Spain Day One

On April 1, we arrived in Spain at the Valencia airport.  It was a little over an hour drive from the airport to the villa we were staying at in Alcossebre.  The first thing we noticed was how little grass there was.  It was very desert like, yet with green trees.  We noticed lots of orange trees along the motorway.  Once we pulled off the motorway, we also noticed almond and olive trees.  The villa was very nice with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a livingroom/dining area, and a kitchen.  In the middle of all the villa's was a swimming pool.  The grounds were well maintained and landscaped.  It sat about 500 meters from the beach.  We were exhausted and hungry when we got there, so we headed down to the beach to a nice restaurant.  The staff was very friendly and helpful even though it was hard to communicate with the language barrier.  Aaron and I don't speak much Spanish, but we sure tried with the few words we know how to say.  The kids ate pizza (the safe bet) and Aaron and I tried our first Paella dish.  It was a seafood Paella dish complete with clams in the shell, muscles, calamari (not the little circles of calamari, but the ones that look exactly like a little baby octopus), shrimp (looking fresh out of the ocean, not peeled and deveined), chicken, and rabbit.  Aaron thoroughly enjoyed it while I was a little put off by the sea creatures.  Aaron also enjoyed his first beer in Spain and I enjoyed a very yummy Sangria.  After dinner we headed to the beach to let the kids run around a bit.  We went back to the villa and the kids decided to try out the pool even though it wasn't very warm out.  They only lasted about 20 minutes.  Then we headed into town to buy some groceries.  Of course with the language barrier yet again, we didn't understand when the cashier asked if we needed bags (which they charge for), so Aaron just put the groceries straight back into the baskets.  When we got out to the car, we decided it was too much work to take the groceries out individually to put into the car only to have to carry them in the villa like that.  So Aaron decided we would just "borrow" the baskets and bring them back later.  The kids were mortified thinking we were thieves.  Oh yeah, it was also a challenge shopping at the store not knowing exactly what we were buying.  Turns out what I thought was chicken was possibly rabbit, and what I thought was beef kebabs might have been pork.