Carpenters in Honduras: July 2011

Spain was amazing; I think we both agreed that in the future we could spend an extended amount of time there. We spent the first week in Denia with our friends and the second week traveling around.

Week one – We took a night flight to Barcelona and Desmond was pretty fussy. I suppose we should have of kept him up so that he would have slept on the plane. I was pretty exhausted by the time we got to Barcelona. Then we waited for our friend Mark to arrive so that we could drive 4 hours to Denia, our destination for the week. The drive down was really pretty and relaxing, and there were hardly any cars on the road (unlike Delhi). The only issue we ran into was Desmond’s epic meltdown from being extremely overtired. I am sure Mark was thrilled to be in the car.

We stayed in these great condos right next to a large pool and series of waterfalls. Desmond and his buddies, Thea and Logan, loved to play in the water and swim around as much as possible. But I think that the “boys” enjoyed playing with the kids’ toys more than they did in the pool. We hit Denia several times for dinner: tapas, fish, paella, lamb, and, of course, sangria. It didn’t get dark until 10pm so the kids were up much later than normal, but that allowed us to stay out a little later. Even then we were still done early compared to the locals. It was great. Des would go to bed around 9pm and wake up at 9am and we got to sleep in.

We spent one day at the beach and Desmond had a blast playing in the sand and surf. He and the girls shoveled sand from one area to the next. Maybe next time they will start building castles. We hired a babysitter one night and went out with adults only, which was really nice and relaxing. And finally we spent one day at the Aquarium in Valencia. Very impressive for older kids and adults. Desmond was still a little too young to understand what was going on but he had a blast running around like a crazy man for many hours and crashed hard on the way home. In fact I think almost everyone crashed on the way home.

The mornings were spent playing tennis and the evenings were spent hanging out over some beers. The days that we did not go out were spent by the pool. The boys and Patty did go out one day to go bowling, which turned into bowling/ McDonalds/go-karting/who-knows-what-else adventure. We won’t make any further comments about it.

Marla, Taylor, and Logan left Friday morning and Art, Patty, and Mark left Friday afternoon. Bob, Dana, Thea, Marcus, Desmond, and I spent the evening in Denia and found a great street with beautiful trees that was blocked off from traffic with lots of restaurants. Thea and Des ran around while we watched them, and we enjoyed a nice meal before heading home. Marcus, Desmond, and I left the next morning for Barcelona… Part II in a few days about the second half of our holiday.

We would like to make a special note to Mark, Art and Patty. We saw them while we were in DC and did not mention it in the last blog. It was great to see them in DC and even better to spend some time with them in Spain. And another shout out to Jessie, Fernando, Gabriel, and Elias for having all of us over for dinner. It was extremely kind of you to organize something.

We would also like to thank Bob for organizing the Spain trip. He did a great job, and we were thrilled that we were all able to get together. We hope that this will be repeated.