35 degrees in the shade

Sorry for the delay in this posting - had a slight issue finding a wireless connection at our second location in Spain so had to wait until we were back home....

Anyhows, Friday came and it was time to pack up and move on. We decided to set off early and drove the one hour up the road back north towards Alicante.  We arrived at the new location, just outside Murcia - it was a massive complex - I mean massive!

Apparently there are 9,000 identical apartments at the complex so you can imagine the scale of it.  We arrived at the security gate and registered our details.  We had some directions to our apartment so we thought it would be reasonably straight forward to find - how wrong we were! After about an hour driving around we gave up and headed back to the security gate to ask for help! it turned out our directions were for someone elses apartment! We finally found it and settled in.  The apartment is owned by a friend of mine and it was exactly what we needed.  It was opposite a swimming pool, had an excellent air con system and a superb roof terrace where we ended up spending a lot of time.

As for the complex, it designed in small "jardins" which there were numerous.  Each Jardin had the apartments on all sides of a square with the swimming pool and play areas in the middle of the square.  Each Jardin was identical and they covered a lot of land.  If you have seen the film The Truman Show or been to Celebration Town in Florida you will know what I mean.

Other than the Jardins there was a "Town Centre" which was a massive building, on 4 sides of a square with a large lake in the middle.  The idea was for shops and restaurants to take a spot in the building and turn the area in to the central town area.  Then the recession came! The "town centre" now consists of a supermarket, 1 restaurant and 1 pub.  The rest of the shops are empty.  Don't get me wrong, it still had what we needed but was a shame they couldn't get more into that area.

Anyway, once settled in and unpacked we went for a swim and made ourselves at home.  The weather was still very hot so the air con was much appreciated.

The next few days drifted by with sessions in the swimming pool and on the roof terrace, that was pretty much it - very lazy times, but the kids were happy in the pool so why not?  Over these days we got to know who else was in our Jardin and there were some sights!  My favourite (if you can call it that) was a "lady" who was there with her 2 kids.  I saw the kids first, mainly because they had blocked the sun they were so large! and then came along Mum...... it was a sight believe me - she was very very large indeed and decided it would be a good idea to wear a bikini for the week, she had also been sitting in the sun for far too long as she had turned a very dark brown.  For those of you who are Little Britain fans, just think of the character Bubbles Devere who lives in the health farm.  She was the spitting image of her!

Other than lazing by the pool, we did manage a few trips out, although it was far too hot to do much (it hit 45 degrees one day).  The first of our outings was to a beach that had been recommended to us.  now, I am not a big fan of beaches. Its the sand - the damn sand, it simply gets everywhere! so when we arrived on the beach I was already missing my swimming "sand free" pool.  The beach was crowded as you would imagine so we found ourselves a square inch of sand and laid out our towels. No sooner had I done then the pesky kids walked over them covering them in the grains of evil sand.  We then went for a paddle in the sea before heading back to our towels covered in sand and now salt.  Needless to say, our beach trip lasted for about 1 hour before deciding enough was enough and heading home.

Dont get me wrong beaches can be good.  I have had one good experience on a beach, when we were in Bali staying at a rather nice hotel with its own beach - that's the only way to do it.  We were escorted every morning out to the sun lounger laid out for us, and then issued with fresh towels, a drink and a bottle of sun tan lotion.  Every hour or so a little man would come along and top up our drinks, re do our towels and issue another bottle of sun tan lotion.  Now that's how to do it.

However, this was a million miles away from our operation in Spain.  This consisted of 4 towels and a few spare nappies for Rosie!!  The Spanish have it sorted, they all turn up with pretty much the whole contents of their houses.  They have towels, sun loungers, deckchairs, parasols, toys for the kids, ice boxes for lunch, wind breakers and the kitchen sink! They seem to have fun when they do it and I now know why!

Other highlights from the week included 2 trips to the local water park, which bizarrely has a Zoo attached.  we arrived too early on the first visit so had to wait an hour for the water park to open, we took this opportunity to investigate the Zoo.  It was 10am but already 35 degrees so walking around a zoo was not top of my list of ideal things to do in the sun, but off we went.  It was actually an ok zoo with Bears, Zebra, Giraffe, Pigs, Deer, Ostrich etc etc but after about 30 mins everyone was beginning to wilt in the sunshine so we decided to get to the water park and wait for it to open.  When it finally did we laid our towels out in the shade and headed for the nearest pool to cool off.

The kids loved the water park, it had everything they needed, including a "lazy river" which Emma loved and a few water slides which Megan took a shine to.  Rosie was happy in the kids pool with the mini slides so it all went pretty well.  Only had one small incident.  After climbing up the steps to the top of one particular water slide with Megan, she had a melt down and decided she didnt want to go down the slide.  I had a double inflatable ring on my back and was not looking to walk down the steps with this. There was only one way down so after about 10 mins convincing, Megan decided we could do the slide. I gave her a "its not fast so dont worry" guarantee and off we set.  The slide actually turned out to be a lot faster than I thought so all I could hear as we went down was screams from Megan "its too fast" and "slow it down" but we made out the end ok and then she said she wanted another girl - go figure!

So this was a pretty lazy week, mainly due to the sunshine, I'm not complaining I love the sunshine but there is simply nothing you can do when it is that hot other than stay in the pool. 

Friday came around far too quickly so it was time to head back to the airport and start the journey home.  This all went pretty well, found the airport, dropped the hire car off, checked in, wandered around the shops, boarded the plane (at the front of the queue), took off, had some food.  Then with about 20 mins to go, I spotted out of the corner of my eye and young lad running up the aisle, I thought nothing of it until he stopped next to my seat (i was on the aisle) and decided to throw up all over the place....oh what joy, it splattered up my leg and those of my fellow passengers and, as with all sickness, it then set everyone else off, people wretching everywhere - a nice way to end the holiday! The air hostess arrived with a little "Body Fluid Disposal Kit" which she had clearly never used before to mop up the sick......lovely.  Still could have been worse, prior to throwing up next to me, it turned out that he had already been sick all over the guy sitting next to him!!

Anyway, we made it back to Blighty in one piece with no major issues and a thoroughly good holiday to look back on. 

Next week it is back to normal duties and trying to keep 3 kids entertained.  I will keep you posted on events.  See ya later everyone.

Bucket and Spade packed.....

Friday – travel day! Up at the crack of dawn, or if you are Rosie it was a positive lie in! And off to the airport, first stop the in-laws to leave the car, eat breakfast and be given a lift to the airport.  On arrival we managed to find the Ryan Air check in with no real dramas and joined the endless summer holiday queues that you get on cheap airline flights.  What is with check-in? We are in the 21^st century and you still need to queue for hours on end only to be patronised by a check in “assistant who would rather be doing her nails in the canteen than talking to us about whether we have decided to bring any bombs or guns on holiday with us! You get asked a series of questions about whether you packed the bags yourself or are carrying any weapons and even if you did have a gun in your bag – would you really admit it to Doreen the check in assistant?!?! I think not.  Do you think that is how they catch terrorists? 

Doreen “Good morning sir, did you pack this bag yourself”

Terrorist “Yes”

Doreen “Ok thank you, and are you carrying any weapons or dangerous objects with you today?”

Terrorist “Damn it, how did you know, yes I’ve got a sub machine gun and 10 kilos of explosives in there.....curse you check in assistants, but it’s a fair cop, you’ve got me”

Anyway, I digress.  Once through the check in and having said goodbye to our bags, never knowing whether we would see them again, we headed off to get air side.  Talking of bags – that’s another thing.  The Ryan Air limit on hold luggage is 15 kilos per bag and we paid for 3 bags.  15 kilos is not a lot when you consider there are 5 of us in the family.  I had to carefully weigh them the night before to make sure they were just under 15 kg each.  The stupid thing with Ryan air is that you are allowed up to 10 kg per person on the plane.  Therefore we were forced into taking 2 more bags onto the plane which were full of our clothes etc. In turn, we took up twice as much space as we would have done if silly Ryan Air had just given us a few more kgs per bag in the hold! 

Anyway, rant over.  We finally made it through passport control on the third attempt; we were being looked at as if we were lepers of something, getting redirected again and again until we were bundled into the “special assistance” line.  Clearly Jo and I looked like we needed some help with the kids! This turned out to be a good thing, because of having to queue up behind a bunch of people who clearly hadn’t flown before and didn’t understand the whole x-ray machine and walking through the “magic” door routine we were rushed through with no queue and no drama.

Once air side we joined the masses looking around the “cheap” shops before realising our plane was boarding and the gate was the furthest away.  We made it to the gate as they opened it and studied the form guide.  Normally there is priority boarding for families but Ryan Air obviously hadn’t agreed to this so it looked like we were about to join the back of a very long queue, and with the plane not having a designated seating plan it was a free-for-all.  Luckily just after I had a moan with another “Doreen” about splitting kids up on a plane, they announced families could board first, so we walked up the queue passed all the tutting and moaning and boarded the plane in relative ease.  Well, if you discount me and the kids going down in a wheelchair lift to avoid the stairs only to find us stuck in a corridor where all the doors were locked and not a plane in sight, having to then come back up the lift and carry the buggy down the stairs, while Jo sends out a search party! We chose some seats towards the back and settled down for the two hour journey.  

It all went pretty well, the kids did some drawing, ate some food, watched a film, annoyed the people sitting in front, drunk some drink, spilt some drink, annoyed the people behind us and finally we landed in Spain.

It was hot – damn hot, just how you like it when stepping off a plane, we had made it to Spain! Now just a hire car to find and then a 2 hour drive to our accommodation........

By about 4pm, we had made it to our final destination.  For the first week of this holiday we were staying in a lovely complex not far from Almeria in southern Spain.  We had two apartments with an adjoining door, this meant the kids could sleep in one and we could then shut them off at night and relax in ours.  It also meant double everything – 2 TVs, 2 DVD players, 2 outside areas etc etc which was very useful with 3 kids to entertain.  They also had excellent air con which was the best part about them!

We chucked our bags in the room and headed off to explore the complex.  There was an indoor pool (with sliding roof for summer months), beauty spa, tennis courts, DVD library, chill out areas, a restaurant, crazy golf, outside gym and the best part – an enormous outdoor pool WITH kids paddling pool – happy days! Guess where we spent the majority of our time!!

Over the next few days we slowly relaxed into holiday mode, with mr mum hanging up his iron and Jo switching off from work.  The kids loved the pools and were happy mucking about in them for most of the time.  Jo and I joined them when we got too hot in the sun before reclining again to lap up more rays.  We didn’t really venture out much in this week, occasional trip out for a meal or to the local beach, or to the supermarket but that was about it – we had everything we needed in the complex so why leave?

The kids also joined in with the activities that were laid on by the management.  They joined a couple of “activity mornings” which kept them busy for a few hours, they also played tennis and one night they even went out (Megan and Emma only) to a movie and pizza night.  I can’t believe it’s got that point in my life when my two eldest are out later than I am! They didn’t get home till gone 10pm after having a great time with the other kids watching “Nanny Mcphee” whilst munching away at freshly made pizzas – what more do they need in life! 

The only other incidents to talk about was Jo managing to drop a glass jar of tomato sauce in the supermarket – she couldn’t even blame a child for this one, it was all her own work, much to the kids (and my) amusement! 

Then there was “Codegate”.  On the gate to the swimming pools there was a security touch pad which you needed to know the code for in order to access the pools – this is to stop little kids jumping in the pools unsupervised (which turned out to be a joke as it was the kids who remembered the codes better than the adults!).  Anyway, on the 1^st of every month the code gets changed.  So on the 1^st August it was changed – but did they bother to announce the new number - no!  We were one of the first at the pool that day and luckily were told the code on the way in so we were ok, however we then made the mistake of sitting near to the gate (as it was easy reach to the paddling pool).  This proved to be a bad move because every 5 minutes we would hear – “Dear, what’s the code, I thought it was 0756 but it doesn’t seem to be working...do you know what it is darling?”  So we were then left to relay the code to them enabling their access to the pool..... this invariably ended with them walking off muttering “I wasn’t told of the new code, were you told dear, why wasn’t I told, I pay all this money and they can’t even be bothered......blah blah blah”  This is fine once or twice but by the 500^th time I thought about making up a poster to put on the gate, reading something like “THE CODE HAS CHANGED .  IT IS NOW 0842. I KNOW YOU WERENT TOLD, NEITHER WERE WE, NOW GET OVER, GO AND SIT DOWN AND ENJOY THE SUNSHINE”. Luckily the kids took on the task of telling everyone, allowing me the opportunity to read some more of my book in peace!

Other than the small matter of Rosie locking us all out of our accommodation one day, there really isn’t much to report.  The week went well and I am now nicely burnt! When will us brits learn!!

Next week we are moving on to a mates place just up the road, which has kindly let us borrow for free......the adventure continues soon.  

See you later one and all and I hope you are enjoying the summer wherever you are.  Well, unless you are reading this in Australia, in which case your summer was a distant memory – G`day!