We are Lex and Flora (Floortje in Dutch) and in 2007 we emigrated from Holland to beautiful Andalucía with our daughters Elise and Rosalie. From our first dinner date at a cosy little Portuguese restaurant in Amsterdam, we have been talking about emigrating. Flora had just returned from a year of studying and working as an au pair in London and was ready to discover the rest of the world, Lex had a "wild" plan to go cycling along the coast of South America once finishing his study of the Spanish language.
After a couple of years with lots of traveling, our daughters were born, so we settled down a bit, travelling within Europe with the girls until they were old enough to actually remember their traveling experiences and then we took them to South Africa. The wish to emigrate always slumbering in the back of our minds...until Lex was forced to make a career change and we knew the time was there! With our car towing a huge trailer with most of our stuff and a roof tent on top of the car to sleep in during our trip (2 adults, 2 children and 1 dog...) our adventure began and we headed to the south of Spain. On most campsites we stopped during our trip we were met with lots of curiosity...we were rather a sight! After 3 days we arrived at our destination: Andalucía!
We have been enjoying living under the Spanish sun to the fullest since then. Flora uses her creativity in every possible way, from crocheting blankets and decorations for every accommodation on the finca to making leather jewelry that she sells online. Lex enjoys working outside all day trying to control the greenery or building new additions to the finca and tries to master flamenco techniques on his guitar. The girls went to Spanish schools, followed by university and art school and have grown into young adults speaking Spanish fluently like they were born here.
After a year of living in Spain, a rescued kitten that we gave the typical Dutch name Lotje, came to stay with us, followed a few years later by Caña, a very cuddly dog, rescued as a puppy off the streets of Málaga. At the end of 2019, when we had just moved to the current finca, another animal decided to become our pet, a small white cat with a funny little black ´toupet´shaped patch on her little head and a black tail. 2022 was a year with a double bonus: a small black puppy found her way in through the neighbours fence and she now goes by the name Nala, followed by a ginger kitten, born on another neighbours property. He came to visit us with his mum and decided to stay, no matter how hard his mum tried to take him home. We named him Simba and he is best friends with Nala.