Holiday Update

I posted a while back about the fact that we were undecided about what to do for a holiday this year (see Holiday Planning). I was leaning towards staying in Switzerland to keep the cost down, but still harboured hope that we could go somewhere with a beach to make sure we had a "proper" summer holiday. For me, a beach is a key ingredient of a real summer holiday, so our search always kept this in mind.

The camp site's swimming pool

After much deliberation and searching, we came across a camp site in the Aigues-Mortes area in the south of France, which is next to the Mediterranean Sea and therefore guarantees a beach-assisted holiday. We plan to go with some friends to the camp site that promises to be child friendly, and has lots of activities for kids to do.

It has a huge swimming pool area, plenty of playgrounds, entertainment, a bakery and a restaurant plus loads more facilities to help enjoy our stay. We'll be staying in a little cottage with it's own terrace area, that should be ideal for meals and evening drinks to wind the day down.

We'll be driving to get there in a journey that should take around 5 hours to complete. We have never before undertaken such a mammoth drive with Lydia as a passenger, and given that she oftens complains when a trip takes longer than half an hour, this would seem somewhat foolhardy on our part.

We plan to leave in the early hours of the morning in the hope that Lydia will sleep in the car, but fortunately my in-laws bought us a portable DVD player to keep Lydia occupied on our recent flight to England, and it can be attached to the back of a head rest in the car for the passengers to view, so this - with any luck - will entertain a restless Lydia during the trip.

I have already recorded a few episodes of In the Night Garden, Postman Pat and T'Choupi - all Lydia's favourite TV shows - onto DVDs, to make sure we are well prepared for any eventualities. I'll also try to get some music on there and some children's music videos (there are loads on YouTube), as that will no doubt help Lydia forget about that she is stuck in a car for such an extended period of time.

Aside from the slight hesitancy over the long drive to get to the camp site, I'm now really looking forward to going on holiday, and hopefully getting some sun in the south of France. The fact that there will be a beach involved only makes it better. I can already see us having a BBQ next to our little cottage, playing bowls on the lawn and generally having a great time as a little family.

I can't wait to see Lydia exploring the sandy beach and getting her toes wet in the sea... She has experienced this before during our trip to Cornwall in England last year (see Holiday in Cornwall), and she wasn't a big fan of sand at the time, but now that she is a bit older, bigger and more worldly, she might get a taste for building sand castles with her daddy.

Holiday Planning

Dear Readers,

In this article I'm talking about summer holidays. That yearly tradition that the vast majority of us take part in, the exclusion of which is deemed almost as a deprivation of one's rights.

I think it goes without saying that everyone loves to go on holiday. A little trip away helps to break up the monotony of our daily lives, giving us time away from work or studies, a little time to recharge our batteries. It's also good to have something to look forward to as well, the knowledge that you'll be heading off somewhere on holiday in x weeks' time giving you that extra drive to get through the daily drudge.

Lydia's first beach holiday

Last year we were lucky enough to spend our family holiday in Cornwall, England, combining scenic countryside with beach-side fun, although it was somewhat dampened by the torrential rain for half the time we were there. Still, it allowed us to experience something different, and Lydia was able to play on a sandy beach and dip her toes in the chilly sea for the first time in her life.

This year, unfortunately, money is a bit tight, so we are looking at simpler options. Rather than splash out on flights or expensive hotels, we are looking at staying somewhere in Switzerland and finding something that is both relaxing for us and enjoyable for Lydia.

One potential option springs to mind - Switzerland has a plethora of camp sites dotted around the place, near lakes or in mountain villages. This, to me, seems like a great holiday idea. Cheap enough to be affordable whilst still having that sense of freedom to do what you want. I haven't been camping since I was in the Cub Scouts many years ago, apart from a brief weekend staying in a tent at the V Festival in 2002, and have some pretty happy memories of those trips. I've long fancied going camping again somewhere and really doing it properly - putting up a tent, building a camp fire, etc - but I think this might be a bit beyond Lydia for the time being. She would be a little over 2 years old this summer and that's simply too young for that kind of holiday. It's an option I will keep in mind for future holidays, but probably not for this year.

Precluding camping trips means one of the cheaper holiday options has to be left out of the search. Instead, we could perhaps focus on holiday camps that have lots of children and activities for the little ones to busy themselves with. Something like Center Parcs would be ideal, but sadly they don't have a site in Switzerland.

The perfect holiday would be a little holiday home (like a villa or a chalet) in the grounds of a holiday camp that has at least a small terrasse and/or garden, located in a nice, scenic area and possibly near a lake. Oh, and not too expensive. Think that might limit our options somewhat!

I have tried searching on Google to see what's out there, but it seems quite difficult to actually find something suitable. This might be partly because things in Switzerland are a bit on the expensive side, but possibly also because I'm not entering the right search parameters. Either way, I'm struggling to find what we could do and where we could go for this year's family holiday.

There is another limiting option that also hinders this search - the language. I'm a native English speaker who has picked up French since moving to Switzerland, and my wife is bilingual (French and English). Lydia, growing up in a home where both English and French are spoken is naturally picking up the two languages. I'm focusing my search on Switzerland to try and keep costs (such as travel) to a minimum, but the problem is that two-thirds of the country is in areas where Swiss German is the spoken language, such as Zurich, Basel, Bern, etc.

From our point of view, it would be much preferable to stay in the Suisse Romande part of Switzerland, as it's French-speaking and therefore won't require me to take a crash-course in Swiss German or Swiss Italian (or even Rumansch!). This is not just for our benefit, but also to make sure Lydia can communicate with the other kids she meets without too much frowning or reliance on hand gestures. As I said above, this is further restricting our field of search and therefore reducing the options available. It means we are looking at the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Valais, Fribourg and Jura. It would be nice to get away from Vaud though, as it would feel more like a holiday if we were further from home.

My searches have so far been fruitless, but that's partly why I have written this article. I'm calling for suggestions from all the helpful people out there in Internet-land who know of a holiday idea that just might tick all the boxes.

Any hints or suggestions would be greatly welcome - either leave a comment on this article or drop me an email to:  erniemcpeck@gmail.com.

I will follow up this article with future updates on any ideas that come to me from the good people out there, plus any I think of myself, as this just might help others who are in the same situation as me. Of course, any suggestions I receive will be fully credited to the kind person who suggested it!

As a back-up option, if I can't find anything suitable in Switzerland then I might consider expanding my search to include places in France, in case the ideal holiday is waiting for me in our neighbour country. Therefore, if you have any tips for great holidays in France then please let me know! That being said, it would still be preferable to stay in Switzerland.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help an expat out!

Kind regards,

Paul

Holiday in Cornwall

At the beginning of June we headed out for our much anticipated holiday in Cornwall with my family. Unfortunately, Cornwall is in England, and so we were greeted with traditional English weather for most of the week we were there.

Lydia with her bucket of seawater

I wasn't looking forward to the flight over to Bristol (see the article Travelling with Babies for my reasons why). I fully expected Lydia to be fidgety and restless, generally screaming us into insanity. To my surprise and delight, she was (almost) as good as gold. Apart from a mini-whinge, she slept on Chris, and so our flight passed without too much drama.

We landed in Bristol on time, then picked up our rental car and started the 3 hour drive down to St. Ives in Cornwall. Well, normally it would have been a 3 hour drive, if it wasn't for ridiculous amounts of traffic on the M5. We were crawling along bumper to bumper in 3 lanes of queuing traffic for what seemed like forever - after about an hour of driving we had managed to move approximately 20 miles away from the airport. With Lydia showing clear signs of boredom, we pulled off at the service station and had a coffee, giving Lydia her evening bottle of milk.

Having rested for around half an hour, we plucked up the courage to head back to the car. Fortunately, whatever was causing the traffic jam on the motorway seemed to have cleared, and we set off at normal speeds to finally kick-start the journey to Cornwall.