IL Magazine: Discover the World's Best Retirement Haven for 2020 + 23 more SUBSCRIBE NOW AND SAVE 35% about subscribing to International Living Magazine 
My partner, Emma, and I initially moved to Granada in 2012. We were tired of the constant rat race of living in Los Angeles, with its traffic, helicopters, and crowds.We had researched living overseas and toyed with the idea for a couple of years, and when an illness in Emma's family led us back to her native Sweden...
Coming from Los Angeles, a bustling city that moves at breakneck speed, to a cave house in a village with less than 1,500 people in Spain’s southeastern region of Andalusia was quite a shock. I traded in being kept awake at night by police helicopters shining spotlights arbitrarily into my windows and the smoggy skyline of downtown L.A., for a much slower pace of life and clear views of the peaceful Sagra mountain range that surrounds my new hometown of Galera.