Hi Hi and welcome! I am Judith, the founder, implementor, author, translator and coffee girl of the GRAN CANARIA REGIONAL Guide.
After reaching the 20 year mark of living in Gran Canaria in 2013, I felt it was time to share what I knew, cherish and could not be without for too long. on this remarkable little and yet so big island in the Atlantic ocean.
I feel truly blessed to call the south of Gran Canaria, to be exact the Costa Maspalomas my home. And that I had the chance to watch my children grow up here and be completely integrated in the Canarian society.
How it all began…
When I started this Online Guide as a hobby, all I wanted was to test and write reviews for restaurants, bars and eateries in general. That is why I called this Website the “GranCanariaRGuide” , as in Restaurant Guide, to begin with.
But after only a few reviews I realized I also needed to share my experience about all the other businesses, new places, views and more I discovered almost on a daily basis. By the end of 2014 I changed the name to THE R GUIDE, and aimed at doing this full time.
In January 2015 I had my first paying clients, and a little later employed my first helpers as freelancers. Craig, Kirsi, Juan, Marzella and Amanda came on board. Kirsi still to this day is our main Finnish translator.
Encarna, our native Canarian wizard came on board later, helping here and there, making sure that no Spanish phrase sounded weird to the Canarians. Michael joined and took on the job of helping me translate to German and wrote a few articles.
In 2017 Joyce joined the team, helping me run the ever growing number of Social Media accounts – our own accounts as well as the numerous client accounts. The company grew steadily as our satisfied clients were recommending our services to friends and business partners, and our own Social Media accounts became well known in Gran Canaria. You can follow our progress in About Us.
In 2018 a new era began when we re-designed the website, made it light speed fast and beautiful. The steadily growing multilingual guide needed a new name – one which every nationality could pronounce and which was easy to spell: GRAN CANARIA REGIONAL was born!
How did I get to Gran Canaria
The travel fever was always within me. To tell you the truth, I feel happiest when on the move. My parents are Croatian who emigrated to Austria when I was one year old. My husband is from Denmark, so we do happen to travel regularly to see our families or introduce our home countries to our children.
On the right an image of me in Denmark, at a family party in the summer of 2013.
From when I was very young I knew I would live in different places of the world. In 1993 I arrived in Gran Canaria to live here for a while. I had heard it was paradise, always warm and fun to be here.
My youngest was one year old at the time and my second one was on her way. They have grown to be adults, the eldest has moved back to Austria when he turned 18, and we had two more boys come along.
Here you can see a rare pictures of our whole family together, taken on a summer holiday in Denmark quite a few years back.
Loving Gran Canaria
Gran Canaria was not love on first sight. When I arrived, I was expecting lush greens we find on the Adriatic coast of Italy and Croatia, or idyllic towns like on the coast of Greece. Click here to read how I learned to Love Gran Canaria.
There is so much to write about, so much to share with you. We hope we can inspire you and add value to your experience of this island paradise. Drop me a line and let me know what you think about Gran Canaria.
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Hi, I am Judith, the founder, author, translator and coffee girl of the GRAN CANARIA REGIONAL Guide.
The Gran Canaria Regional BLOG offers a platform for bloggers to write about Gran Canaria. This article represents the personal opinion and impression of the author. We like to offer a wide range of opinions and impressions to our readers. Do you have any suggestions for this article, did you notice an error? Do you have Canarian recipe you need to share? Would you also like to write about Gran Canaria? Please contact us here.