THE TRAVEL BUG RETURNS

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”
Graham Greene

For me, that door opened when my parents moved me to Hong Kong at the age of 10 and forevermore I had a burning desire to travel and see as much of the world as possible. It wasn’t always easy – when I had a young family, holidays were generally deeply unpleasant experiences – all effort and resentment with a healthy dose of terrifying thrown in for good measure thanks to the occasional near death experience (real or imagined) any time we were near water with one, two and then three small children. That was until we discovered the slightly more sanitised prepaid package holidays with kids clubs which were absolutely perfect for a number of years – although of course that meant you never left the hotel and it’s surroundings.

But, as the kids have grown up and I am able to function on my own with them instead of as a couple, my love of travel has returned and I think this might be the first holiday I have taken with just my children somewhere a little out of my league to show them a new country, a new culture and a new experience.

so I hope that somewhere in my children’s memory banks I will be able to add my bits and pieces – so that they too learn to love the big wide world and enjoy immersing themselves in somebody else’s culture. They all love travelling and have had the “advantage” of very often having double the amount of summer holidays owing to the legacy of divorce. Not great, but hey, there might as well be some benefits.

So. This is heavenly. (Apart from how much it’s costing me – have I already mentioned that?). I am trying to stop balking each time they order another drink or plate of food but not to the point where it’s made me wish I was in an “eat and drink all you can” venue and I’m still of the opinion that this is so much more worth the money than that new washing machine and roof I need in my house. That can wait. Growing children can’t. That said, I did try and make them eat their body weigh in breakfast yesterday morning because I had been offered one complimentary breakfast – it was the hotel’s one offer to me as a “lifestyle blogger” in a Lifestyle hotel – which was very kind of them as this is where I have chosen to go for our holiday and I wasn’t expecting any discounts at all. They duly ate their body weight in food – we all did and then went and lay like snakes who have just consumed small cows on sunbeds and went to sleep. I had hoped that the children weren’t going to wake up until Friday, but it didn’t work.

Anyway, the point is that holidays are nearly always worth the ridiculous amount of money you spend on them if you don’t think too hard about it – as my brother says “it’s only money” and I don’t know how many more of these I will get with them and sharing experiences is THE way forward as far as I’m concerned. Of course it’s entirely possible that if parents keep paying, children will keep coming – but things for us will change at some point – they will want to do different things in the future, go on holiday with their friends, not their mouldy old mother and then maybe they’ll get married and have children of their own and then things will evolve and change again (in that I’ll be back to being scared shitless as everything becomes a death trap with small children – more so when you’re a Grandparent as you don’t know them as well as the parents do – that’s when I’m going to go and live in Bora Bora).

So whilst I can, I am hoping that I can instil in my children that same passion for travel that I’d forgotten I’d been harbouring all these years. It’s emerging, slowly again and I love it. Yes, I know – I’m not exactly in deepest darkest Africa – but give me a chance! One step at a time…

We’ve spent the last few days exploring Positano which is just stunning.