10 Scenarios Every Parent of Small People Will Face on a Foreign Holiday 

I’ve done a fair few foreign holidays with my kids now… and I’ve lived to tell the tales, ride the inflatable whales, and not yet been thrown in any jails… And mainly I can tell you they all pretty much follow the same format.

So if your embarking to the Costas with your toddlers (sorry. I’ll stop attempting to make everything rhyme really shitly now.) then here’s my guide to the top 10 scenarios you have in store for you…

  1. You ‘save money’ by flying at a time of night that only cats, owls and toddlers are awake… when you do finally arrive at your hotel at 3am I can 100% guarantee you that there will not be a cot in your room, no staff available to help you, and your first task will be assembling a ‘homemade’ cot from sofa cushions, pillows, trunkis and your own tears/sweat.
  2. You won’t sleep the entire first night mainly due to listening to your toddler fall continually onto the tiled floor whilst fiddling with the air-con which only provides two settings; scorchio or ice-your-tits-off-freezing. Your husband sleeps like a log through the entire thing. (dick.) Including the toddler-bed-jenga. You plan to make him suffer tomorrow. And drink from breakfast.
  3. Within 24 hours your small people have worked out the concept of ‘all inclusive buffet’. Which is basically to keep refusing whatever you bring them, because eventually you’ll cave and bring them chips. Every meal. Every day. Only broken up by ice-cream and the occasional piece of melon.
  4. For every hour the sun shines you are the twatty-lotion-sun-hat-monitor. Despite which the kids still get a tan. And you burn to fucking crisp.
  5. You tell the kids they can have a rubber ring from the shop. You return with with enough inflatables to create your own inflatable bastard village. And every evening you take them all back to the balcony because your too ‘British’ to deal with asking for them back again if another child happens to be using them in the pool…
  6. The ‘Buggy-Walk-of-Shame’. Every night. 9pm. We all do it. If you take grandparents with you – you make them do it. And you give a knowing nod to any other Buggy-Shame-Walkers you see doing it too…
  7. You see young couples at the adult-only-pool… relaxing, drinking cocktails, sunbathing topless without their tits spreading into their armpits like melted cheese…. in thongs… Yep. Next year you’re bringing the grandparents, abandoning the kids and joining those bastards. (Maybe not the thong thing. I’m not sure my perineum is up to it anymore.)
  8. 4pm is beer and iPad-baby-sitter time. Yes. Yes it is.
  9. The 20 minutes you spend wrestling your a toddler into a swim nappy, UV suit, hat, lotion and arm-bands is fairly proportionate to the 17 seconds they spend in the actual water. While a spanish child in only their pants stands and laughs at you.
  10. Looking back through the holiday photos which include 700 plus shots of your husband and kids, you soon realise that other than one accidental selfie of half your torso and an arm… You basically have no way of proving you were even bloody there….


One Response

  1. Tales from the Dad Side June 22, 2016

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