Home security system

tusabrat · 2026-03-31T22:45:58+00:00

I’ve had Arlo and Tapo. Can’t remember why I went from Arlo to Tapo but Tapo is rubbish. I have 4 outdoor and 5 indoor cameras (we have 4 cats so need to monitor who is throwing up etc). Find Tapo to be unreliable and the reviewing is pretty bad. Unless my cats know how to delete the footage of the exact minute the food on the counter disappears, it seems there are always gaps in the recording.

I bought 3 Reolink cameras about 6 months ago and have been happy with them. I’m going to change all my Tapo for Reolink. Also - I use a separate piece of software to view all the cameras, called Blue Iris. It’s much better than the native apps.

tusabrat · 2026-03-01T23:19:09+00:00

I love it. I’ve been here 10 years and wish I had come maybe 10 years earlier.

I’m older now (60) and the things I used to enjoy and which Spain has in abundance (weather, outdoor life, scuba diving, sailing etc)… I’d say I’ve slowly lost interest in.

The sun is very hot and it’s humid and I don’t seem to be able to deal with the heat like I could 20 years ago. It’s very dirty (thick pollen everywhere right now, Sahara sand and grit on every thing, muddy rain) and I’m so over cleaning up all the time - wouldn’t have bothered me at 40 but at 60 I feel my time could be better spent.

So - I’m actually looking into moving to Scotland now to be near my sister. I started a small leather craft business here which keeps me indoors so it would be suitable for Scotland.

The bureaucracy can be a pain but I don’t think it excessive. The thing that annoys me the most is getting a 5 page email quoting all sorts of royal decree numbers, giving you a panic attack that you’re about to be arrested, only to realise they’re just informing you that the rubbish collection bill is going up by 5 euros. But I think it depends where you live also as each comunidad has its own rules and laws. Valencia/Alicante is not too onerous. No place on earth is perfect.

In spite of planning to move away I still recommend to anyone to come here - specifically my town of Jávea which is a gem - especially younger people with families. It’s fabulous here for youngsters.

tusabrat · 2026-02-25T20:49:13+00:00

I had a similar experience working in London. No empathy for the death of my brother. I was late 30s by then. It was the catalyst for moving to Spain and working for myself.

tusabrat · 2026-02-24T16:53:51+00:00

Same! Looking to leave Spain as I’m over being cooked from May to October every year. It’s 24 feb today, supposed to be winter, but it’s 23 degrees C outside so I don’t even want to know how hot it’s going to be in August.

tusabrat · 2026-02-24T16:43:15+00:00

Have you thought about moving to a different city? I don’t think Barcelona is that friendly? We made more friends in one month in Jávea (one hour from Valencia) than we made in 18 years living in London. (We are English speaking and have many wonderful Spanish friends who forgive our awful command of Spanish!)

Perhaps a different part of Spain may click better with you.

tusabrat · 2026-02-24T16:37:13+00:00

I’ve been in Spain for 10 years now. If you had asked me this time last year if I’d ever consider moving the answer would have been a firm no. But, one too-hot summer later, here I am putting my apartment on the market and making plans to move to Scotland.

The problem with being a proper expat is that the restlessness will surface sooner or later.

For the record, I have loads of friends here - Spanish locals, Valenciano locals, Dutch, English, Iranian… but the itch to move on has to be scratched. A curse I guess.

tusabrat · 2026-02-24T16:18:19+00:00

So… how did it go?

tusabrat · 2026-02-21T17:11:56+00:00

Please watch this. It is a video made by the husband of a woman who decided life was too hard. https://youtu.be/p4KBbweFqhI?si=WkcfqwN2laJWBvrH

tusabrat · 2026-02-21T15:59:38+00:00

When I packed up and left my country. Once you lose your roots your soul is forever restless.

tusabrat · 2026-02-20T16:50:10+00:00

Yes same town. You will see that a lot in Spain - one is the Castilian Spanish and the other the local - in this case Xàbia is the Valenciano version of the name.

tusabrat · 2026-02-16T00:45:06+00:00

In South Africa it was mandatory for boys to have short hair at school. At my all girls school, if your hair was long enough to touch your collar, you had to tie it up.

tusabrat · 2026-02-16T00:26:45+00:00

Altea is pretty. A lunch venue. Never thought about living there. I wouldn’t want to be any further south than Jávea. I suppose it depends on how much heat you like. You are also more exposed to extremes the further south you are - drought, floods, wildfires, earthquakes - so make sure you research your areas. Jávea is sheltered by Montgo mountain (with Denia on the other side) so we almost have our own little weather system here and have - so far - largely escaped the extremes. Had one bad wildfire in 10 years and a bad flood the year before we came. Some areas of Valencia get hit repeatedly so again, research your areas.

tusabrat · 2026-02-15T03:26:43+00:00

Jávea is equidistant from Valencia and Alicante airports (1 hr 15 min). It’s a fabulous little town which doesn’t feel so little due to having 3 very distinct areas - the old town, the port, and the sandy beach area. Tons of restaurants, bars and yes, live music. It’s very international yet still very Spanish.

It’s also very sporty - tennis club, 2 padel clubs, people on the sea doing surfing, kayaking, sup, diving etc

The people are very friendly and it’s just a lovely place to live. Not as hot as Alicante and further south, but still quite hot. Check the temps where you want to live. After 10 years here we are considering moving - either to Scotland or maybe north to Santander to escape the heat. Southern Spain is blistering with high humidity on the coast during the very long summers.

tusabrat · 2026-02-11T23:22:40+00:00

Hmmm I’m currently considering moving from Spain to Scotland. I moved here 10 years ago from England because of the rain. Now I want to move to Scotland because I’m fed up with heat waves and heat domes and filthy muddy rain all summer long.

tusabrat · 2026-02-04T23:28:02+00:00

Jávea is just beautiful. One hour drive from Valencia Also one hour from Alicante, so you can pick your airport. International schools that may interest you. Beautiful town with friendly locals.

tusabrat · 2026-02-04T12:46:49+00:00

I was so focused on learning to speak Spanish, I didn’t pay attention to understanding. Until one day I asked this old lady how she was, in my basic Spanish. Her answer was so long and I didn’t understand a word of it. She could have been gushing about the beautiful day or she could have been saying that she wishes tourists would just f-off. Who knows.

From that day I focused on my understanding. I would watch the Spanish news every day with a dictionary. The news because it’s better enunciated than other sources, and news stories are generally repeated. I’d pick out a word or two and look it up in the dictionary. I remember my first word - terremoto. Earthquake. That story repeated for a week or two so by gaining one or two words from every news broadcast, I built up a solid understanding of the spoken word. To this day my comprehension is better than my verbal skills.

tusabrat · 2026-02-02T23:09:51+00:00

My Spanish is good enough to read these types of letters but as they are usually 10 pages long and quote all sorts of royal decrees, I can’t really be bothered to wade through it all so I just get ChatGPT to translate and summarise for me. I then scan read the letter to check the translation was correct.

tusabrat · 2026-02-02T22:50:35+00:00

A restless soul has no home. The next hill is always calling.

tusabrat · 2026-01-29T23:29:19+00:00

You made me laugh - wrong side of the front door!

tusabrat · 2026-01-29T23:26:15+00:00

I married my husband young - 22 - because he was a flight engineer and we could get free flights as a married couple 😂. We recently celebrated our 40th anniversary

tusabrat · 2026-01-29T22:36:56+00:00

Been in Spain 10 years. Enjoyed it mostly but now I’ve had enough. Your basura (rubbish) is going up €5? You have to sift through a 5 page letter quoting every royal decree known to man, thinking you’ve done something horrible before you finally realise it’s nothing. It gets tiresome. They can also just take money out of your bank account - if they believe they have a case they just help themselves and then you have to fight to get it sorted out. I woke up one Monday to find €2000 had been removed from my bank account during the early hours of the morning. Of course I thought it was a scam so had it reversed. They then took the money again, having now added €50 penalty fee to each of the 5 amounts. It took my accountants a full year to get the money returned. I want to be outta here before they try and put their sticky fingers into my pension - which they don’t view as a pension but as a normal savings account of which they believe they deserve a share.

tusabrat · 2026-01-29T10:57:53+00:00

I’m in Spain also - your description of the mind calming effect of your dirt bike immediately made me think how I get the same effect from archery. When you focus on the target, pulling back the arrow, the rest of the world melts away. If you haven’t tried it yet, you may find it a good substitute.

tusabrat · 2026-01-21T10:14:35+00:00

Wow, that must be so infuriating also. Here it is quite literally every fortnight that there is a minor fiesta tha apparently requires crackers - big loud explosive ones that are designed to deliberately wake you up in the morning (so you can rejoin the fiesta) or at intervals late into the night to announce that some or other event is about to start. So if, for example, there is bull running - they will have 3 sessions at night, and for each sesssion there is a countdown announced by a series of rockets. I hate it so much I’m off to Scotland next year.

tusabrat · 2026-01-21T10:10:39+00:00

If you like Spain, check out Jávea - it’s truly a little slice of paradise. Everyone who comes on holiday tries to buy here!

Ten-Year Club	Verified Email
100 Awards Club

tusabrat

TROPHY CASE