Can't decide how I feel about this change of plans - come offer your thoughts please

[Earlybird]

Dd and I moved away from London 2 years ago, and now live in a different country. We have been planning (since last year) to visit London this summer. Exact dates of the visit were never absolutely firm until quite recently, but general timeframe has been known since just before Easter break.

We will be staying with some very dear friends who thankfully have plenty of space and can accomodate us without any problem or inconvenience. It was mentioned about a month ago that they might be away for about a week of our stay, but we were welcome to stay at their place regardless.

Today I had a phone call from the husband to say they have been offered the chance to stay at a villa in France (owned by his parents). The complication is that the dates they've been offered the villa are almost exactly the time we will be in London. (There is no flexibility on the villa dates, as it is rented out/unvailable on other dates) At this point, they are planning to go to France, and have proposed that dd and I come there to stay with them for a week or so.

These are some of my oldest friends and dd is like a sibling to their children. We've been looking forward to this London visit, and spending time with this family, for a very long time.

Going to France could be lovely (of course!) and a real unexpected adventure. But where they will be is not easily accessible, so we'd spend a full long day in transit each way. By breaking up our London visit, we would lose lots of time to see other friends, and also may not have time to do other things we've planned (loosely). If we don't go to France, we will only see our friends for a few days, if at all. Dd would be heartbroken.

What do you think, and what would you do?

Earlybird you have my sympathies. We also moved away from London about 2 1/2 years ago and now live overseas. We have been back to the UK twice (once when I was pregnant with DS and once more recently with DS) and found it really difficult to please everyone and family members would complain that we'd spent more time with the others and vice-versa and they also didn't understand that we also wanted to catch up with our friends.

I take it from what you say you aren't able to change your travel dates so that the London friends will still be in London? If you do go to France - seems like your dd would love you to go so might be difficult to avoid could you have some kind of 'open house' or picnic or something and get a group of your other friends together so you can see more of them? Not ideal as it feels like you are spreading yourself a bit thin but at least you would be able to catch up with more of them. We kind of did this as we got DS christened and invited loads of our friends as well so that we would see them which we wouldn't have done had we been living in the UK.

Where are you by the way - I assume going back another time is not an option either?

"Open house" is a great idea. We have some good friends who now live on the other side of the world - they come back for a week each year, and have to fit in seeing family etc in that time. So, about two month in advance, they book somewhere (last year it was a pub, the year before a family-friendly cafe) and send an email to everyone they'd like to see inviting them to come along. Which we do.

I'd go to France, I think. It sounds great.

We're now in America, and can't really change the dates of our trip to another time as school resumes here in mid August.

Will give the idea of an open house some thought...

I'm coming around to the idea of France, and know it would be fun, but it certainly means our visit would be very different than I had envisaged.

I would go to France and, as previously suggested, try to get together with as many as possible of your other friends at once via some sort of open house while you're in London.