On to Spain!

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Time for another adventure!! Catherine is turning 30 this Feb, and since we were flush with Frequent flyer points, we figured we could fly almost anywhere, Catherine's choice. Of course, she then really struggled with the options for ages - after all, when you’ve got the whole world to pick from ,how do you make a choice? Our choices were complicated by the fact we are now the proud parents of our beautiful little 16-month girl, Sahara, and it would not be a holiday without her(!) - which meant the place had to be reasonably kid-friendly (ie: no adverse environments like war zones) and did not require any inoculations (Sahara is too young for them!)

So with these limitations, we looked at what was on our list of places we wanted to see next: Morocco, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Mexico. All failed the criteria, so we ended up picking Spain.

So here's the plan: land in Madrid, rent a car, and drive to the South. Spend about 2 1/2 weeks, chilling out in Seville and Granada, do lots of day trips, and eventually end up in Barcelona and fly back to Sydney. Overindulge in lots of tapas and churros. Fun!

Planning is everything

If you've been following our travels, you've seen that we like to take things pretty simple. We travel with backpacks; stay in hostels; travel on the cheap; enjoy hooking up with other backpackers; plan no more than a day or two ahead; and at all costs avoid 'touristy' things as much as possible. This has been an integral part of our travelling identity.

Enter the child. Good luck trying to be spontaneous and staying out till late with fellow travellers, only to wake up early the next morning to catch an all-day bus. Ha. Now we've got to think about nap time, feed time, play time, cranky time, I-want-to-be-carried-time, I-want-out-of-the-pram time, and all the other fun moments us parents enjoy with our kids.

So our trip is now going to look like this: staying in hotels (not hostels), renting a car (not relying on public transport and certainly no overnight trains), travelling with suitcases AND a port-a-cot, AND a pram AND a carseat (a far cry from backpacks!), and planning several days in advance (can't afford to be stranded and risk having to rough it in the freezing cold if you have a child!).

Eek! How is this remotely adventurous? We feel like we are grandparents going on a grown-up adult holiday. Only thing left is to have a travel agent book it all and go on an organised tour, but thankfully we're not quite there. Yet.

Anyway, enough about our confused identity crisis, on with the show…

Getting there is half the fun

Henry Tillman said that getting there was half the fun. Ha. I'd challenge him to try doing it with kids. But I'm getting ahead of myself…

It was a very excited bunch of Thambiratnams that boarded the plane at 6pm on the 26th, drunk on euphoria of the thoughts of going on another holiday. The nice lady at the counter had given us FOUR seats, so we had room to spare. Things were definitely on the up!! We sat down in cattle class in glee, excitedly accepted the face towels and packet of peanuts, and eagerly pored over the list of movies that were available for our viewing on the 26 hour flight (Syd->London->Madrid).

Three hours later, I had still not even plugged in my headset. Movies? Ha. Sahara was in a top mood, and excitedly demanded lots of attention from us. Exhausting! I could only hope that our fellow passengers had their headphones nice and loud, because her shrieks of pleasure were probably driving them insane. One doesn't want to be one of those parents whom everybody secretly hates on the plane after all.

The action continued, with Sahara going from excited to tired to downright cranky. She of course refused to sleep, would cry lots if we didn't pay attention to her, and so we'd take turns cuddling her at the back near the toilets, sheltering our fellow passengers from our child's loud cries. Aargh. The hostesses were lovely of course, and would come around and tell us what a cute child we had and attempt to play with her. Was sorely tempted to say they could have her, but didn't want to face the wrath of both our parents when we came back. 😊

We finally found a way to make her go to sleep. I would take her into the bathroom, she would go ballistic because she wanted to be with mummy, but at least her cries were mostly muffled. I'd then wait until she eventually got tired from the crying and fell asleep out of exhaustion. I don't know what people outside the bathrooms might have heard or thought, but quite frankly, I didn't care.

Anyway, that gives you a taste of the flight. For the record, I watched one whole movie, Catherine got none. Spent a lot of it anxiously looking at the flight path, going 'I can't believe we've still got 18 hours to go!'

We finally got to Madrid, completely exhausted, dishevelled but grimly jubilant that we had made it! Sahara was still happy even after the 3 hours of sleep she'd had. I have to conclude that taking a 26 hour flight with kids is NOT fun - but we wouldn't have it any other way!

Stay tuned for our next entry on Madrid and more… lots of pics and stories to come!

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