Villajoyosa Fun

The month of April was kind of crazy!  Marcus was working a ton.  I was feeling really sick, and the combination led to an incredible amount of homesickness.  I have LOVED Madrid, several times I've even dreaded leaving, but the end of March and April were tough months for me.  I've learned I do not handle sickness well at all.  When I got sick in New York I had the same feelings.  The only difference was in New York I was still planning to go visit family in a couple months.  Here I'm planning to stay in Madrid for two full years with out ever going home.  That plan seems more and more silly by the day, but as of now I'm still sticking to it. 

Marcus' schedule was really bad the couple weeks leading up to vacation.  So bad in fact that we saw very little of him.  The week before vacation he had to go to London for a few days, and then flew straight from London to New York...(Mostly for me).   He'd been planning to go to New York for a couple months for a training, which I wasn't thrilled about, but then I realized if he went to New York I could have him pick up some things from the U.S.  I also realized I could order some clothes and other things and send them to our friends place and he could bring them back to me without me having to pay ridiculous taxes, and fees.  I proceeded to order probably 400 dollars worth of things from Target and other places that I wish we had here.  Only to find out about a week before he was supposed to go that they needed him to be at the printers in London, and weren't sure he'd be going to New York at all.  What?!  The thought of something like this happening hadn't even crossed my mind.  I was super stressed, and didn't feel like I could ask our friends who had been so kindly storing all of our stuff, to then mail it all back for us.  I was really stressed.  Marcus's training was supposed to be Thursday-Friday, but he couldn't fly out of London until Friday morning, so he actually only made it to about an hour and a half of a two day training.  But that sweet boy brought back all my stuff, and even made an extra trip to Costco and Target for me.  It was like Christmas when he got home.

The next week was Easter, and so he only had to work Monday through Wednesday and then Thursday morning we rented a car and headed to a little town about 4 hours South-East of Madrid called Villajoyosa.  It was the perfect break.  It was so nice to get away, and Villajoyosa was such a charming little beach town.  It was the perfect escape for this city family.  We stayed at a place right on the water, and just spent most of our time relaxing and enjoying the beach.  We payed for the half board option at the hotel, meaning that we got to eat both breakfast and dinner there.  To say we overate is probably an understatement.  I don't know what it is about me, but something about buffets brings out this crazy instinct in me to gorge myself.  It's like I'm afraid I'll never see food again, and I need to try some of everything, especially the desserts.  We ate a LOT of food!  We enjoyed a lot of sun! And we brought back a lot of Sand.  It was a great break!

 Enjoying lunch at a little place on the beach.

 They have such colorful cool buildings on the boardwalk.

 Our hotel balcony.

 Enjoying some ice cream together before going to the Good Friday Procession.

 Villajoyosa has a Valor chocolate factory in the town.  We ate as many free samples as we could get our hands on!

 We decided to take a day trip to Valencia, to get REAL Paella.  A friend had told me about this great park there with a giant Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels.  It's huge, and basically Gullvier is tied down and the different parts of his body are different slides you get to slide down.  In theory it sounds amazing, but this was the scariest playground I've ever been to.  Kids pushing kids all over the place, and cliffs you can fall off all over.  In short a mothers nightmare.  I'm pretty sure a neck or two has been broken on this thing.  But in Spain You play at your own risk!  The girls loved it, but Marc and I were ready to get out of there.  Still a neat experience though.

 

 Marc and the girls cruising down a slide.

 

 Before the park we had this delicious Paella.  It was made with rabbit, which sounded a little strange, but it was delicious.  The girls didn't like the sound of rabbit.  Avery said, "like Peter Rabbit?!"  she was pretty concerned about it so we told them it was mostly chicken.  ;)  So happy we got to have real traditional paella.