A Liverpool woman left her life behind after a chance meeting on a last-minute girls' trip to Benidorm.
Andrea Higgins decided to move 1,500 miles to the Spanish resort after a holiday romance blossomed into a relationship that would shape the rest of her life.
In 2009, Andrea from Wavertree , then aged 30, met the "love of her life" Daniel Eccles, on the second day of a long weekend away.
Ten years later, the former John Lewis worker has started a new career as a teacher, had a son with Daniel, and her mum has even moved over from Liverpool to start a new life in Alicante.
Speaking to the ECHO in Benidorm , Andrea said: “I love it, I love everything about it.
“At first when I came over, I’d heard bad things like ‘it’s like Blackpool in the sun’ and it’s just full of stags and hens.
“But it’s not, it’s full of so many beautiful places surrounding it... the bars are just a small part of Benidorm.”
Andrea and Daniel first had a long distance relationship, for around a year, where they would plan to see each other every other weekend.
Andrea said: “Flights these days are cheaper than getting a train down South, so it was fine but then we made the decision that we wanted kids and that the best place to bring up a child would be in Benidorm.
“Then everything just seemed to fall into place, I had always wanted to go into teaching, and I found a course and got a job in a school.
“Now, looking back, it has been the best decision ever.”
Daniel moved over to Benidorm when he was just 10 years old with his whole family, from Blackpool.
He now runs an estate agents called Activanza while Andrea teaches Maths and Biology in Elian’s British School in La Nucia with her mum who is a teaching assistant.
Mum to three-year-old Luca, Andrea, said she can’t imagine bringing him up anywhere else now: “I do love Liverpool and it’s not that I would never go back but I love the life that I’ve got here now.
“I’ve got Luca and the lifestyle here I just love it. We’ve got the park, and the beach, and the waterfalls and he goes to the pool everyday.
“The weather as well, obviously you can’t fault it, I just think how lucky he is to just be able to go in the swimming pool everyday for example.”
