So we moved to Spain, and in this post, we share how our life looks here for a day. Each day can be different, but as we decide to stay in Spain for the longer haul, life here is becoming much different than just doing daily tours.
📍 Want to try the digital nomad life?
Win a 30-Day Workation in Mexico City, one of the most popular digital nomad hubs in the world. 30 days of accommodation with free flights.
Check Safetywing Nomad Workation here and join for free for a chance to win!
A Little Background About Us
If you’re new to this blog, hi there. We are Ruben and Rachel of Gamintraveler, and we’ve been traveling and writing together since 2015. We consider ourselves lucky to be working freelance, self-employed, and living simply, and as we love to travel, we continue to create a life that will help us support that. While Ruben has been to 90+ countries, together, we’ve traveled to about 20 countries and three continents. And this year, the wind of life blew us.
So let’s get started.
Morning Routine
Our day starts early but manageable, with no alarm clocks—just the natural light streaming through our windows. We savor a slow morning with cups of freshly brewed coffee on our balcony. Mornings also mean a quick, fun Spanish lesson with our son, who’s gearing up for his first experience in a Spanish school after years of homeschooling. We wake up at seven because we’re planning for a packed day on this day.
Once we’re caffeinated and ready, we start our day “eating the frog.” We do our essential morning work to ensure we’re productive. A typical day will consist of a few hours of focused work on the blog. This will usually involve a bit of everything—working on a blog series, discussing a few SEO ideas, and email work for writing assignments on a few brands we work with.
Our little one, Han, is still technically homeschooled (until next week), so he receives a few lessons and videos to study.
Breakfast
By 9 AM, we do a quick break to have breakfast together and then plan the rest of the day. After this, we usually return to work, and I (Rachel) do some cleaning. I cleaned the house because today we’re getting a visit from Ruben’s father!
I did the laundry as well today. Even the slow days in Spain are much faster than how we do it when we’re in Asia or full touring and traveling mode.
Family Time
Family visits are the main reason we stay close to Madrid for the next few months. Because Han got into a minor accident with his roller skates the other week, his activity has been highly lessened, so we’re grateful for the family visits we can have. We’ve been ensuring the next few weeks will also be full of walks, which is essential for everyone’s well-being.
📍 Want to try the digital nomad life?
Win a 30-Day Workation in Mexico City, one of the most popular digital nomad hubs in the world. 30 days of accommodation with free flights.
Check Safetywing Nomad Workation here and join for free for a chance to win!
Visiting Central Madrid
Because our work mainly revolves around personal projects like writing and creating content (we’re so grateful that we can work for ourselves), we have the luxury of designing our days. So today, we planned to spend the day with one of my favorite of Ruben’s friends. Several years ago (more than a decade), Ruben was traveling, and even before meeting me, he met a Spanish guy in Kerala, India. And how do you know, his name is also Ruben! It was the exact happy accident that they got introduced to the hostel where they were staying, and they have never stopped getting in touch since. Now that life has brought them back to Madrid simultaneously, we will try to meet when possible.
He lives in Malasaña, one of Madrid’s most vibrant neighborhoods, and we love it there. We get some coffee, then lunch, and walk around Madrid—our version of the Spanish sobremesa!
In Madrid, we always try to get to a new restaurant and get a “Menu del Dia” or the day’s menu. This is Spain’s way of making you taste several dishes without a premium, and we love it! It costs 12€ more or less and is a fun way to taste several dishes. You get a big appetizer, a main dish, and a dessert or coffee. It’s usually a dessert because when we’re in Madrid with our friend, we go for another coffee after a long walk!
Evening Routine
Back to our home, riding the Madrid metro, we already had a long day by this time, so we could mostly snack at night. Today, we’re having ice cream with strawberries – okay, we’re sweet tooth people! One big part of our routine is that we watch Spanish Netflix shows to add to our Spanish study, and today, we watch one of Spain’s most significant and boggling true crime documentaries, which was remade very recently – the Asunta Case. We try to study Spanish shows from Spain because accents can be different from different countries, and I want to learn the speed and accents in Spain.
Our Nightly Story Time
At the very heart of our lives, we are parents, so our lives and days revolve around Han and ensuring he lives well. Our little one is autistic, and even if he’s high-functioning, we live with him, so we know all the quirks and the challenges he faces daily. So, Story Time in the evenings is when we talk to him before sleep and review anything that didn’t go well during the day. More importantly, these evening talks are mostly our way of planning and setting expectations for the next day. This is primarily when we plan and build up the next day’s excitement. If he needs to study more, we tell him and make sure he gets to talk to us about his good and bad feelings during the day. Han gets excited and more relaxed when he knows what to expect.
Personal Reflections on Choosing Spain
Before living in Spain, we traveled to various countries, and since Rachel is from the Philippines, it has been our home base for a while during all our travels in Asia. We’ve made the decision to move to Europe and use it as our home base for personal reasons, and we think that this is a stage in our life when we need a more permanent home base. Are we still going to travel long-term? Yes. But really, for now, we’re happy to make these new changes to our lives and hope you loved our day in life as digital nomads here in Spain!
📍 Want to try the digital nomad life?
Win a 30-Day Workation in Mexico City, one of the most popular digital nomad hubs in the world. 30 days of accommodation with free flights.
Check Safetywing Nomad Workation here and join for free for a chance to win!
About the Author: Ruben, co-founder of Gamintraveler.com since 2014, is a seasoned traveler from Spain who has explored over 100 countries since 2009. Known for his extensive travel adventures across South America, Europe, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and Africa, Ruben combines his passion for adventurous yet sustainable living with his love for cycling, highlighted by his remarkable 5-month bicycle journey from Spain to Norway. He currently resides in Spain, where he continues sharing his travel experiences with his partner, Rachel, and their son, Han.