April 2017: The kids were so excited about going on an overnight flight. It was the longest flight so far – 10 hours. We prepared ourselves with memory foam neck pillows, slippers and extra blankets. The flight did not take off until after 9pm, which is already late for our kiddos. The plan was to have dinner, watch one movie, and then sleep, but everyone was too wired with excitement. We were all restless and no one slept more than 2-3 hours. Before we were ready, they served breakfast and then we landed in Madrid, Spain.

Passing through immigration was a blur. We do remember that we had to walk a long way to get there. We did not have to pick up our bags or go through customs, but we had to take a train to another terminal and then walk some more.

The Madrid airport is huge and the internal architecture is stunning with very high ceilings and huge columns colored in the order of the rainbow.

We had a four hour layover in Madrid. The kids found a play area in our terminal to keep them busy and Roger and I took a nap on the floor behind some seats.

The flight to Málaga was, gratefully, a short one hour. When we arrived to baggage claim, we waited and waited for our bags to come out with the others, but they did not. We finally asked at the service desk and they explained that we had to go to a separate carousel and “go through customs”. This meant putting our bags through another scanner.

I had booked a rental car through Enterprise online. After getting our bags, we had to walk about 1/2mile to get to the shuttle for Enterprise. The rental process was pretty smooth and we drove away with our 6 passenger SUV.

The drive to Crown Resort Delta Mar was about 30mins. The road was refreshingly well-maintained and the views were beautiful. We passed stores we recognized like Carrefour and Desigual (in an outlet mall!). Waze took us directly to the Resort. Checking in was straightforward but we did have to pay extra for wifi and utilities for the week.

We lugged our bags up 3 flights of stairs to our apartment. The kids crashed on the sofas.

Roger drove back to the airport to pick up his parents. I walked to the local grocery and bought food for breakfast. When everyone arrived, we exchanged our joyous hellos and then walked to the Korma Indian restaurant and had an amazing meal.

This was so good, we ate here 3 times!