January, a time for planning ahead and imagining yourself on a hot beach; kids playing in the sun, other half behaving himself and you wondering how to spend the evening? Eat in? Eat out? Wear the maxi dress or the shorts combo?
The hard life eh?
But holidays are important as the memory will stay with us forever, we are creating good moments for our kids to look back on and remember. TOTS 100 and Thomson Al Fresco holidays are offering the prize of one of their holidays to France for one blogger and their family (me, me, me) all I have to do is write about my favourite holiday and that’s where I’m becoming stuck.
After all, a lot of thought, time and preparation goes into planning this annual event and looking back they were all brilliant. I have favourite moments from each one.
As a child my grandparents had a villa in Majorca and we spent all our summers out there. I learnt to swim, ate my first paella and I played crazy golf.
Then I became a parent and living in Italy I had Europe’s top beauty spots on my doorstep, we travelled up and down the boot from the Dolomites to Sicily, I visited Florence, Rome and Venice, I swam in the seas off Sicily and Sardegna and I stared in awe at the beauty of the Costa Amalfitana. The memory of our camper van trip around Puglia has an indelible mark on my soul.
I scuba dived in the Red Sea, I swam with shark and barracuda, I witnessed a shoal of fish laying their eggs on the sandbanks and I giggled at the sight of a shipwreck of a boat carrying toilets that had been sprawn across the seabed. ‘Don’t be tempted to sit on them to take a photo,’ our instructor warned, ‘the Mornay Eels like to live in them and you don’t want their teeth in your backside!’
Before the twins arrived Paul and I did The States. We chose a tour starting in New York, a dream come true as I yelled ‘Taxi!’ on Broadway and how I cried as I walked around Ground Zero witnessing the devastation, the loss of life and the immense force that is the American people. That holiday was unforgettable, eating Seafood Chowder on Pier 39 in San Francisco, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and the National Park of Yosemite, each and every stop has a ton of photos and memories.
See what I mean? How can I choose just one? The first trip to Rye in Kent with the twins aged 5 months? (Oh yes we did! A monumental organisation went into that 3 night stay!) My favourite fishing photo from Torquay? The best crab sandwich ever in Dorset? Beer o’clock on the Costa Dorada? Or a mini tornado at Lake Garda?
Or maybe the holidays yet to come, new places yet to explore, languages to stumble with, new food to taste and more memories to make? I’ll leave you with a short video of last year’s holiday in Sardegna…sigh
