Noah and Emmie slept in my room so we could wake up early and walk to Starbucks for breakfast food and drinks. Noah had the most real food in his breakfast, an egg sandwich with English-style bacon, while Emmie and I went with a couple of the more sugary holiday treats. She had a red velvet cupcake, I tried the seasonal chocolate loaf of bread. The food and drinks were good but the best part about breakfast was being able to sit outside and soak in the scene one final time. This was our last day near the ocean of the trip and the last day of 70-degree weather we will experience for several months.
Morning view from our Gran Canaria hotel.
We returned to get Eilidh and take her to the Poema Del Mar Aquarium. This was not part of our original itinerary, nor had I done any extensive research on the attraction, but it was well-rated on Google, and the kids were very excited about the opportunity to visit it when I pointed it out from our hotel room’s window. The price gave us a bit of sticker shock, but once we were inside the aquarium, it was apparent it was money well-spent.
Emmie was the notetaker throughout the museum, capturing names of fish and other sea creatures on her newly-purchased small notebook. Noah gave an occasional assist by relaying spelling from the monitors by each pool of water. Eilidh loved it too, and walked through the vast majority of the aquarium, wanting to be up close to the glass to view the animals. Best of all, we’d visited the aquarium early enough in the morning that it was hardly crowded. We could go at our own pace and never had to fight for a view.
We could have spent another hour at the aquarium, but we had another flight to catch, our second in a four-day span. This flight took us from Gran Canaria to Lisbon, where we were spending the final two nights in a familiar apartment. Almost immediately after we were dropped off by the taxi, I received a text message that our flight had been delayed by 30 minutes. While a delayed flight is never preferred, it did give us a little extra time for lunch at the airport before going to our gate.
Eilidh wanted some green tea since she missed our morning meal, so we started our time in the terminal at the airport’s only Starbucks.* The kids ate sandwiches here, but Amanda and I decided to go for back-to-back fast food meals and order lunch for the nearby Burger King. My gourmet chicken sandwich was better than I expected, Amanda’s classic “long chicken” sandwich was worse than she’d expected, but the Fries were hot and Cokes good, so all-in-all it made for a decent airport meal.
Our order from Burger King.