As my three loyal followers well know (sheesh, sometimes I wonder why I even keep this blog!) we’ve been taking one trip every month since March. That’s nine trips. Nine months of hotel arrangements. Nine months of plane tickets. Nine months of excursion planning and public transportation scouting. I’ve spent an extraordinary amount of time on Internet research and comparison shopping. And you know what? I’ve done an incredible job…until now. Until the November adventure.
The ironic part is that the November trip took the longest to plan. We knew we were cruising to the Canary Islands, leaving from Malaga, Spain. The tricky part was getting into and out of Malaga in a timely manner. Long story short, it cost a fortune and we had to be flexible with our days. One week before our trip I realized that I had made a mistake. A big one. I had scheduled our return flight for the day before our cruise arrived back in port. Uh oh. For the next couple days I scrambled, trying to salvage what was by now a very expensive non-refundable vacation. When the dust settled, we were flying into Malaga a couple days ahead, cruising, spending another day in Malaga at the end, flying to northern Germany, and then taking the train back home. It wasn’t the most direct route, but at least we got to go. And then the vacation began.
It wasn’t that our trip was bad. We actually had a really good time. The thing is, our trip was very, very different than we anticipated. We anticipated spending our days in Malaga on the beach, constantly reapplying sunscreen, soaking up rays, and chasing Abbi in and out of the water. That’s not quite what happened. While it was still warm, there was a bit of a nip in the air which kept us out of swimsuits and reaching for the one paltry jacket we each had brought along just in case. We still had a great time- Abbi found a playground at the beach, Eric and I ate lots of paella, and we had our first mojito experience. We enjoyed wandering about, getting a look at what Torremolinos (a smaller town a few miles outside Malaga) is like on the off-season. I spoke lots of Spanish and relished the opportunity to not be the “stupid American” who can’t communicate. We had a great time, it was just different.
The view from our hotel in Torremolinos- not bad for $60 a night!
Then our cruise began. We had two days in port and two days at sea. Our cruise took us to Tenerife and Lanzarote, two of the Canary Islands owned by Spain and located near the coast of Africa. We expected to sweat our buns off, spending both days on a super tropical beach. Again, that’s not quite what happened. It was warm enough to don bathing suits, but chilly enough that we had goosebumps a good bit of the time. Chilly enough that I kept wondering if I should put more clothes on Abbi, but warm enough for me to decide she was ok. Warm enough to venture into the water a bit, but chilly enough to not stay long. Warm enough to enjoy a couple hours at the beach, but chilly enough that a couple hours was plenty. Also, the islands weren’t tropical. Lanzarote, in particular, was strikingly barren. Black volcanic ash made up the entire landscape, except right by the shore, where some palm trees popped up. We actually found it to be so ugly that it was beautiful. Not bad, but different.
Tenerife, Canary Islands
We spent a little time in the water...
but most of the time on the playground.
Lanzarote, Canary Islands
Our beach beauty...
is Daddy's precious girl!
See what I mean? So ugly that it's beautiful.
And then there was our time on the ship. We’re pretty much cruise experts by now. When we get on a ship, even with Abbi, we fall into a comfortable rhythm of meals and napping and (most of all) time at the pool. It’s what we do. That’s not exactly what happened this time. First, it was chilly. I thought that maybe the fact that we were so far south would counteract the fact that it was November, but no. It was chilly. It was windy. It was NOT pool weather. Second, it was rough, rough, rough. Eric and I have now spent roughly 30 days on a cruise ship and never, ever, not even once have we had even a tinge of anything resembling seasickness. We thought we were immune. False. One of our days at sea was spent on our backs in bed. All day. And we weren’t alone. Again, after approximately a month on cruise ships I can safely say that I have never seen such a deserted ship. The corridors were silent, the lounges were deserted, and the few people who were in the dining rooms were subdued and glassy-eyed. We felt fine during our second day at sea, but it turns out that without the option of going to the pool, there really is nothing on a cruise ship for a two year old to do. We tried the art auction and lasted 20 minutes (thankfully we left without our daughter inadvertently buying us some expensive new wall hangings), but spent the majority of the day playing cars in our stateroom. We had a good time, any time together is fun, but it was definitely different. Also, just as a fun bit of trivia, we were cruising on the Adventure of the Seas- the same ship we cruised on our honeymoon. Our experience this time was somewhat different than five years ago- funny how a two year old will change things.
After one more day in Torremolinos/Malaga, wherein we ate more paella, drank more sangria, found another beach playground, and discovered that the season really ends the first week of November, we headed back to Germany on a three hour flight. Fun fact for you. Should you ever fly Ryan Air into Dusseldorf, Germany, please be advised that despite the fact that you’ll find nothing online or on your tickets to indicate otherwise, the airport you fly into is actually not in Dusseldorf. In fact, it’s about an hour away. There is an airport in Dusseldorf, it’s just not the one you’ll be flying into. So, for example, if you arranged train tickets from Dusseldorf Airport to, say, Bruchmulbach, for example, you’ve got a problem. Long story short, we caught a bus to a train and rode for an hour and a half to catch up with our original train itinerary. We arrived home a mere nine hours later (Google maps tells me we could have driven it in about three), tired, but safe. Was it a good trip? Well, yes. Was it what we expected? Negative. Are we done with travel for a bit? You know, I thought so. I thought this trip was it, but now there is a possibility for a trip in December and another possibility for January. It turns out that travel is a tough habit to break.
