I’ve been wanting to post about our travels for a while, but life and work got in the way. Now that we have decided to take some time and focus on B&G Produce, we also have more time that’s “ours”. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting about our travels to Southern Spain, London, Alsace, Santa Barbara, and more. It’s so fun to revisit these places and memories. I hope you enjoy them as well!

We based our first trip around Southern Spain. Our reasoning was because we wanted to visit Jerry & Mitchell (Matt’s uncle and his husband). They had recently moved from Santa Barbara, California to Sevilla, Spain. The length of our trip was fairly short, less that 2 weeks, so we narrowed the cities down to Malaga, Sevilla, and Cadiz.

We started our long journey “over the pond” on December 31, 2012. Somewhere in the sky, we celebrated New Year’s Eve together. After an 8 hour flight, we landed in Amsterdam around 8am on January 1, 2013. With a 7 hour layover and the fact that I’d never been in Amsterdam, we decided to take a quick train into the city and explore before our next flight.

If you happen to have a long layover somewhere, by all means get out and explore. And readers, that sentence just tormented my father-in-law, Tom, who would not consider 7 hours long enough to leave the airport and get back in time for the next flight. In all seriousness, that short layover gives you a quick glimpse into a place to see if it might be somewhere you want to visit again for an extended period of time.

I will also say, don’t fully determine how you feel about a city based on the layover…or at least don’t visit that city the morning after New Year’s, after a solid rain. Not a good idea. The folks in Amsterdam have FUN on New Year’s and the city looks as hungover as they feel.

The picture above is mild compared to some of the sights that morning. Broken champagne and beer bottles, wet remnants of fireworks, vomit, trash, etc. I spent 90% of the time looking down, watching my step. It was a combination of poor decisions on my part. I didn’t wear appropriate shoes (black flats, no socks). I didn’t wear appropriate clothing (skirt, light sweater, jean jacket). I didn’t anticipate the aftermath. Matt did his best to make it a fun few hours. He talked about all of his exciting and fun experiences with friends when he visited years ago. He bought me a crepe filled with hazelnut spread. He kept saying “It’s not always like this.”

Despite his attempts, I left Amsterdam feeling damp and cold throughout my whole body, not one inch of me wanting to go back. I literally threw my shoes away when we finally arrived in Malaga. Good news, though, the next year I agreed to visit Amsterdam again (blog post coming soon) and absolutely adored it! I would hop a flight again in a heartbeat.

The First Trip – Malaga, Spain – The Arrival