Heidi; Hello
(I was tempted to open this reply with Heidi Hi but if you are a Brit I guess you have heard that a thousand times or more!)
I don’t think you will get a tremendous response to your thread because as far as I can ascertain, there are very few Brits actually living in Granada City.
There are a lot of Brits living in the area, say out to a radius of 50kms, giving a total area of about 500 sq.kms., but most tend to live in the country villages and visit the city for nights out and shopping.So you may not get much of a response as to which are the preferred areas for living within the City.
I only know of one couple living within the City and they do not contribute to this forum.
Living on the outskirts need not be a problem; within the City public transport is generally very good and cheap as well with a flat fare of 1 euro (I think) for any distance.
The villages are also well served with buses at times to meet with a 9am arrival in Granada and other services throughout the day albeit at long service intervals.
You mention that you are coming out here in a couple of weeks, so I would point out that there is a bus service from the airport into central Granada; its quick and serves most of the hotels in the centre; the fare is 3 euros which is a lot better than the taxi rate.
Car ownership is a mixed blessing ; much of the centre of Granada is off limits to private cars during parts of the day and the rest of the time is a nightmare and definitely not for the faint hearted. At the moment and for the next 18 months to 2 years there is a lot of work going across the City whilst a new tramway system is introduced; normally wide dual carriageways are reduced to single lane working and the traffic queues can be horrendous.
One of the main problems you are likely to encounter is that of schooling for the kids if they are of school age; information relating to schools is hard to get a hold of and as far as International Schools are concerned I think the nearest one to Granada is actually closer to Malaga.
My wife and I came out here in 2006 to a small village to the south west of the City; there are only two other Brit couples permanently resident in the village and almost none of the ‘natives’ speak any English. What make it doubly difficult is the fact that the local dialect tends to drop the last part of multisyllable words and is spoken at a very fast rate.
But if there is anyway I can help out pm me or email me and I’ll see what I can do to help.