Well the day has finally arrived, we are heading home after 4 marvelous months in Europe.  Our day started at 8 am when we awoke to a rainy, dreary day in Paris.  I weighed our luggage before hauling it to the car and Leslie was 12 lbs over the weight limit.  Did a quick and methodic repack and got under the weight restriction. We got on the A104 for what should have been a 20 minute drive to the airport and deliver the rental to Auto Europe when all of a sudden all 3 lanes of traffic came to an abrupt hault. The 20 minute drive took a little less than 2 hours but know hurry as we then had a 6 hour wait at the airport.  Looks like a great start to a long day!

The trip overall was a great success.  Eastern Europe was fantastic and our 3 week stint in southern Spain certainly helped us wind down from 3 months of extensive travel.  Once again, we were very fortunate to form some incredible friendships that will last a lifetime.  Gerard in France, Mekela in Italy, Eljoise in Croatia, Edin in Bosnia, reuniting with our great German Friends Sibylle & Walter, Metso & Karina at Lake Konstanz, sampling Toika with Diana & Dorin in Romania, Vladimir & Jana in 

The last week of our adventures always seems to fly by and these 3 weeks in southern Spain was no exception.  Now that we are grandparents, these extended holidays are becoming a little tougher because we miss the kids.  So we leave Calahonda with mixed emotions, a gorgeous view of the Mediterranean, fantastic weather, beautiful beaches, you couldn't ask for much more.  However, we are looking forward to going home and seeing family & friends again. 

Our trip got an early start this morning on the road at 7 am.  What I thought was going to be a 9 hour drive took a little over 6 hours.  The highways in Spain are amazing.  We made a couple of pit stops before arriving in Calatayud, a small city just south of the French border.  On our route, we visited the Arcos de Jalon, Church of Santa Maria du Huerta and Castle Ajub to wrap up another great day!  Tomorrow we make the 9 hour trek to Limoges, France, inching ever closer to Paris for our departure flight on September 29.

Our daugher-in-law Jen emailed us this sad story this morning.  It is a must read for all parents and grandparents.  Jen & Ryan have twins, Becca and Nolin, our grandtwins, so the story really hits home.  


You will need the Kleenex...







-----Original Message-----

From: Jen
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2014 11:28 PM
To:  EVERY PARENT & GRANDPARENT
Subject: Please read with Kleenex

For a minute I hesitated in sharing this because it's another long-ish read and I know I recently sent the long read about fire hotel safety (which I hope you've all taken the time to read!) but ultimately I think this could save a life of someone I love so I am sending it!!

This is an INCREDIBLY SAD story which I made the mistake of reading at work....good thing it's a quiet Friday afternoon so no one can see me crying at my desk.  Make sure you read with Kleenex and learn from this totally tragic story by taking action with her suggestions! 

Love you all.

http://lovelightlaughterandchocolate.blogspot.ca/2012/12/be-with-me-just-for-today.html?m=1

xo

Jen

Today is day 5 since our arrival for some R&R and it has been magnificent.  We get up to some incredible sunrises overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.  The sunsets are just as spectacular with the moon rising just behind causing a silver glow on the water. 
The weather has been superb, in the mid 30's everyday with a blue blazer sky.  Today we are planning a day trip to explore the villages and beaches south of Calahonda and Marbella.  This area is quite congested because of its ideal conditions, beautiful beaches and very predictable weather, a little too populated for us.  If we can find a smaller city or village with some quiet beaches and nice accommodation, we may consider making this our winter getaway.  I am sure that may be a tall task.  With 741 million Europeans, I am sure everybody is looking for the same thing which may be impossible to find.  Certainly Spain is probably the most desirable location for most Europeans given it's location, amenities, multiculturalism and the list goes on.  Croatia is becoming very popular but in our opinion, Spain is still the place!  We will report on our findings later this evening.  

Still no solution to our hard drive problem and we are still hoping all our data is in tact and will be fully recoverable.
First stop we had to make was a resort that would be almost impossible to beat.  It was Déjà vu all over again!  For those of you that know me well, you are probably sick and tired of hearing me brag about my most favourite location in the world, The Marriott Marbella Beach Resort.  I have said many times that if heaven is even close to this place, I have to be good because there is no other place I would sooner spend eternity.  We arrived at the security gates and within a couple of minutes, Casper, the manager was there to greet us. I informed him we had spent 3 weeks at the resort in 2007 and he welcomed us to tour the resort for old time sake.  We gladly took him up on it.  The place was even more spectacular than I remembered but this time there was 96% occupancy.  The last time we were there, we practically had the place to ourselves.  It was hard to leave the resort but from there, it was on to the very southern tip of Spain to the port village of Tarifa.  

I looks like you could almost swim to Africa from Tarifa.  It is right there!  The village is nothing to write home about but the beaches within a mile on either side are pretty impressive.  There ferries that leave regularly from the port that will take you to Africa for the day or as long as you want.  They are quite popular with tourists and the locals if you want a change of scenery and a chance to tell anyone who cares, you were in Africa for the day!  We were told the port town of Tangiers is not much to see and to get a better feel for the true culture, you have to travel a little further south.  Not this time for us.

Tarifa is the point where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean and for as far as the eye can see, there are white sand beaches that are almost deserted, by European standards anyway.  We spent a relaxing afternoon at a secluded spot watching kite surfers speed across the windy sea. It was 7:30 before we got back to the apartment.  We threw a pizza in the oven, tossed up a salad, poured ourselves a drink and dinner on the deck with our panoramic view of the city below and the vast Mediterranean Sea.  No better way to end the day!

Well actually, Calahonda, Spain, a tiny enclave just a few miles from Marbella.  This region happens to be very high on my destination list, if not the number 1 spot.  The last time we were here was December 2007 when we spent almost 3 weeks in Marbella.  It was fantastic!
It was nice to finally find a place to simply kick back and relax for a few weeks.  We have put on over 16,000 kms on the Peugeot and it is time for a break, for the Peugeot and us.  The weather in the last few countries we visited in Eastern Europe was starting to look like fall and we were anxious to get to the sun and heat.  We rented a 2 bedroom, two bath apartment in Calahonda overlooking the Mediterranean, certainly not too hard to take.  We have 3 pools to choose from but no tennis, gym or some of the other amenities we normally like to have.  Oh well, you can't have everything.  The temperature since our arrival has been in the mid 30°C/90°F, with bright blue south of Spain skies.  Our daughter-in-law kindly sent us a photo of our snow covered vehicle in Calgary which really makes us anxious to return on September 29...NOT!

We are planning a trip along the coast tomorrow to tour some of the smaller seaside villages and maybe hit the beach for a few hours.  Very tough life!  We are starting to count down the days for our return to Canada and am sure the time will continue to fly by.

My hard drive is still down with all our photo's in limbo but we are trying to put it out of our minds for now, confident that a solution will be found and all will be good.

No photos today and if your wondering why it has been quiet on the home from over the past few days it is because my blood pressure is going through the roof.  I have a LOVE/HATE relationship with computers.  You may recall a blog at the beginning of our journey where our Seagate External Drive crashed causing us to lose all our data.  Fortunately I have the photos to that point backed up on our laptop hard drive.  Yesterday, the Toshiba Hard Drive we purchased in Bosnia gave up the ghost but this time we may have a pending disaster in the making.  All our photos of our trip are in jeopardy because everything from Bosnia til today was stored exclusively on the external drive because our laptop was out of space.  This was always a big concern of mine and I was tempted to buy another external just in case but in my mind I thought what are the chances of 4 external drives crashing in a 3 year time span.  Well the worst case scenario has transpired and now I am trying to work with Toshiba to recover the data and restore the drive.  It would be a travesty if we lost all the photos but thank goodness, most of them, other than our last few days in France, are on our website.  Not sure if I can access and save them from our website.

We are keeping our fingers crossed.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the beauty of this region.  It is endless!  The biggest problem I have now is my second external hard drive crashed with all our photos (1000's) of our European Adventure.  So therefore, you can go to our Travel Album link and only view a small portion of the photos taken in Provence/Avignon.  After lots of calls and correspondence with Toshiba & Seagate, we are confident that they can be recovered once we return to North America.  Fingers crossed!!!

If we would have know how breath taking the region is, we may have reconsidered our plans for Spain and spent our time in this area.  Oh well, just another excuse for another trip to Europe.  We now know the areas we really favour and those...NOT SO MUCH!

Say what you want about the French, but France is beautiful.  We have visited France on two occasions and it continues to be among our favorite countries.  The French our proud of their heritage and have a real pride of ownership.  The country has got to be one of the cleanest in the world, particularly in the rural areas.  Bridges lined with lush flowers, manicured grass boulevards, fabulous architecture and the list goes on and on.  We are heading to southern Spain and our both wondering why we didn't just end our holiday in France.

We stayed in a rural apartment just outside Avignon.  The host was incredibly friendly as usual but did not speak a word of French.  We got another late start because we couldn't stop visiting, hence, it was a long day traveling.  Provence is amazing!  You could easily spend a month in that region and not even come close to taking in all the beauty.