I love architecture and spend lots of time taking pictures of beautiful buildings wherever I travel to. One of my favourite things when I am in Spain in La Marina is to wander round looking at all the different houses and gardens and admiring all the alterations that people have made to them.

The urbanizacion is about 30 years old now and the original properties were mainly bought by retired people or as holiday homes so that, combined with the lack of planning regulations in the early years of the development, has led to some wonderful, and some truly bizarre adaptations, of the original house builds.

This beautiful house backs on to an area where the owners have built a private pool with other neighbours.

It is amazing to think that this would have started life looking something like the house below that I photographed a few years ago and has been re-modelled into this beautiful place, I love the fairy tale castle turret.

Whatever your choice of property most people like to have a view and since La Marina is on a hill there are lots of choices for sea views or those of the mountains. This first picture was taken on my walk and the other two are of the views of the mountains from my Mum’s house, one of the main reasons she bought it as they have the most amazing sunsets over them every evening.

There are so many different varieties of house design to choose from and some gorgeous architectural features like balconies, turrets and sun terraces.

There are lots of new builds now and as the area has become more established there are lots of Spanish people who live there full – time but it still has a real mix of nationalities as there are German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Hungarian who live there both full and part-time. On my latest visit I met a lovely Danish couple who are retired and travel down in their caravan through Europe every September to spend until May in the sun, then go back for spring and summer at home.

Some of these new builds are very different to the traditional Spanish style of housing and over the last couple of years more and more of these very modern types of houses have been built. I photographed these just down the road from where I live and there are lots of different styles of these houses being constructed.

They are proving very popular with buyers, many have been bought by Scandinavian owners. You can tell this from the name plates outside as they are built to order which avoids the problem as in other areas where developments have been started and then left half finished due to a slump in the property market and the developers going bust.

One of the key things about them is the privacy, all have their own pool and high gates surrounding them, unlike the older properties with wrought iron gates they are very much enclosed.

The other very different thing is the large expanse of glass in their design, traditional Spanish architecture is designed to keep the heat out so these huge windows make the properties really stand out. If I lived in one my main concern would be keeping them clean, the area is very dusty and my small windows are permanently dirty. They are also going to need repainting quite often to keep them so white, there is a good reason most of the houses in the area are painted yellow!

Some people don’t like the newer properties, or don’t like the fact that they are being built very close to the older ones but I really like the mix of styles. Spain has a reputation for modern architecture and I am sure that what Gaudi did in Barcelona probably horrified some of the locals when he first built his apartment blocks.

I think that we should value both the old and the new, the Alhambra in Granada is very beautiful but I also love the science and technology area in Valencia as well. The picture below is from Google but the one of Valencia is mine taken a few years ago on a very hot visit when I had a sneaky dip of my feet in the water!

My house is in one of the older areas and is a very little house that has not been  modified much at all , it sits between two neighbours that have been extended to be two storey so looks very tiny in comparison but it is just perfect for me.I love the fact that it is so compact, very little cleaning to do and I have a lovely terrace to sit on.

When I bought it the house had most of the original furniture that it had first been sold with 30 years ago so I am gradually replacing things and adding personal touches. My latest buys are the cute little lizards for the front wall, some curtains and thanks to my very generous Mum and Aunt Maureen I now have a new coffee table and an indoor dining table.

One of the best things about it is the view, the houses opposite it are lovely with gorgeous gardens and the sun sets each evening over them with the most wonderful shades of pink and gold over the sea.

The view is great even from inside, I love sitting on my sofa reading or stitching and looking at this view.

I am very lucky to be able to live there, albeit part-time at the moment, and to be able to wander round in such beautiful weather, all of these house pictures were taken on the 6th January, look at those beautiful blue skies!

I hope that you have enjoyed looking at all the pictures, I am going to share some more of the lovely gardens in Spain a bit later then update you on the latest stitching finishes. As I mentioned yesterday I am itching to get creative with but first I have some marking to do. It may be the weekend but I have just been on leave for 2 weeks so I am going to have do a little bit of work before play this weekend.

Take care, see you all soon and thanks for visiting.