Travelling with children

Today was a day long looked forward to in the Ayres household as it as the day that our long awaited holiday finally came around! Now you may wonder why you had not heard much about this up until now, well that was quite deliberate really. It never ceases to amaze me how many people go bragging about their trips all over the internet. 4 more sleeps, 3 more sleeps, then it's pictures showing off on the beach or pissed up with some cocktails.   You might as well plaster all over facebook, "Hi burglars, come and ransack my house". I would imagine insurance companies might even refuse to pay out in the future if they haven't done so already. So apart from a few close and trusted friends, no-one knew I was going away and in fact my internet footprint has vanished altogether as I have closed my facebook account for the duration. You see even in my absence someone could let it slip. It's my birthday on Saturday so all it takes is someone to write something on my wall that alludes to the fact I'm abroad and the cat's out of the bag  

So where are we? In Corralejo, in Fuerteventura, the most beautiful and unspoilt of the Canary Islands and the one that few other people go to. I've been coming here on and off for 18 years now and I love it. I've tried all the others e.g. Tenerife, Gran Canaria and invariably find them full of chavvy twats and lager louts. It is simply not like that here. And there are a few other things e.g. No McDonalds or Burger King here. It's very much locally run restaurants and bars, many of which have been here for decades and unlike anywhere else I have ever been, every time I come here, I feel like I am coming home.  

My aim is to write a daily diary and convert it into blog entries when I get home. I'm writing using the bluettooth keyboard on my Galaxy Note - which is a little rubber keypad similar to the old ZX Spectrum. It's not the easiest thing, I make a lot of small mistakes which have to be corrected, so forgive me for any I miss. Overall my typing speed is probably about half what it is at home, but still way faster than a touch screen.  

So the story of day one? Well we left home in a blizzard, which was nice to be getting away from. Not really much point in me boring you with all the ins and outs of our journey, we've all been on holiday enough times to know the procedure, so I'll just give you the notable points. Firstly if you are travelling with children, don't let yourself be conned by the travel agent into pre-booking your seats. I was being harassed via email for this in the weeks leading up to my departure, even to the extent that when I needed to go into the online booking to update some other details, it was even implied that it was compulsory. Small print analysis determined it wasn't. I know there was no way they were going to separate a 2 and 5 year old from their parents - can you imagine the chaos? A couple who had paid to pre-book their seats having a 2 year old screaming and filling its nappy with poo next to them, while the parents are 20 aisles away? Never going to happen. So I stood firm and when we got to check in the desk clerk said - " Oh I see you have pre-booked your seats". " Erm, no, I haven't", came my reply. " Oh well someone must have done it for you", she said. Job done.   The flight as you can imagine was hard work. We had 3 seats together and one across the aisle. With a four hour flight, I sat in-between the two kids for the first couple of hours and then swapped with Claire. Lots of treats and colouring books and crayons got us through, but there were various problems. Crayons falling on aircraft floors are not easily retrieved.But we made it and emerged blinking into the lovely evening sunshine around 5:30pm.  

I had read a number of horror stories about this hotel - mainly to do with the rooms, seems it is pot luck whether you get an old crumbling one or a nice new refurbished one. My heart initially sank when I saw the number we had been given - but thankfully, due to a mix up over the key and lightning fast reactions on my part I managed to get us swapped into A405, which my research had indicated was a good room to go for.   Now to me, this was perfectly acceptable holiday accomodation. I think some people go on holiday expecting the Ritz. The room was exactly what I've had on almost all visits to the Canaries - basic, functional, but clean and tidy, and with a kind of conservatory feel to it. Had clearly recently had a lick of paint, and the marble type floor looked reasonably new. If there was one room that was maybe not that great it was the bathroom but again I'm used to that. If I've got a fully functioning shower, sink, and toilet I can live with the odd bit of mildew or mould between the cracks in the tiles on the wall. It's no big deal to me. If I had paid 5 grand for this holiday then it might be an issue, but I didn't.  

By the time we were unpacked and settled it was dark, so we headed for the onsite restaurant. As I may have previously mentioned, we were booked half board. Not really intentionally, but due to a statistical quirk of the Thomas Cook website. This quirk was that when I played around with the options,my desire to book us a 2 bedroom apartment (essential with children in my view) added about 500 quid on to the booking. To upgrade from self catering to half board also added about 500 quid to the booking. But add the two on together and it only added about 400 on in totality - in other words if I wanted the 2 bed room, it was actually cheaper to book half board than self-catering.  

So effectively we had the food thrown in free. Which was just as well really, as quite honestly the restaurant was pretty dismal - very little choice, a salad area with just salads but no cold meats/ cheeses, a few curry type slop buckets, some very basic chips, bread rolls, pasta. Very cheap and cheerful. It was not a patch on what we experienced at say, the Sirenis in Ibiza. The only good bit was a show cooking area where a chef was frying up some pork loin steaks so I basically had some of those with chips and bread. The kids, who could quite happily live on chips and bread were more than happy. So we roughed it.   Afterwards we decided we'd alternate nights - go cheap and cheerful and free one night, and go into town for a proper meal on the others. We have a few favourite restaurants in Corralejo from past visits and they are not overly expensive.  

Afterwards we went to the bar, where the Thomas Cook team were providing the entertainment. Again it was on a much smaller scale than the Sirenis and there did not seem to be anyone much about but the three reps did their best. Usual sort of stuff you might expect, kids disco, bingo,quiz - basic stuff that you would not touch with a bargepole if you were child free but which suddenly becomes majorly attractive when you need some distractions from the little ones.

Luckily for us, we won the quiz. Well I say won, annihlated is more the word, it was a bits and pieces style pop music quiz, which was right up my street. Our crushing victory seemed to rather upset one rather rotund gentleman who had clealy been here for a while and used to winning the quiz. Think Johnny Vegas as the Oracle in Benidorm and you won't be far off. The reps seemed delighted though to have a new champion in the midst. As for the prize, well there's a Pizzeria on site and we had won 2 pizzas and 2 ice creams. Apparently the Pizzeria is way superior to the main restaurant, so that's another night's meal sorted.   So fuelled up on Sangria and Strongbow (no complaints about the bar) we headed off for a well deserved night's sleep ready to begin our holiday in earnest the next day.  

A quick stop press written on 20th February to say there are at least 12 more blogs to come and we are due home soon. I have downloaded the blogger app which means I can cut and paste all these entries across on to it and if I can get the wi-fi in reception to work, start posting them up on the internet - not sure about the pictures though - will have to see.

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Jason xx