1st Two Days in Chiclana

Chris here again. Currently I’m sitting poolside while the kids are swimming. After a day at the beach, Sammie informed me that my face was really red. I guess I better watch the sun time during the remaining days at the beach.
Our first day of travel was a little rough considering the amount of time it took us to get to Madrid. We left MSP on Friday at 6:30 a.m. and didn’t get into Madrid until about 11:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Much of the reason for the length of travel was due to a 12 hour layover in Newark. We tried to make the best of that by heading into Manhattan for a few hours. That went pretty well, and did help to kill the time, but the city was a little overwhelming and the kids were happy to return to the airport.
We touched down in Madrid after a very pleasant red-eye flight. Most of us managed to get our fair share of sleep. We met David’s parents at the airport, David and Nathan took all the luggage in a rental car to the hotel, and the rest of us took the metro. We met at the hotel about 30 minutes later, all happy to have reached our final destination.
In Madrid we enjoyed a light lunch outside the Mediodia hotel then all crashed for a couple hours inside our rooms. In the evening we all walked to the center of Madrid and once again met up with David’s parents. David’s sister, Mamen, also joined us. We spent a fun time in a cueva (cave) restaurant eating tapas and vino. The tapas, or small bites, included calamari, French fries, small fish, olives, egg and potato tortilla, ham, cheese and probably some other things that I’m forgetting right now. It was typical Spanish and a great end to our first day in Spain.
The following day we headed to Cordoba, Spain, which is south of Madrid a few hours. Getting to Cordoba was an experience, let me tell you. First off I struggled with the manual transmission car we rented. Second, I was stressed beyond belief getting out of Madrid and thinking that at every stop light I was going to kill the car. And last, it took us about 3 hours to find our hotel once we arrived in Cordoba. The streets wind around this way and that, are narrow beyond belief, and have crazy one ways and dead ends. I felt like Jason Bourne ripping around in my stick shift car through the narrow streets of an ancient European city. It was quite a rush even though we were all quite frustrated to not be able to get to where we needed to go. The entire story is quite a bit more elaborate, but I’ll leave it for now. Just believe me when I say we were all extremely happy to eventually find the hotel.
We did a very late dinner in Cordoba then spent the following morning exploring the Mezquita. The Mezquita is a mosque turned Christian cathedral that dates back to the 8th century. It was very impressive. Oh, I forgot, prior to the Mezquita we roamed a torture museum in the center of town. It freaked us all out and left us with a creepy feeling that lasted to bedtime last night for some of the kids.
So, later in the day we drove the last couple of hours to Chiclana. We got some drinks at a little bar while David negotiated with Loli for our apartment rent. Our Chiclana apartment is small for 11 of us (Maria’s friend Megan joined us in Chiclana), but it’s very nice and just a very short walk to the beach. I think we’ll have a lot of fun squeezed into this tiny apartment.
In the early evening we swam in the ocean followed by another late dinner, this time a meal in a restaurant right on the beach.
Today we’ve been at the same beach almost the entire day. Kids played in the waves, used their boogie boards, and played in the sand. Adults did all that, too, along with some good chilling out time on the beach.

Sammie’s Top 10 Funniest Moments So Far in Spain

10. Getting lost in Cordoba with Uncle Nathan running behind the car.
9. The Awkwards, Casey and Santi, doing their Dino Rex Dance.
8. The high tide almost took our stuff yesterday.
7. Chalin and my mom thought the octopus was too chewy.
6. The car died on my dad a lot.
5. All the kids look tired all the time because they got sunburned under their eyes.
4. We had to hide from Loli, the apartment owner, because our group is too big.
3. David had to sleep on the penguin floaty toy.
2. That all the TV channels are in Spanish.
1. The Awkwards both bought a giant key.