This week we set out on our first big "holiday" trip to the Spanish Canary Islands off the western coast of Morocco, Africa. Sounds exotic but it's the equivalent of some in the US going to the Caribbean. Things started out pretty interesting for us about 4 hours before we were going to leave - Kevin discovered in the small print that Addison didn't have any baggage allowance. Funny thing was that the "stuff" we needed for her ended up in one suitcase and both of our carryons, so Kevin and I had to skrimp down our stuff into one case because we had pretty strick baggage allowance rules. We took a 4 hour flight our of the London-Stanstead Airport to the tiny volcanic island of Lanzarote. Stepping off the plane we felt like we had stepped onto the moon or a giant rock pile. There are over 300 volcanoes on the island and several of them are still active. We hopped on the coach to our hotel and the weird thing was that they drive on the right side of the road there and we were freaked out since we'd been driving on the left side for such a time. Even though they drive on the right side, all the speed limit signs are in km/hour and everything is in written in Spanish so those two years of high school Spanish had to be recalled in a hurry. We stayed at the Playa Flamingo resort which is set up as villa type apartments. The weather was amazing. It was sunny and hot...about 34 C each day...I think that's in the mid-90's F. We loaded up on SPF 30 and put 50 SPF on Addie and kept her in the shade as much as possible. The first day we went to the beach and floated in the cold Atlantic Ocean. After Addie ate most of the sand and tried eating a few volcanic rock pieces we felt that was too stressful so we stayed up around the pool for the rest of the week. We sat everyday and soaked up the sun. We took Addie for long walks twice a day to get her to fall asleep for her naps. We ordered take-away Hawaiian pizza everyday from the Beach Club for lunch. Kevin played very competitive water polo matches each day and later on in the week I ventured to do the water aerobics sessions in the pool. We attemtpted to do the trivia but everything was British trivia since the resort was owned by Thomson a British company. A nice thing was that the Canary Islands utilize the Euro for currency so our dollar went a bit farther. The biggest treat was that they had Oreo cookies at the supermarkets onsite and we ate them like they were going out of style because you can't find them in the UK. The staff was amazing at the resort and it was very family friendly. Addison did pretty well. We all had to sleep in the same room so the two weeks of sleeping routines all went out the window when she would wake up in the night. The only downfall of the accomodations was that there was no air conditioning, but we did have a ceiling fan and an oscilating fan. The Canary Islands' infastructure was built by tax contributions from the EU so all the roads and such were almost brand new, but because of the strain on natural resources they don't utilize A/C to conserve electricity. Since we were trying to keep Addie's bedtime to around 7:30 we had to keep ourselves entertained. We did so by watching Sky News and EuroSport TV because they happened to be the only English speaking channels and by playing cards. It was a great vacation for all of us to be together, but we learned that 7 nights is a long time for a vacation and we were excited to finally get home and sleep in our own bed.
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