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!