Ten things I have learnt from our first 'break' with Elias
We were cautious to begin with. We booked a six day trip to France; more an experience than a 'get-away'. Nonetheless it was disappointing how un-get-away-ish the whole affair was. Mums and dads who have holidayed with little ones before, you already know all the reasons for this. I probably should have come to you first. Alas, I did not. But now I am in your suitably smug club of experience and intend to use this blog to dish out advice to those who are currently dusting off their passports, searching for their boarding passes and wondering what they've signed up for.
1) Here's the big one from which all other things cometh: take your own car seat.
Most airliners let you travel with two baby items (extremely generous when you consider how proud they are of their £9 on-board bargain meal deal). We chose a travel cot and buggy. Our thinking was that both of these would be hard to damage by airport handlers chucking bags about willy-nilly. The truth is that these items all go into over sized baggage. So, if you do choose to take your car seat, it’ll be nestled up with someone's skis and someone’s cello. In a fight the cello will come off worse.
Taking your own seat is especially important if you are travelling at peak holiday time; the parents who have reached the car hire desk before you will have inevitably chosen the expensive padded car seats and you will be left to scavenge from the dregs. We ended up with a Finding Nemo forward facing seat with no padding. It was so upright it was tilted forward. In truth, it can't have cost them more than 20 euros and yet we would pay 100 euros (in addition to the 45 euro hire fee) if it was damaged. The problem with a very upright seat was that as soon as the rumble of the engine kicked in, the desire to sleep would sweep over my boy and his head would loll uncomfortably forward (think tube commuter waking himself up every ten seconds) - he would then erupt from moans of frustration to hysterical wailing (on the longer journeys I would join him). As any parent knows, wanting to sleep but not being able to is indeed akin to torture.
2) Take out car insurance to cover your excess. Let me translate: go to reducemyexcess.co.uk and pay them £6 to cover damage to the vehicle that is below £500 ( the car hire companies charge you significantly more for this luxury) . On our honeymoon the rock was hit by the car (note the passive form) and we suffered at the hands of a money grabbing car hire company - £300 for a tyre. They say lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice but, lo and behold, on the journey from the airport to our airbnb accommodation, the tyre suffered a similar misfortune. That £6 was worth far more than it's weight in gold to us during these stressful moments.
3) Limit travel. You’re probably starting to see a link to my regrets. On a six day trip, three entire days were near on consumed with travel. On day one our door to door time was between eight and nine hours (avoid London Luton at all costs). On day three, the day we would take the two hour trip from Arcachon to our friends in Lescole Nord, our door to door time was about six hours. On day six our door to door stint took a colossal twelve hours. Yes, there were stop offs but these were only to alleviate the stress from Elias’ wailing. On the two days we didn’t have travelling to do, we still often found ourselves in the car (hell wagon) for longer than we wanted to be.
4) Plan some sort of itinerary before hand. Use those luxury moments when your child is sleeping to do a bit of reasearch. leave this until ten am on the morning of your holida and your research will be hampered by the necessity of stopping said child diving into a pond, throwing stones at a hosts' car or stroking wasps. We planned activities and day trips quickly and with little thought for balance. We visited two zoo/theme parks, a swimming pool (see point 5) and a beach (we didn’t touch the sand; dinner time was long past and we had to track down something with a vegetable in for Elias). These central activities were not really things we would have chosen to do without Elias and I wonder whether, with a bit more forward planning, zoos could have been tempered with more Holly and Zane activities (wine tasting etc.). Probably not but certainly something worth thinking about.
5) Take budgie smugglers and a swimming hat for french pools. Don’t waste the journey or the euros not knowing this. They sell Speedo equivalents in vending machines but they are fifteen euros a pop, which equates to about five euros per square inch of fabric.
6) Use airbnb – it’s the hosts that are the real glory feature of this site. When we arrived with a flat tyre, a tired child and a truck load of woe, it was our French host who found us the number for a pizza delivery and let us use his phone to call them. He then changed the tyre for us in the morning and spent hours on the phone to our car hire company trying to figure out what they wanted us to do with the blasted car and its spare tyre. He also shared his pets with us - a ray of sunshine in a day of perpetual darkness.
7) If you can, scout out toddler safety features in your accommodation. We stayed with a lovely couple we met on our honeymoon in their beautiful home in Lescole Nord (like 4 acres wrapped in sunflower fields beautiful) and I don't regret this at all. However because we prioritised company over toddler friendly accommodation, Zane and I were basically on shift work with Elias. Without constant supervision he would have either permanently damaged himself or one of the seven sets of French doors. Note the drop side pool in the photo (in France they tax you less if the pool is built above ground level - it's not good news for toddlers who think they can fly.)
8) Consider taking relatives. There were very few moments that Zane and I got to sit down together and actually talk (the car journey time didn’t involve conversation – I was in the back ferociously feeding Elias bread sticks and singing baa baa black sheep on repeat to try to abate the weeping). Relatives, as well as being highly valuable in and of themselves, may have eased the toddler work load just a little.
9) Get on the aeroplane last. This was one of the only bits of advice I read and took heed of before travelling. Many airlines (who clearly do not have a clue what it is like to restrain a toddler on your lap) allow families to board first; it’s a gift with spikes. It was not easy trying to keep Elias in his seat belt, not opening the tray on the seat in front of him for the time it took to ‘ferry’ to the run way, wait for the air traffic controllers to stop fannying about and get into the air. I don’t like to think of the howling that would have ensued if we’d added an extra half an hour to this time. And that would have just been from me...
10) Think carefully about whether the fancy meal out is really worth it. Here is a picture of Elias trying to escape the restaurant whilst we waited for our expensive french food to arrive.
So there it is. We are officially initiated into the club of parents who have taken the plunge and gone on their first family holiday. I should add here, just in case it is lacking in the aforementioned emotional splurge, that there were some really wonderful moments mixed into our trip. Unfortunately they were like the brazil nuts in muesli but nevertheless, they were there: delicious ice cream was consumed, the sun shone on one of the days and the evenings drinking wine ( or sniffing it in my case) and catching up with our friends could have been used by the french tourism board. I hope the oats of the muesli, to extend the metaphor, are of nutritional benefit to those about to join our club.
1) Here's the big one from which all other things cometh: take your own car seat.
Most airliners let you travel with two baby items (extremely generous when you consider how proud they are of their £9 on-board bargain meal deal). We chose a travel cot and buggy. Our thinking was that both of these would be hard to damage by airport handlers chucking bags about willy-nilly. The truth is that these items all go into over sized baggage. So, if you do choose to take your car seat, it’ll be nestled up with someone's skis and someone’s cello. In a fight the cello will come off worse.
Taking your own seat is especially important if you are travelling at peak holiday time; the parents who have reached the car hire desk before you will have inevitably chosen the expensive padded car seats and you will be left to scavenge from the dregs. We ended up with a Finding Nemo forward facing seat with no padding. It was so upright it was tilted forward. In truth, it can't have cost them more than 20 euros and yet we would pay 100 euros (in addition to the 45 euro hire fee) if it was damaged. The problem with a very upright seat was that as soon as the rumble of the engine kicked in, the desire to sleep would sweep over my boy and his head would loll uncomfortably forward (think tube commuter waking himself up every ten seconds) - he would then erupt from moans of frustration to hysterical wailing (on the longer journeys I would join him). As any parent knows, wanting to sleep but not being able to is indeed akin to torture.
2) Take out car insurance to cover your excess. Let me translate: go to reducemyexcess.co.uk and pay them £6 to cover damage to the vehicle that is below £500 ( the car hire companies charge you significantly more for this luxury) . On our honeymoon the rock was hit by the car (note the passive form) and we suffered at the hands of a money grabbing car hire company - £300 for a tyre. They say lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice but, lo and behold, on the journey from the airport to our airbnb accommodation, the tyre suffered a similar misfortune. That £6 was worth far more than it's weight in gold to us during these stressful moments.
3) Limit travel. You’re probably starting to see a link to my regrets. On a six day trip, three entire days were near on consumed with travel. On day one our door to door time was between eight and nine hours (avoid London Luton at all costs). On day three, the day we would take the two hour trip from Arcachon to our friends in Lescole Nord, our door to door time was about six hours. On day six our door to door stint took a colossal twelve hours. Yes, there were stop offs but these were only to alleviate the stress from Elias’ wailing. On the two days we didn’t have travelling to do, we still often found ourselves in the car (hell wagon) for longer than we wanted to be.
4) Plan some sort of itinerary before hand. Use those luxury moments when your child is sleeping to do a bit of reasearch. leave this until ten am on the morning of your holida and your research will be hampered by the necessity of stopping said child diving into a pond, throwing stones at a hosts' car or stroking wasps. We planned activities and day trips quickly and with little thought for balance. We visited two zoo/theme parks, a swimming pool (see point 5) and a beach (we didn’t touch the sand; dinner time was long past and we had to track down something with a vegetable in for Elias). These central activities were not really things we would have chosen to do without Elias and I wonder whether, with a bit more forward planning, zoos could have been tempered with more Holly and Zane activities (wine tasting etc.). Probably not but certainly something worth thinking about.
5) Take budgie smugglers and a swimming hat for french pools. Don’t waste the journey or the euros not knowing this. They sell Speedo equivalents in vending machines but they are fifteen euros a pop, which equates to about five euros per square inch of fabric.
7) If you can, scout out toddler safety features in your accommodation. We stayed with a lovely couple we met on our honeymoon in their beautiful home in Lescole Nord (like 4 acres wrapped in sunflower fields beautiful) and I don't regret this at all. However because we prioritised company over toddler friendly accommodation, Zane and I were basically on shift work with Elias. Without constant supervision he would have either permanently damaged himself or one of the seven sets of French doors. Note the drop side pool in the photo (in France they tax you less if the pool is built above ground level - it's not good news for toddlers who think they can fly.)8) Consider taking relatives. There were very few moments that Zane and I got to sit down together and actually talk (the car journey time didn’t involve conversation – I was in the back ferociously feeding Elias bread sticks and singing baa baa black sheep on repeat to try to abate the weeping). Relatives, as well as being highly valuable in and of themselves, may have eased the toddler work load just a little.
9) Get on the aeroplane last. This was one of the only bits of advice I read and took heed of before travelling. Many airlines (who clearly do not have a clue what it is like to restrain a toddler on your lap) allow families to board first; it’s a gift with spikes. It was not easy trying to keep Elias in his seat belt, not opening the tray on the seat in front of him for the time it took to ‘ferry’ to the run way, wait for the air traffic controllers to stop fannying about and get into the air. I don’t like to think of the howling that would have ensued if we’d added an extra half an hour to this time. And that would have just been from me...
10) Think carefully about whether the fancy meal out is really worth it. Here is a picture of Elias trying to escape the restaurant whilst we waited for our expensive french food to arrive.
So there it is. We are officially initiated into the club of parents who have taken the plunge and gone on their first family holiday. I should add here, just in case it is lacking in the aforementioned emotional splurge, that there were some really wonderful moments mixed into our trip. Unfortunately they were like the brazil nuts in muesli but nevertheless, they were there: delicious ice cream was consumed, the sun shone on one of the days and the evenings drinking wine ( or sniffing it in my case) and catching up with our friends could have been used by the french tourism board. I hope the oats of the muesli, to extend the metaphor, are of nutritional benefit to those about to join our club.
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