Back From Holiday

I’m back from holiday! I feel like there are a thousand things I could write about - Tenerife, travel, capitalism and the erosion of locality, holidaying with three small children, all-inclusives…

But I’m tired so let’s try to keep it brief and spread out posts once I’ve got more of my wits about me.

Lowlights

I’m only starting with lowlights for the purposes of balance - it’s been a great holiday with a lot of positives. My worst bit was the second night (the one after the travelling) - we were all exhausted and hadn’t settled into our rhythm yet and nobody would sleep and everybody else’s children were behaving and ours wouldn’t do anything but complain.

Sometimes the buffet was overwhelming with the people and noise and chaos.

The 10 month old only napped for 35 minutes at a time and so reverted to angry 3 nap days rather than calmer 2 nap days. He also woke up loads in the night and typically woke up an hour or two before the other kids each morning, throwing all our schedules out of whack.

Highlights

Most of the rest of it! I asked the kids today and their favourties were:

6 year old: making friends with the girls next door and looking for lizards.

4 year old: the inflatable water slide and the beach (note: she wasn’t fussed by the beach)

10 month old: he didn’t comment, but he learned to move from his tummy to sitting, and to clap and wave…so let’s go with those!

me: one evening where we went to an a la carte restaurant, then went to the hotel’s ‘carnival’ - there was a magic show on and the 6 year old volunteered and was chosen to go on stage and his 4 year old sister followed him and wouldn’t leave because she wanted to stand next to him. And going to the beach with my 6 year old on a solo trip.

wife: ‘carnival’ evening

Overall

A great experience and something I’m glad we did. I’m tired, fat, hungover, and can’t wait to get to sleep in my own bed.