Moron on Monday

Soaking in Spain

So I am doing exactly what I promised myself I was not going to do. Enjoying my vacation too much and not taking time each day to just write something down about what we have done or our doing.

This has been such an adventure. We flew into Moron, (Ma'row'n - roll your R and emphasize the Ma) and it is the middle of the desert. It was probably 98 the Sunday afternoon that we landed. Annie Kate said, Mom this looks just like New Mexico. Nothing on the base was open. We could not rent a car, buy gas. We hitched a ride in some guys truck to the hotel on base only to find out that kids can't stay there because it needs to be quiet for the pilots to sleep. So we had to get all of our stuff over to the base living quarters.

The heat made our exhaustion and having no plans or a way to get on to another city just that much more interesting (or should I say discouraging)

We got moved to a double room that connected with two bathrooms in the middle, full kitchen, nicer T.V.'s that we have in our house, free laundry, pool and ping pong table (I bet that when this is all said and done this will be the kids favorite part of the trip) and next door to the "chow hall", where we all ate dinner for $11 US dollars. And did I mention that the rooms were only $30 us dollars a night, this was easing the pain a little bit for our suana like situation.

The plane ride over was awesome! We fley on a KC10 (I think that is what it is called) the refueling planes. There were 13 seats near the front of the plane and tons of room to walk around, but we had to sleep in our seats and could not lay on the floor. It was really nice like a regular plane and even had carpet. We ordered the box of dinner, which is nicknamed in the military the box nasty. But this time it was actually really good. The three kids slept the entire time and we barely needed our ear plugs as it was not that loud. Our flight crew was awesome! You don't have any kind of stewardess on the flight but one of the flight crew kind of helps anyone with what they need. I of course knew his life story after the flight and just wanted to hug him because he was so nice to my kids.

I was surprised to see the crew sitting with us wearing their sunglasses on their heads during the night (we left the airport at midnight). But then realized why when they opened the door into the cock pit. It was as bright as day. One of the crew even covered the two small windows on the plane with tin foil to try to keep it dark for us. Oh how I wish we could have taken photos of the plane and such it was such an amazing experience to fly on this plane. The pilots even had a litte oven to make choc. chip cookies and cinnamon rolls during the flight. Since there was only a few of us flying, we got to know the other passengers quite well. A father and teenage son backpacking through Europe, who also were trying to get to Germany and jumped on this flight too. A young couple who were trying to get to Rome and then a Grandma who was stationed in Moron bringing her daughter and grandchildren to the base for a visit. During the flight we passed around any information any of us had on Spain (we still have not found a Rick Steve's Spain book and it is making us crazy). During our flight we figured how long it would take us to drive to Italy - too long, 12 hours and tried to plan a little of what our new vacation would hold. Our new friends kept laughing at us and asking us, "so have you figured out what you are going to do?" Jeff and I would just look at each other and say, "nope not yet"

When we landed we learned that we had to go into the city of Moron to the police station to get our passports stamped. So after a great night sleep and stocking up on food at the commisary we went on Monday to find the police station. Everything is shut down on Sundays, which was maybe a blessing as this forced us to just relax and not take the ground running.

Jeff got up on monday and went to the gas station where the guy there rents a few cars. They are all really small and could not fit our family and our luggage, this plays into an interesting part of the story in a few days. Jeff got the orange one for Caroline because she had seen it at the lot the day before and thought it was a punch buggy. The car is only $200 US dollars a week and the gas is the same as American prices which is great because off base it is $10.00 a gallon.

The air base is seriously in the middle of no where. It took us a little bit to realize that this is not what the entire country was going to look like. The base was surrounded by sunflower fields and all of the sunflowers were black, dried up and dead.

We went to Moron to find the police station and fill out paperwork to be in the country. We walked up and down the city street to see the amazing shops. We found about 3 fabric stores in just a few minutes. Me and Spain were getting along really well. What is amazing about these shops is that they sell fabric, notions and then the most beautiful children's clothing which is all hand made. The children here are so well dressed. It is a smocking, scalloped rick rack feast for the eyes. I wanted so bad to buy each of the girls these Spanish style dancing dress that was handmade and in the most beautiful colors. But at $125 Euros, taking a photo had to do the job.

We found an old castle and a amazing church, had a frozen treat - hey this was just like last years trip just twice as hot.

We went back home and then had our own Siesta (I could so get used to this life) and then went to Seville for the night.....

to be continued

I don't have much time on the computer and downloading my photos is slow going so I will hopefully get a little journalling in while we are here. We are now on the beaches and seriously soaking in every second we can of Spain - oh my!

We still have no plans for today (it is 10:00 am) or even tomorrow or the next day, but we think some of our days will include a trip to Africa and and the end of the earth in Portugal.

Here is a little trivia for you. One night we spent on a island. We paid for the hotel in pounds, we had to show our passports to get on and they welcomed us by saing, "Good day mate, enjoy your holiday" (he sounded like Burt from Mary Poppins) we saw doubble decker busses and red phone booths and drove across the runway of an airport to get on the island. We saw lots of Monkeys (ok the monkey story will hands down be the best story from our trip) and went into some caves.....

{Any guesses of where we were?}

Adios for now