We’re back! A lot has happened since we drove away from our rental home in Estepona, Spain on Saturday, April 17th. We had decided to drive straight through Spain, France and Belgium, hoping to arrive in Sendenhorst, Germany by Tuesday afternoon (2500km).

But before we get to that, a few photos from our last days in Spain. On Saturday, April 11th all four girls bravely got their ears pierced! Luisa went first, and the ladies who did it were really impressed with her once they realised that the other girls were also going to do it. “You sent your littlest sister first?!? What a champ!”

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The next day we went to see the amazing Nerja Caves, home of the largest stalactite in the world at 32 meters high. It was quite impressive! Unfortunately, we only have one photo from our adventure, but we had a really nice day. A tour of the cave, a quick play on the playground and then a delicious Italian dinner down by the water in Nerja.

So now back to the drive north. Sometime in late February, we made the decision to spend a couple of months in early summer in the US to visit family and friends instead of continuing on our European adventure since many countries are on lockdown in Europe and things were improving in the US, covid-19-wise. We realised at that time that Charlotte and Luisa needed new US passports US passports so we booked our tickets for late May, secured appointments at the Embassy in Berlin for early May and decided to be on the safe side and arrive back in Germany two weeks before the passport appointments, in case we needed to go into self-quarantine upon arrival in Germany. Steffen’s dad was generous enough to allow us to stay at his house, so on Saturday, April 17th we left glorious Spain. We made it past Paris, just under 2000km, on Sunday night and were feeling really good about our progress. 

Then we woke up Monday morning and realized that the camper had been robbed, while we were sleeping in it! They stole 3 laptops, 2 iPads, Steffen’s iPhone, the kids iPod touch, my Apple Watch, a camera, my shoes, the list goes on. A horrific feeling to know they were inches away from us while sleeping and a huge pain in the a$$ to get everything locked/cleared and replaced (still working on that). And it seems as though all our photos since January 2020 were not in iCloud. We spent a few hours at the police station, reporting the theft, and they were really helpful but not optimistic.

Then, to finish the day off, we got a flat tire on the Belgium highway and spent 3+ hours getting that fixed. The people that came to tow the car and trailer and fix the tires were so helpful and kind. We got very lucky!

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Around midnight on Monday, April 19th we finally arrived in Sendenhorst where we spent five weeks. More on that soon!