This past weekend, we had the bros’ final long holiday weekend before the end of their second school year here in Madrid. We decided to spend the weekend hopping on a the high-speed train and to look for rentals and around various areas in the Costa del Sol! Now that the bros are enrolled in an American International school in Estepona, Spain, it’s time to find our future town.

The Costa del Sol is made up of 103 tiny villages and towns and is such a unique area which each town having its own personality. For us, there were some obvious places we wouldn’t consider living long-term (like Marbella) and then we finally found the best town for us: Cancelada.

Our family did not prefer Marbella because it felt so English-speaking. We were mostly surrounded by internationals like Germans, British and Dutch speakers, and while it was nice to hear a little more English day-to-day, we are desiring and choosing to immerse in Spanish in Spain. Although Landon is now close to fluent and Griffin is improving daily, Logan and I still struggle with complete language fluency and struggle beyond basic sentences. But living in Marbella we felt would push us back on our progress and we wanted to find a more authentic area for our family in Spain.

We spent time visiting a local church (Healing Place Church in Estepona which we loved) and explored centro Estepona. It’s a beautiful area, but we wanted to try to find something that was new construction. We spent time exploring the Selwo Hills area where their school is located but that area felt way less Spanish-speaking and was very remote from everything. We then found our new home: Cancelada.

Cancelada is a gorgeous, authentic small Spanish town with a centro full of shoppes and restaurants, all super authentic and Spanish-style. We loved the beautiful, charming old homes and townhomes in Cancelada and especially loved that around the corner is the new construction flats that we’d be looking at for our relocation. Now that we have a solid plan, we’re moving forward and looking online for the best rental for our family.

We absolutely have loved our almost 2 years in Madrid, and now we look forward to putting roots down for middle and possibly high school in Cancelada, Spain in the sunny Costa del Sol, a town of Estepona, Spain.