Well when we left you last time, we stood facing the gates of hell, which was 30hrs of travel door to door with 2 young kids to hit Spain. And it didn’t disappoint. No sleep at all for mummy and daddy (our 2 girls thought they were in baby business class so were sprawled all over us) made for a tough arrival into Spain. Then to top it off, after a small nap on arrival the girls woke up at 1030pm convinced it was morning. I think this led to my first Spanish phrase of the trip which was ‘fuckos meos’. It has copped a solid workout and become a staple phrase since then.
After finally getting them back to sleep around 1am I woke up just after with what I was convinced was DVT. Olivia had cried out and Krys and I were sleeping in a loft. Once Liv cries out we know we have about 10 seconds to get to her before she tries to climb out of bed. And in foreign surroundings with hard floors that was unlikely to end well. As I scrambled for the ladder I was hit by a stabbing pain in my calf which slowed up my ladder decent just enough for me to arrive at Olivia as she clunked on the floor and woke up half of Barcelona with her cries. So after finally getting Liv settled again I was left limping around the house but hardly felt like asking Krys for sympathy given she had just seen her husband move like a sloth dragging a bobsled full of weight watchers failures leading to a potential child concussion. So I tried to be discreet, leaving the Spanish emergency number (112), details for our address and keys in the door just in case I did have an issue. Turns out I did, but it wasn’t DVT. It is just that trying to climb a ladder in my declining state leads to calf strains. Which is sadder than if I did actually did get a dangerous clot…..
Anyway with very fuzzy heads thanks to our children’s ‘sleep patterns’, on our first morning we set off to find breakfast. My Spanish is so good they ended up eating a chocolate biscuit and some fries. Which is even worse given the menu had an English translation on the bottom. Quality work dad. But that was the fuel to get us to a Barcelona zoo visit. The zoo was great, but deflating at the end as we saw two giant tortoises going at it – by ‘at it’ I mean the daddy turtle would thrust and give a guttural groan about once every 30 seconds. When I made an offhand joke to Krys about how it might remind her of home her retort of ‘well it’s lasting a lot longer’ was unnecessarily cruel I thought.
Traveling with kids is certainly ‘different’ to previous travel. Rather than drinks and dinner till late it is early meals, and in bed before Barcelona even begins to stir for the night. I had found a lovely restaurant for dinner one night and came back to Krys to rave about how cute it was, but that I was surprised no one was in there. But we should set the trend and get things started – they deserved our support. So we gathered up the kids and were surprised that we weren’t greeted with enthusiastic appreciation by the lady at the door as we arrived for a leisurely 730pm dinner. Instead she asked curtly ‘what are you doing – we don’t open till 830pm. And if you don’t want to book I’d like to help but I’m trying to set up for open’. Kind of explains why it was empty.
Traveling with kids we’ve found that plans are hard to make and even when they are they can be forced to be aborted pretty quickly. We found this out when we jumped on a tour bus for a lap of Barcelona. We already felt deflated that we had been reduced to tourist bus laps – we used to see them go past and mock the people that paid overs for a city tour because they couldn’t work out a map and a metro network. It was like a bright red, open top tour of shame. Well here we were – sitting with other tourist drifters who had handed over 75 Euro for a glorified bus service. But this was made even worse when the girls started to lose it 10mins in so we had to jump off. On a per km cost it would be hard to beat over this entire trip unless I ride in a solid gold chariot with Jessica Alba paid to stroke my hand at some point.
Our dismount from our red vehicle of shame was at the beach, so given it was a sunny day we decided to make the most of it. There was a workout area like Venice Beach but I didn’t want to shame the young fit guys with my rippling 1 pack so decided to strip off my pants and thermals to frolic in the shoreline in my boxer shorts. I could see the hunger for some ‘tortoise time’ in Krys’ eyes as she sat on the beach pretending to look disinterested. But we didn’t have time for hungry eyes – we had a flamenco show to go to. When we booked we asked the lady if it was suitable for kids. Something must have got lost in translation and she must have heard ‘will our kids hate the noise’ and this was why she gave an enthusiastic nod. Either that or she spoke no English and was trained to just say ‘si’ until I’d paid for the tickets. Liv slept through the whole show and Millie spent it covering her ears because it was ‘too noisy’.
So the start has been tough – the kids sleep patterns are killing us and the change to last time is huge. Rather than late nights at restaurants and bars followed by sleep instead and day naps instead it is trying to find places serving dinner at 6am and night naps. Hopefully the girls will find a rythym soon. I’m thinking they’ll hit their stride around 18th July in time for the return home. I’ve used a cricket analogy to Krys, that currently we are on a first morning Gabba green top, and if we just get through the openers the pitch will flatten out. Her eyes just glaze over and she nods like a Spanish lady slotting two gingos with Flamenco tickets that their kids will hate.
We’ve had an unsuccessful run at Sagrada Familia, and hit a cafe that was kid friendly, except that the kids area was roped off – but more on that later (perhaps). For now we are off to Seville. So I’m standing in a Ryanair boarding line as mum wrestles the children. I should go before I am stuffed in the luggage hold.
Adios!!
Trent the tortoise, Krys, Olivia, Emelia and some messed up body clocks.
smallthoughts 