Family holiday conundrum

[sjg]

Blown2CV said:

yea we looked at that too. I would be less averse to this but it seemed to be coming in sort of £4k upwards to live in a shed for a week!! There were nicer ones but they were more ££.

Stayed here last summer with 8 & 6 year old: https://europe.huttopia.com/en/site/rille/ - we were camping but there's not many camping pitches there as it's a "villages" site so mainly huts/cabins/trapper-tents for people to book. Plenty of (free) organised activities, most were an hour or two and many were for for the whole family rather than just waving the kids off for activity club. Decent pool, playground, forest spa, cafe/bar with some live music on a few nights. Lake was great, plenty of paddle boards, rowing boats and kayaks to use. Easy walk or cycle around the lake (we took ours, but some available to hire), some longer local rides, or the kids loved just riding around the traffic-free site.

Comes in around €3000 for a high season fortnight in a trapper tent (plus your travel costs) - my parents came, aren't campers but had a comfy stay in one of those. You have your own bathroom, woodburner if it's chilly, big outside deck, loads of space around.

We hardly left the site except for supermarket runs but my parents were out most days (with their dog) visiting local chateaux and the like.

There's a certain amount of "same work, different place" with anything self-catering but I'd take that over an all-inc buffet and sharing a small hotel room.

[LuS1fer]

We always hired villas in different parts of Spain with it's own pool.

Lloret de Mar, Javea, Pedreguer, Calpe, Peniscola, Almeria, Casarabonela, Ronda, Mallorca. Visits to Granada, Cadiz, Marbella and so forth.

Kids loved most of them and we used a hire car to go and visit castles and smaller resorts. Ate out on pizzas, pastas and fish mainly.

Though we took them to the US once, we found that 2 hour flights are far better. Even I get bored sh*tless on a 4 hour flight.

[98elise]

WestyCarl said:

98elise said:

We always took our kids to rental villas and apartments as I really don't like hotels.

I also wanted to spend time with the kids, they could play with their mates at home!

The kids must have liked it because they still wanted to do family holidays Into their early 20's,

The same here, I don't like hotels and am very anti social

Airbnb's / villa's with a hire car are great and give better flexibility and living space. Kids help with shopping / cooking (BBQ) and it's all very relaxed.

The holiday's are usually punctuated with some sort of trips every other day they will like (beach / snorkelling / rafting / quad biking, eating out, etc) depending on where we are holidaying and what the options are close.

Likewise we didn't spend all day at the villa or apartment. We did day trips, which was anything from culture/history to theme parks.