To hate family holidays?

Enjoy the buzz of being back home OP, there’s nothing quite like it!
Reading your posts, I thought two things.
First I don’t think the holiday-with-ILs break needs to be as long as your main family holiday. 2-3 days max, possibly twice a year if necessary. It would be much more bearable if you only had it in short chunks.
Second if you’re going to spend £5-£6k abroad, rent a villa. We are going to Madeira on Friday and it’s £6k including flights & a 3 bed villa, with a pool, sea view, rooftop terrace and in the old town, cue lots of lovely restaurants. Can recommend Villa Plus, their villas are spotless and always spacious.

I hate attending group holidays in shared accommodation. I have managed the odd long weekends with friends but I always feel claustrophobic and unsettled. Would be ten times worse with inlaws.

our family holidays are sun filled city or beach holidays. In the UK we keep to nice caravan parks or lodge places with more things around to do.

how long is left?

Straitjacketsandroses

yay!!! To me board game night trump everything! Hope it all gets easier op! x

This. I think you need to woman up about the car. Just go get it and drive somewhere fun!

The seagulls are utter bastards and the chocolate shop is twee nonsense. That used to be a mad old ironmongers and general store. It’s life as a chocolate shop is new. The fudge shop is also pretty poor. But the pub by the sea wall that believes itself to be a ‘gastro pub’ is a absolute rip off. Go into Whitby for the day. Much better for kids, the abbey is class.

Drive to Whitby! You don't need Google bloody maps, just keep the sea on your left.

It’s an unfortunate family tradition that the in-laws take the grandkids to staithes every year for a week or so. The first time I went it was over night and I thought ‘oh this is quite charming’ but my god Lord it is dull. Beyond dull. For some bewildering reason it engenders joy in many people who love it like a cult. It’s grim. Both pubs are shite. And for the love of Odin do not swim in that harbour 🤢

It’s not family holidays you hate then. You like family holidays. You just hate these particular holidays. If you really have to go with them, try a cottage complex where you can have 2 separate cottages and at least get your evenings back.

Can you start up board games night/ poker or something?

Are you in Staithes by any chance? Sounds like Staithes. Village of the damned.

It could always be worse OP, I’ve just had a week in a ‘rural’ (see halfway up a mountain) cottage with the ILs where there was no TV at all and no internet/radio signal.

Conversation had dried up by night 3 so then we all spent every evening reading in silence, interspersed with the ILs saying how lovely it was to all spend time together without everyone on their phones😆

MiL has already been asking DH to promise to go again next year (their treat!) I’ve told him I’m busy 😂

Oh you’re a girl after my own heart - you had me at squid rings on the beach! 😍 Next year let’s combine forces and we can sneak off for a a seafood platter while our MILs have a veggie chilli cook off 🤣 good luck with the rest of it!

"just same shit less conveniences around you."

@Straitjacketsandroses I'd tend to agree with this.

I know people who go for two week beach holidays with young kids. Staying in a hotel room.

TWO WEEKS! In a single room!

Apart from the claustrophobia of being in a hotel room with my whole family for two weeks (yes, I know you just go there to sleep, but I would hate going to sleep
And waking up that every day for a fortnight), a beach holiday for 2 weeks with young kids is just too long for me.

And then coming home with a fortnights worth of dirty washing.

Not for me.

The problem is holidaying with MiL and FiL!

We do family holidays but we don't all do the same thing all the time as different generations need different things. I would stick to weekends away with PILs in future and do other things if you don't fancy doing the same things as them. Surely a compromise with you seeing them every other day while you are away is acceptable? Point out to your DH that it is yours and DSs holiday too and walks, rubbish pub lunches and TV in the evenings is not what you want to do.

Sounds like this year is a holiday to spend some time with family members who might not have many more opportunities to go away with you so maybe you need to make peace with that now you're there and start planning something different for next time. Have you got the budget to go away for a short break with just your DH and DC at another point this year?

Well... a family holiday doesn't have to be like that, surely?!

From what you've said, you've gone to stay in a property that you don't really like, to do things you don't enjoy, with people you find annoying.

You're not enjoying your 'family holiday' because it isn't your family holiday. It's your in-laws' holiday, to which you have for some reason been added even though you know that you hate doing the things you'll have to do with them.

Why are you going on holiday with your in-laws at all? Why aren't you going on holiday with your husband and kids to the kind of place where you can do things you actually enjoy?

Mumsnet seems to be full of people who go on holiday en masse with extended family every year, as if that's an obligatory thing that everyone's expected to do. But I don't think I really know anyone in real life who holidays with parents or in-laws or siblings on a regular basis. It's not the norm, and if even it was, you still wouldn't be obliged to do it.

I love my parents and DP and I get on really well with them; plus we don't have kids. But I've been away with them twice in my entire adult life - and on both occasions, my parents were staying in a friend's holiday apartment for two weeks and DP and I just flew out for five days to join them. And we didn't spend all day, every day with them on any of those five days! We had some breakfast with them on the balcony and then they did their thing and we went off and did ours, and we went out for dinner in the evenings.

Its not family holidays that's the problem, it what you've chosen to do on yours. Next time pick a place that appeals to you for its beauty, history, culture, activities, whatever you enjoy and go there. Take picnic food you actually like and either do an activity while FiL watches soaps, or make sure the accomadation has a garden/seperate room to get away from him in. You dont need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, just lesrn from what hasnt worked and change it.