Budapest or Split and pay the equivalent to about 1,000 Euros a month. These days, going on Airbnb, everything seems incredibly high all over Europe.
Travelling around Spain and seeing highlights for free
A lot of highlights around Spain are expensive. 6 Euros per person for Granada Cathedral, 12 Euros for the Seville Cathedral, 13.50 Euros for the Real Alcazar in Seville, 13 Euros for Palacio de Las Duenas in Seville, 13 Euros for the Mezquita in Cordoba, 15 Euros for the Prado Museum in Madrid…It all really adds up, especially if you’re several people.
What if I told you that you can see all the above (and lots more) for free? Almost all the major tourist highlights in Spain have free times. It just requires a bit of pre-planning.
We’re right now seeing most of Granada’s highlights for free. A few weeks ago we saw the Cartuja Monastery for free, 2 days ago we saw the Royal Chapel. Next week we’ll see the Granada Cathedral, the week after we have 2 other sites.
All of these sites have free entrances 1 day a week. You can go to this website and book them. This is just for Granada. Just make sure to plan at least 2 to 3 weeks in advance.
For Seville, I wrote this post on seeing the highlights of Seville while saving money. I’ve tried to keep it up to date. As you can see looking at the post, most of the attractions have free times. Sometimes you have to book them in advance, in other cases you should just show up when they have free times.
It’s everywhere in Spain. If you can get up early enough, you can see Cordoba’s Mezquita for free between Monday and Saturday between 8:30-9:30 (still the most incredible thing I’ve seen in Spain). You can see Toledo’s Catedral Primada for free between 8:00 – 9:30 Monday to Friday. See this post on seeing Toledo on the cheap. Every day, the Prado in Madrid is free during the last 2 hours that it´s open (6 – 8 pm Monday to Saturday).
Don’t ever assume you can’t see something for free. Do your research. You might be surprised to find that you can save some money.
I love September (and back to school!)
I’ve always loved September. In another life I was a father and summers were always expensive and complicated. Summer camps, holidays (which meant competing with everyone else going on holidays), everywhere was always crowded.
So when September came I was happy. The kids went back to school and things got back to normal. In Montreal the weather started cooling off and the leaves started changing their colours (fall is the most beautiful time of year in Eastern Canada).
Thinking of the above, I had to dig up this old commercial that always made me laugh.
For us September means the beginning of travelling around Spain again. Hopefully, in a few weeks, temperatures will start dipping just a bit. Then we’ll start exploring some of the small towns in the region, places like Montefrio, Salobrena, Guadix…
That – and cooler temperatures – are something we look forward to.
Personally I think central/central-northern Europe is the perfect place to live weather wise, if one has to stay in a single location. Also it’s close to everywhere else in Europe and usually not far from great nature, whether forests or mountains. I’m thinking about middle or southern Germany, Czechia, northern France etc. Warm summers, occasionally snow in the winter, four different seasons, not too dark etc.
I can’t really understand the appeal of living in southern Europe year round nowadays, when the summers are so terrible and the nature is mostly burnt grass and dust… I live at the very southern tip of Sweden which has excellent weather May-October but is dreary in the winter with gray skies, dark evenings and cold winds (and no snow unlike the rest of Sweden). The ultimate setup if one could have two locations might be Scandinavia from mid-May until late October and southern Europe from November until mid-May. I’ve been beating the drum for Scandinavia as a summer holiday destination and every year I see more and more tourists in my town. Many people don’t realize that we have long, sandy beaches and vineyards here and the weather usually stays around 20-27 degrees C. A perfect refuge from the excessive heat of southern Europe.
Thank you RJA!
My IT guy has to adjust the settings because you ended up in my spam box!
You are very right. Central Europe has very tolerable summers, we spent a lot of time in Prague during the first years of our full-time travels and summers there were great. Winters get grey and wet and a bit depressing. I´d actually prefer snow which lightens it up, I remember the first time I saw snow in Prague and was so beautiful.
There´s a lot of great things about Spain but (Lissette and I were just talking about it) we’re going to make other plans next year. July and August are horrible. June and September are fine – over the last couple weeks has really cooled down here, especially at night and we’ve actually had to pull out the blankets. But next summer we`re going somewhere cool and I’m trying to convince Lissette that it’s finally time to explore the bottom half of South America.
You’re nearly there, Frank! Our own summer has ended but it was the first year that we regretted not installing air-conditioning at home. It requires complicated rewiring, etc once the interiors are already done. Now we’re dealing with floods and massive traffic jams, so when one thing ends, the next begins. Don’t know how things will be if it gets worse every year.
I too liked a lot of what I could catch on the Olympics. We don’t have quality broadcasts for that here but I loved seeing places in Paris that we’d been to. It’s my favorite big city anywhere in the world, hands down, so I want to revisit it at some point. When it came to the events, India was not much better than previous years 🙁 I loved how the arrogant American men were one upped by American women, though :-))
Spain is good for the free hours. We could only manage to take advantage of them on one day in Asturias. We were leaving the Prado when people were queuing up for the free hours and I wouldn’t have been able to do that. The line snaked to almost outside the perimeter!
Hi Claudine! I don´t know how this ended up in my spam box.
You get the feeling that the whole world is going to shit: fires in the American/Canadian west, flooding in central Europe and SE Asia, wars breaking out with no end in sights, increasing hate….the world is a mess.
We barely saw Indian athletes at the olympics. I guess there´s not much investment in sport?
If you ever come back to Granada, the Monastery de Jeronimos is incredible. Had never heard of it but went last week with our free booking. Just fabulous.
Thanks for this. Very informative as usual. We had perfect travelling (and biking weather) in January, February into March of last year in Andalucia. Lots of sun and warmth during the days, cooler at night & in the early morning, little wind or rain. We were told it was a bit warmer than usual. Our Cordoba hosts told us that after 20 years they were contemplating going back to France as they just could not take the ever hotter summers with young children – 50C! Only winter travel in Spain for us – and so many other benefits – fewer tourists & lower prices.
100% agree Jennifer. It´s usually the time we take a longer vacation around Spain. Prices are good, temperatures perfect and fewer tourists.