Mallorca - Day 1

We left for Mallorca a week ago on Sunday evening, and while I did not enjoy flying in the evening because Carsten's bedtime gets delayed by quite a bit, it was nice to basically have an entire weekend before we went on vacation for a week. On Saturday, before our trip, we ran errands around town which takes quite a bit of time when you don't have a car, and we had ample time to procrastinate about packing because we said 'hey, we'll do it on Sunday!'. It turns out we should have packed a bit more on Saturday, but oh well, we live and learn :). On Sunday, we slept in as much as possible since we had our daylight savings time change, and then we proceeded to lazily pack during the morning and frantically pack during Carsten's nap in the afternoon. We chose to forgo church since Carsten would not have been able to nap in afternoon due to our 11:30 am church service, the time change, and our 5:30 pm flight. I must say that even though our flight was delayed by 45 min, which would normally stress me out because it's hard to keep Carsten in check at an air port, it was quite pleasant to be stuck in the Zurich terminal because they have a 'family services' area; this means that they have a purposed area for children with toys, cribs, changing stations, and even tables for eating. I can't tell you how wonderful it is to have an area like that in an airport, and I think I've said this before, but I now purposely try to fly through airports with children's areas because it's always very likely that you'll be delayed longer than you think you will. Here's a photo of Carsten in the play area with a large truck that he LOVED:

I'm not sure it was intended to be used this way, but Carsten really enjoyed it :).

Our flight went really well, and in fact, we were amazed at how easy a 1.5 hr flight is :). The only thing that was unusual, is that Swiss air would not let us take our car seat on board in case there was an extra seat for Carsten. Perhaps this is only an American tendency, but I do like having the car seat available for use :). We were treated to a view of the island near sunset as we flew in, which was fun. Of course, it was dark by the time we located and loaded our rental car, but luckily it was only a 20 min drive to our hotel from the airport. At our hotel, we had booked a 1 bedroom apartment, which was nice because then we didn't have to sit in the dark in the evenings while Carsten slept. The major downside is that it was 1 bedroom, so we all slept in the same room. This worked great for the first evening since he was completely exhausted by the time he went to bed, but not so much for subsequent evenings. It's a little distressing when your child pulls off your (well, Andy's :) ) covers at 2 am in the morning and says 'DADA!' while he's still in his crib (it was tight quarters).