Getting Ready

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Greetings Everyone:

This will, hopefully, be the first of many entries chronicling our 3-month adventure to Spain and other parts of Europe. We leave in a week, and are now busy getting our house ready for the family who will live here while we are gone. We are also starting to make lists for packing, but haven’t yet actually put anything into a suitcase or backpack. Angie, however, has been a madly cleaning out closets all over the house.

Our first 10 days in Spain will be spent in a small town called Roquetas de Mar, which is in Southeastern Spain about 90 minutes east of the more well-known resort city of Malaga. Roquetas is on the Mediterranean, and we have rented an apartment on the ocean. Our plan is to ease the kids into the ex-pat life by combining a beach vacation with language school. We’ll all be in class for about two hours per day learning or perfecting our Spanish; the rest of the time we’ll be free to hang out on the beach, play tennis, and explore the nearby areas, including the salt lagoons which are home to flamingos, and the mountains just to the north. (We’ll have a car for this portion of our trip). Here is a map to give you some sense of where we’ll be:




After that interlude, we’ll head up to Granada for a couple of days to experience some of the Holy Week festivities and see the Alhambra, the ancient palace and fortress complex of the Moorish monarchs of Granada. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra for more information). From Granada we are planning a quick excursion across the Straits of Gibraltar into Morocco (note to self: rent Casablanca for the kids to watch), and then we’ll meander up into Portugal, across West Central Spain to Madrid, a week in Paris (arriving on Ryan’s birthday), and then back to Spain and settling into Sevilla, where the kids will attend a bi-lingual Spanish school for 5 weeks. Our trip will then be capped off by a trip up through Barcelona, Southern France and into Northern Italy, where hopefully we’ll meet up with my sister Kathey and her family. We’ll leave from Rome on June 18.

That’s it for now. I’ll post again once we’re actually in Spain. Until then, que les vayan muy bien!

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Comments

[Scott Reames]

Nude Beaches?
Sounds like Tommy is getting much more of an education than anyone anticipated!

[Silvia]

Lovely familiy
Hi everyone!! Hope you are enjoying Spain, we miss you at the school and also the girls at the asador de pollos!!