Back in September, my brother and his wife moved to Madrid, Spain. So since then, my family started to plan for winter break in Spain. My parents have never been there before and same with me so I thought it would be perfect. So I talked to the family and they all agreed! Spain for winter break for my parents, 2 brothers, 2 sister-in-laws, and me. This was exciting! So I started planning right away.
However, planning for this trip was difficult. I’ve never been a long vacation like this nor have I planned a trip for so many people. So this was new to me.
First thing was to figure out what day to fly out to Spain. What days can we all be available. We had to figure out our parent’s schedule and work around that. We were able to find 9 days that worked for all of us.
Second, we decided on what cities to go to. Usually, I like to go from city to city and hit up all the major spots. However, this time, we wanted to take it slow. Take time to enjoy the city a bit more. So we all agreed to do 3 cities. But which ones? The major must were Barcelona and Madrid. Barcelona was unanimous between the kids and Madrid because my brother and sister-in-law moved there.
So which city would be our third?
I was stuck between Seville and Granada. Seville is the bigger city but Granada had Alhambra. I ended up making a powerpoint presentation for my parents and they decided on Seville by just looking at pictures from the internet. Here is my presentation. Which one would you have picked?
Third, after we had the dates and the cities, I picked a route that fit our schedule. Barcelona in – Seville – Madrid out. So once the route was set, I went ahead and purchased my parent’s flights using my Chase Reserve card. It was going to be an early Birthday gift to them from the family. When I told them the news, they were so excited.
I wanted to make sure that they were not arriving in Spain and being strained alone. So I looked for flights that arrived before my parents. And perfectly enough, I found a KLM flight for my parents that arrives at 5:05pm and a TAP flight for me that arrives at 5:00pm. Perfect!
Once, we had our dates, flights, and cities, we booked our accommodations. I did not realize that booking a place for 7 people would be so hard. Hotels were out because we would have to book 2 rooms and would not know how to separate the family members.
So we started looking at Airbnb. We were looking for apartments that had multiple bedrooms and bathrooms and living area. With a whole apartment, our family could spend more time together. So we all looked. All the cities we picked were tourist cities so there were a lot of Airbnb rooms and apartments to choose from.
However, there were some issues with some of the places for family use. A lot of the places had room for more than 7 people.However, it would be 2 bedrooms with several bunk beds. This was not suitable for my parents. So when making a booking on Airbnb, don’t just look at the number of people the apartment can host but what type of beds they have and how many rooms they have.
After all the arrangements, we are just all looking forward to this family vacation!
I’ll write about my experiences when I come back!
Moons on the Move 