A 10-hour flight with kids, an "after" and "before" story

These were taken en route to Bilbao, Spain, the second leg of our European journey.

For comparison's sake, this was taken before... Before the limo ride from our house to LAX. Before the 2 and a half hour wait for our flight to Paris. Before I watched the first 20 minutes of "Nine" twice and then heard that the audio/video would be shut down for the entire flight. Before the lady next to me moved the arm rest out of the way and may as well have sat *on* me rather than next to me. Before yet another of my kids' iTouches came in fatal contact with water, its dreaded villain. Before our family's near meltdown at the currency exchange at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, due to no ice cream stands and the adversarial relationship that the French seem to have with both air conditioning and ice. Before I discovered the reason we hadn't gotten our luggage from the carousel was, heck, we were in the wrong place... no wonder everyone else was gone. Before we realized that it was a good thing I only packed two suitcases because apparently they don't rent Suburbans in Europe (their version is an Audi 4-door with manual transmission). Before we drove an hour through Spain and fell in love with the green countryside. Before we landed at our pretty apartment in San Sebastian, with views of the beautiful bay-like beach, saw a few topless sunbathers , an orange striped banana hammock, and a parade or rally for something or another. Before our kids insisted that we go back to the apartment at 9:30 at night to get bathing suits because the sun was still setting and the waves were warm and the lights illuminating the surrounding boardwalk came on and made the whole city appear to be magically bejeweled.

Basically, before we fell in love with San Sebastian and decided that yeah, we could do that 10-hour flight and 2-hour connection to Bilbao again, if it meant we could be here.