We keep the chaos at bay and our mental health intact by following a trusted and familiar routine with our 20-month old toddler girl. Apart from the occasional meltdowns and tantrums, I think we are doing ok and enjoying our family life. 👍
Then, what madness would make us board a flight and leave the familiar baby-proofed set up and risk shaking up the carefully curated domestic harmony??!!
Boredom. We all deserve a break to the routine and some sun and sea! Kids too! Life and travelling as we knew them ended when we had Maia but it doesn’t have to be, and isn’t in my opinion, a bad thing. Yes, it’s different and requires more planning (also forget about travelling light) but nothing gives me more joy than to see my child so happy and excited, squealing and running in the waves with sand in her hair!
We travelled a lot when Maia was little, heck we even got married abroad in Italy when she was only 7-months old! Now in hindsight, I realise travelling with a breastfed baby was pretty easy. It was the sleep deprivation and first time parent’s lack of confidence that made it feel harder than it was (two perfectly valid reasons though!).
This summer we’ve faced new kind of challenges with our 1.5-year old.
- Sleep: Maia is sleep trained and has a 1.5-2h nap in her cot every afternoon at 1pm and her bedtime is at 7pm. Sticking to this routine keeps her, and us, happy and prevents overtired meltdowns and disturbed nights. Most of the time this is great! But it doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room in the daily schedule… Never mind jet lag!
- Eating: Maia is a distracted eater and it’s a struggle at best of times to keep her at the table long enough to get enough food into her. She’s just got better things to do! So feeding her in new places is a bit challenging…
- Entertainment: Wow. Toddlers’ activity levels are impressive. Maia gets so excited about everything and is on the go nonstop! She wants to do things herself and isn’t too keen on being pushed around in a buggy either but would rather walk (which takes ages with her little legs and detours 😅). So forget about chilling on the sun lounger reading a book or sipping a mocktail!
So that’s what we knew we are dealing with. We also knew that in five months time the second baby will add an exciting spin to the logistics (should we go anywhere) and family dynamics generally, and we really wanted to take one more trip to the sun just of three of us! So when we started planning our one-week family holiday, we decided to accept the realities and tailor a holiday which would make us all happy and allow for some relaxation. To summarise, these were the key decisions we made at the planning stage:
- Location: Menorca. Short, direct flight from London (and relatively short, 4h, from Helsinki from where we’d fly from). Sun and beautiful beaches but not too busy
- Hotel: Grupotel Playa Club (****). A family friendly resort (*cringe*) with kids’ pool, playgrounds, gardens to play in. Comfortable but not too posh, likely to have other families (= feel less awkward when the inevitable tantrums do happen)
- Getting around: Rental car. An absolute must to make the most of the island and explore the beaches and sights with ease (aircon and a boot for sand toys and god-knows-what)
- Stick to routine as much as possible. We would wake up between 6-7am as usual and head out after breakfast to visit new places and come back for 1pm for Maia’s nap. She sleeps the best in the cool and dim room.
- Baby Monitor-app would enable us to relax by the pool while Maia naps. It allows me to watch her live on my phone while outside enjoying the garden/pool (staying nearby, of course)
- Dinners at the hotel after Maia’s bedtime just the two of us. This is a compromise but having our evenings to ourselves makes it feel more like a holiday (after all, we have that at home too!). We’ve used the Baby Monitor-app for this too.
Planning is one thing, but the reality can surprise… As a spoiler, I can say it did all work out pretty well in the end!
The 5am flight from Finland to Menorca couldn’t have been much worse though. Apart from the 3am alarm, the journey started well. We got through airport security at record speed and even had time for breakfast but I was fearing the worst since I had had to wake Maia up at 3.30am. Maia was, as usual, super excited to be on the plane but she was tired… We had about an hour of hysterical screaming when she just wouldn’t settle down regardless of being tired. It wasn’t a full flight so at least we had the space to move around (and pace the aisles) and finally she did fall asleep for an hour. I bet our fellow passengers and the flight attendants were secretly hating us by then (even I was hating our mad idea to fly with her at that hour – but it was the only flight of the week!). After her nap Maia was much happier and the last two hours went ok.
Once in the destination though, it all felt worth it!
The hotel was everything we had hoped for. We booked only a month in advance and didn’t have too many options but the Grupotel Playa Club met and even exceeded our expectations! To be honest with you, we had feared the worst (a tacky “Brits abroad”-experience). My husband and I have always preferred active and adventurous holidays backpacking or chic city breaks in boutique hotels. I’m not saying this isn’t possible with small children (apart from the fact that many boutique hotels are adults only), but we really wanted a relaxed family holiday and convenience is a big factor in that. Our hotel catered for families perfectly. It was comfortable although not luxurious (still bloody expensive at peak tourist season!). Our room had a living area and a kitchenette and a separate bedroom, which is what we wanted as Maia is used to self-settling for sleeps. If she can see us, she won’t stay in her cot!
Most days we came back to the hotel for Maia’s afternoon nap and then stayed in the resort area after she’d woken up. This gave us the chance to spend an hour or two by the pool relaxing while she slept. Maia absolutely loved the pool which had a shallow end so she could (and would!) walk straight in and a separate kids’ pool. Of course it’s a bit hard work for the parent on duty, but we took turns to be in the water with her. And she was so happy and excited!
Another great thing at the hotel was the fenced (very important) and covered (even more important) play area next to the pool with swings and toys to share. Our hotel was absolutely packed with kids of all ages and Maia had lots of fun running around with the other little ones. She’s too young to officially take part in the kids’ club’s activities but every afternoon the club leader would bring pencils and colouring books etc to the play area which was fun for Maia and gave us a break from running around after her.
On our first evening we went to have dinner all together but it didn’t really work for us. I’d be totally relaxed for Maia to stay up later on holiday or snooze in the buggy while we eat, but she’s so used to her routine that it didn’t work. After 7pm she gets overtired, won’t eat properly and just gets up to mischief while us, the poor parents, are trying to fork our food in at lightning speed to get back to the room to put her to bed. It was only 8.30pm but she was overtired and too excited to settle down and was fighting sleep and waking up at night which hasn’t happened in months! So we decided it wasn’t fair to her to keep her up and instead we cooked for her in our room and she had her dinner, bath and bedtime the normal time, and once she was asleep we’d sneak out, with the baby monitor on, to eat at the hotel restaurant. Luckily it didn’t feel like a sacrifice because the hotel offered an impressive buffet dinner with for example an on-demand barbecue station, a salad bar, and a cake buffet! My husband and I also enjoyed having that one-to-one time as well, and having our dinner in peace making plans for the next day.
Maia woke up around 6-6.30am as usual and they’d go out for an early morning walk with my husband letting me (the pregnant mummy) sleep. Breakfast started at 8am and we were usually the first ones there. I think Maia was being a good girl, happy and excited all the time, but I can see why some people shook their heads at the little wildling running around with Nutella all over her face and a half eaten croissant in her hand (yes, our healthy diet slipped a bit on holiday…). But she wasn’t being naughty and so we just decided to let her run free. I do wonder how come some people’s kids just sat in their high chairs at the table eating in a civilised manner but hey ho!
Oh a word of praise to this hotel again: they had numerous high chairs, children’s own cutlery, and what seemed like an endless amount of patience regarding noise and mess! And they don’t even charge for kids of Maia’s age!
After breakfast we would head out for our morning adventures. We usually drove to different beaches for a couple of hours and had lunch before driving back to our hotel. Menorca’s beaches were beautiful!!! I’m sure that if you’re able to trek to the less accessible ones, they’ll be even more beautiful and less busy, but we were happy with what we found. Maia loved the beaches possibly even more than the pool because she likes playing in the sand. My favourite beach was Cala Algaiarens. It didn’t have any amenities but we never went anywhere without drinks and snacks anyway nor did we stay for long so it didn’t matter that we didn’t have an umbrella or sun loungers. Of the services beaches I liked the Cala Galdana. Obviously we didn’t have time to visit all beaches and we picked those 30-minute drive from our hotel, but we were happy with these!
One day we stayed out too long and Maia fell asleep in the car on the way back. This was a disaster because she woke up when we got to the hotel, mega cranky because her nap was too short but refused to go back to sleep. It was a long afternoon after that and we had learned our lesson – quality over quantity when it came to beach time! On the bright side, no one got sun burnt.
We wanted to go on a boat trip as we thought that’d be the perfect way to really appreciate the beautiful shoreline of Menorca! Unfortunately we didn’t realise how popular these trips were and didn’t book early enough. The only available tour would have coincided with Maia’s nap time and neither one of us fancied being stuck on a boat with a tired toddler… So instead we went to explore the old town of Ciutadella and Maia got her first ever ice lolly!
And before we knew it, a week had passed! On Sunday morning at 7am we left the hotel after an early breakfast and drove to the airport. This time our flight was short, only two hours to London! Maia was active but happy to run up and down the aisles. All in all, the journey back went very smoothly and she was such a trooper! We got home for 2pm and she went straight down for her nap. Probably had missed her bed! I know I had.
Travelling at 18-weeks pregnant is physically quite tiring. So when I got home I booked my first pregnancy massage for the same evening. It was so relaxing and helpful to release all the tension from my neck and shoulders from carrying around my toddler (she’s a mummy’s girl when away from home), the nappy bag, sand toys etc.
I feel like we made the most of our one-week holiday and we all really enjoyed it! The idea of going away with small children can be a bit daunting but I’d encourage you to give it a go!
xxx,
Sini