Sunday, October 30, 2011

Heading South to Marbella (Spain)

Today we left for yet another trip, this time to Marbella and Gibraltar.  As I write this at 10:30 on Saturday night I have to say, we are off to a great start!!  Our flight wasn’t til 5 tonight and so we just chilled out during the day at home and let the kids skip their tennis lessons – it looked like it was going to rain anyways so why tempt fate?

As we were getting out of our cab, the boys started wrestling.  Then all of a sudden Aidan was crying and I couldn’t figure out why.  Then I saw the blood.  It took me a minute.  Turns out that Liam knocked one of Aidan’s very loose teeth even looser.  So off we went to the bathroom.  We washed his mouth out with water and the tooth came out.  It was covered in blood so I went to rinse it since they don’t have papertowels in most bathrooms in Spain (it’s a very eco friendly country!), I had no choice but to use the sink.  Unfortunately the spray was a little too strong and despite my best efforts, the tooth ended up going down the drain.  I felt sooooo bad!!!  I told Aidan the tooth fairy will come anyways as long as he writes a note to her (which he has done and is waiting on the desk in the hotel).  A good and bad way to start our trip – a lost tooth and well, a lost tooth!

Our flight was relatively non eventful, albeit a bit bumpier than I like… ok a lot bumpier than I would like.  It didn’t help that the old guy sitting next to me would verbally freak out (in Spanish of course) every time we hit some turbulence.  Josh was with the boys in the row ahead of me and they were fantastic.  They were not phased by the turbulence, ah the joys of ipad and iphone! 

We got to Malaga Airport, got our rental car and hit the road.  By now it was close to 8PM and dark out so it meant navigating the roads (which are likely beautiful in the light) in the dark.  And of course our GPS didn’t work right away so a good thing that I came with a map and directions already printed thanks to Google Maps!  Aidan was super excited to see a shooting star on the way and it put him in the most fabulous mood.  Based on my last entry, I’ve been excited about this trip since he has just been so positive these days.  Our hotel was kind of off the beaten path and so it took us a bit to find it – we passed it once and had to backtrack on the highway again to get to it.  But once we got here, we weren’t disappointed!

We arrived at the Melia Marbella Banus in Puerto Banus (next to Marbella) and we loved it right off the bat!  We could hear the live music, albeit it was from the 60s, like My Girl and Leaving on a Midnight Train to Georgia, but it was American music and it was live.  We checked in and they not only gave each of the kids a stuffed dolphin, but they gave them a passport book.  It had one stamp in it already and they told the boys to fill out their name, age and parents names and to get it stamped each time they went somewhere in the hotel – the bar, the restaurant, the kids club, etc – and they would get a stamp.  I never thought Aidan would get so excited about this – normally he would have been “oh this is so stupid” but he immediately grabbed a pen, wrote his name, age and asked for help in spelling our names.  The passport book did not leave his hands all night!

We had dinner in the buffet restaurant which was ok – it was nice that they grilled meat for you on the spot – Josh had sausage, I had chicken and Aidan had some fish – but nothing super exciting.  We checked out the hotel grounds shortly after and then went off grounds towards the beach.  However Liam started freaking out because it was dark so we turned back.  All in all, it’s been a good evening, which is really how long we’ve been away so far!

Tomorrow, Sunday, is Gibraltar, and we are super excited about it!!  Monkeys, caves and a dolphin tour!!!  Can’t wait!!

Julie

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