Our Family Holiday to Spain

On Tuesday 11th August at some ungoldy hour Mum and Dad woke us up and told us it was time to get up and get dressed so that we could go to the airport to fly to Spain. Normal morning get ups are usually a struggle for some of us but on this morning we leapt up out of bed and got ready in record time.

We left our house, when it was still dark, and Dad drove us to the airport. When we arrived at the car park we unloaded the car and then we made our way across to the bus stop with all our bags (9 in total!) as we had to catch a bus from the car park to the airport terminal.

Check in at the airport took far too long, despite Mum & Dad having checked in on line we still had to queue to drop off our bags and the baggage handling conveyor belts stopped working just as we got there so we had to wait for about 20 minutes, eventually they started working again and we were able to check our bags in and make our way to security, as usual Mum had to be searched at security!

Once security was done we went to the shops and selected our comic and breakfast for the journey and then it was time to board the plane. We settled into our seats and got ready for the take off, Dan isn’t very keen about taking off and managed to work himself up into a bit of a state but Mum held his hand and he calmed down a bit. We then settled down for the flight to Spain, Dad watched a film on his iPhone, Mum read a magazine and looked after us and we read our comics and played on our DSs. Before we knew it we were landing in Spain!

When we got off the plane we were horrified to discover that it was actually raining a little bit – however it was still very very hot! We cleared Spanish security, waited for our bags, collected our hire car and then we made our way to our “home” for the next 11 days – Dad drove and Mum navigated and we got there in no time at all, without getting lost!!

We were all very excited when we arrived at our villa which was situated on the Mar Menor Golf Resort even though non of us play golf! We couldn’t wait to get through the doors and into the swimming pool, but we were told that we had a few jobs to do before that could happen including unpacking which we didn’t mind as one bags that needed unpacking was full of floats, armbands, water guns & inflatable crocodiles!!!

Once the unpacking was done we went for an explore around the resort so that we could find the important things like restaurants and supermarkets. We soon located these and then we went back to the villa. When we got back we were allowed to go in the pool so we rushed upstairs and put on our swimsuits and before you could say inflatable crocodile the 3 of us were jumping into the pool.

We spent a few hours in the pool and then we all went for a little sleep before dinner, which actually turned into a longer sleep which meant we didn’t go out for dinner until after 9pm, which wouldn’t have been a problem if the on site restaurant had been open but Tuesday night is the one night a week that it was shut! So we then had to travel to the nearest town to find a restaurant – this took some time and we finally sat down for our dinner at gone 10pm, but it didn’t really matter as we knew we could all have a lie in the following morning.

The holiday then took the following form:
9am – Mum wakes up and gets herself a cup of tea
10am- We start to appear and join Mum downstairs
11am – Dad surfaces
12noon -We have a family breakfast on the terrace (yes breakfast at lunchtime!!!!)
1pm – Apply suncream and then spend 6 hours in the swimming pool (Mum & Dad supervised us and read books), with a break around 4pm for lunch.
7pm – Get ready for dinner
8pm – Have dinner either on the terrace or at a restaurant
11pm – Bedtime

During our 6 hours of swimming time we had great fun with Mum & Dad in the pool, we played games of shark attack, had crocodile races, dived for seals, had water fights and generally had great fun getting very wet!

Every day we would have a proper swimming lesson with Mum & Dad which meant that over the course of the holiday Emilie & Joshua progressed to being able to swim a full length of the pool on their fronts and backs without ANY assistance. Josh was first to show us that he could do this and once he had done it there was simply no stopping him, he became a real water baby. Emilie was a little more reserved and would only swim on her conditions!

On a couple of days we went across to the social club swimming pool as it was bigger than ours and we enjoyed swimming with some other children and playing in the jacuzzis!

8 days into our holiday we ventured off the resort and returned to Aqua Nature, the water park we had visited last year, this had been a requirement of ours when we found out we were coming back to Spain this year. We had great fun here again this year, we loved playing on the slides and standing expectantly in the pool waiting for the big bucket to tip it’s contents on to us. We also had a great time floating along in the rapids and this year we were able to float in them without our arm bands on as we could all swim!!

Our favourite restaurant was El Olivio which was an Italian restaurant on the resort, they made the most delicious parpadelle carbonara and they had a really lovely waitress who took a real shine to Josh! She thought he looked very cheeky and she liked to call him Marshall as the first night we had visited Josh had been wearing his Manchester United kit which has Marshall on the back. Josh became very very shy when she spoke to him, which we thought was funny as he is normally quite an extrovert!!!!

Sadly 9 days after arriving in Spain we had to pack our bags ready to fly home the following day. Fortunately we didn’t have to get up very early to get to the airport but a get up time of 7:30am was something we were not accustomed to after lieing in until at least 9am each day!

Dad drove us to the airport, with Mum navigating, and we returned our hire car (which Dad had loved driving – NOT) and then we checked in and went through to duty free. In duty free we spent the last of our euros on sweets, a birthday present for Grandad and perfume for Emilie.

Whilst we were waiting to board our flight we were entertained by 4 jet planes that were taking off and landing at Murcia airport. When they took off they were extremely loud! As we were boarding the plane home the jets landed for the 2nd time, which meant we got to see them quite close up.

The flight home was pretty much the same as the flight to Spain, apart from Dad was sat a little bit further away from us. Before we knew it we were landing back at Manchester Airport in the RAIN!

We had a fantastic holiday and can’t wait for the next one, so get saving Mum & Dad!!!!!!