To not understand holidays

[RandomlyChosenName]

Aibu to not understand how people choose and book holidays and what they do when they’re there. Except millionaires...

My childhood was spent self catering in the UK. I get them! And as a couple we went on short city breaks. I get them too. And we had an expensive all inclusive chill out honeymoon. Also easy! But I can’t work out how to do an abroad family holiday without being a millionaire.

All holidays seem to cost £2,500+ for the family for 2 weeks- I’m looking on First Choice, Tui etc. And the cheaper ones are a self catering room and a shared small basic pool. My children would be bored after an hour or two. Whilst they love swimming, they’d need to do something else for some of the day. Do everyoneelses children just happily swim non stop for 2 weeks? All the holidays seem to be miles from anything. Everywhere with lots of things to do is horrendously expensive.

I can’t work out where you find self catering villas abroad- I looked at AirBNB but couldn’t understand it. I thought it might be cheaper we could maybe go sightseeing or on walks or something. I cannot work out how to even start finding something!

AIBU to not be able to adult enough to even find a family summer holiday that won’t leave us bankrupt? And to not understand how everyone else does it?

Italy, Portugal all have nice options for family. Try one of the many "Villagios" in Italy. They are self catering but they sometimes also have restaurants too. Depending when you go you can get flights for 4 plus the accommodation for 2000 Pounds. They have pools, games and entertainment. I found it much better than any camps here and the weather is better. Kids love it. I take a book and go for long walks. July is less crowded then August.

Oh and if you do French campsite, book direct, we saved hundreds doing that. Went from £1700 to £900 incl ferry.

We've been pretty lucky so far, we do abroad holidays but super cheap as we tend to visit family or friends. We spent nearly 2 weeks driving round Europe catching up with various members of DHs family one year, we thought it was great but to be honest, I think my kids would have been just as happy if they'd stayed in my parents camper van on the other side of town, playing Nintendo DS for 2 weeks. They weren't that bothered about the views as we crossed the Alps.We've tried AirBNB but only for odd nights on the way through, check the reviews first, we had a great one in Bruges but the one in Holland was a bit dire and would have been hopeless with small children.
I'd recommend camping in Holland/ North West Germany. We bought a Ruhr Top Card for about €30 each that gave us free entry to lots of places once each for a year-museums, swimming pools, spas, theme parks, zoos, we made our money back by the second day. It was such good value we had a second holiday there that year to get our money's worth, ferry tickets with Tesco points and staying with family, looking after their kids.

You’re making a big deal out of not much.

Book flights and look on one of the gazillion sites for villas. Homeaway is a good one.

But don’t expect to get a holiday abroad for 2.5k!

We got cheap European flights ( £30 per person), car hire another £100, and a Euro camp type mobile home for a week in Germany. All in, less than £1000, before spending money.
Be creative!

I find that staying in a private properties abroad is a bit isolated. In camps or resorts kids make friends as they have organised activities or at least are more entertained... They usually have sports facilities, etc that the children can do without their parents

Notso
Agree! This person really pissed me off lol. I don’t know anyone that can save £500 a month

Ours was only £1800 for 2 weeks in Florida, 2 adults and 1 child. Even with food and tickets comes to less than £3500. We just save and book through a travel agent so no messing around. You can do European holidays for a lot cheaper too.

Don't think we spent much on holidays growing up, mums a teacher dad is military, we went to Disney florida, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Disney california. Always stayed in villas rather than hotels, walked, sightsee'd (sight saw? ), swam, took books and games were often there. All self catering save for Switzerland where we stayed in a skiing resort (worst holiday imo, we all hated it save for my dad as we went with other familied we knew who were, quite frankly, awful). Think my parents saved for a few years then we went on holiday.

I got 2 weeks in Florida this year for family if 4 ( 2 teens) for £2800 and last year, 2 weeeks in LA for £2850. It’s sometimes cheaper to go further. Plus, easyJet have great holidays too. I just got the 4 of us 5 nights in krakow, Poland b&b in a deluxe apartment , luggage and transfers for £812 for all 4. Use travel supermarket to compare too. Xxx

Ps, that’s stopping in private luxury villas too in the states, not a gritty motel

My ddil has just booked a 2 week holiday all inclusive for £395 pp, in Fuerteventura for June 2020.

Finding cheap holidays is my superpower 🦸‍♀️.

This year, me and the DC are going to the south of France. Booked the flights on the day they came out - £180 for the 3 of us. And booked a 3 bed stone cottage with pool for £390 for a week on air BnB. Will need to hire a car which I haven’t booked yet which will be around £140.

Oh forgot to say that’s in August so during school holidays.

We never even look at packaged holiday websites. We look for flights where we want to go on Skyscanner website, trying to be flexible with dates. Checking mostly low cost flights like easyjet, wizzair, ryanair and then we look at booking.com for hotel room. We been to many places until now like Morocco, 5 times to Spain, Italy, Portugal etc. and spent very little money. All inclusive holidays are way to expensive and for us they don't work because we go to visit as many places as we can and don't want to be laying down in the sun for 2 weeks. Our 4 year old daughter is enjoying the holidays with us and she loves being on a plane 😊
We hardly ever spent more than £1000 in total. And we eat out whatever we feel like. Not fussy though.

Airbnb is fairly straight forward once you get the hang of it and you can find fairly cheap self catered flats on there in areas off the beaten track but still lovely.

Saying that, if you have to book holidays in school time it's a nightmare. I only went on two foreign holidays to europe growing up once by ferry. I think a childhood of uk self catering trips is largely fine and eco friendly and you could spend the money you would save on making the rest of your life fun.

We've done eurocamp sites for the last 3 years... 3 weeks in 3 bed accomodation in the south of France last year, including all travel and food was less than £3k. Obviously if you only want 2 weeks it'll be cheaper.
We've booked 1 week through sun holidays this year... ferry and accommodation in vendee, France in summer hols for £400.

We go abroad every year in the summer school holidays and spend approx £1500 to £1800 ( excluding food and spending money ) for 3 of us. We have had fabulous holidays, Croatia, Montenegro, Austria, Germany, Greece, France to name a few. The trick is plan what you are going to do early. I had everything booked by first week of Jan. Book everything separately, sky scanner is fab for flights, owners direct, Airbnb, booking.com for accommodation. Anything else like hire cars, airport transfers you can just google it and check the trip advisor reviews. Eurocamp is great too and we have done that a few times. I often book campsites, hotels directly with them as you save a fortune. Where we are going this year was booked up with Eurocamp and they were charging £800 more for a week than I am paying for 2 weeks. Be flexible sometimes if you alter your dates by a few days you can save a lot. We never travel on a Friday, Sat or Sunday as Mid week if often cheaper. We can only cope with a day or so by the pool/ beach as we like to explore so often I plan our holidays around something we want to see or an activity. E.G Ice caves in Austria, Europa Park in Germany. We mix it up and some years fly, others ferry and drive. By the way if your family like theme parks Europa park is brilliant, when we went it got better trip advisor reviews than Disney. Trip Advisor is my best friend and holiday planning takes up a big chunk of time to get the best price. But, I love it and the alternative is not being able to afford to do what I want to do. We’ve already booked our next holiday and currently discussing ideas for summer 2020! So close to the school holidays you might struggle to get reasonable flight prices. I paid £600 for the flights to Croatia but I imagine they will have really gone up this close to the holidays. I’d look at something like Eurocamp in France as you could always stay not far from the port if you are nervous about driving. Chose the right campsite there will be loads to do in and around the surrounding areas. Alternatively one year we stayed in Norfolk, one week in a static caravan then we hired a boat and sailed the broads for a long weekend. Again still achievable within our budget. Good luck I hope you manage to sort something. Last tip, book everything on your credit card as if the company ceased trading at least you can have recourse through your credit card provider.

We did a road trip with our children 2 years ago.
Paris - Dijon - Barcelona - South of France.
We stayed in little self catering apartments all the way and it absolutely didn't break the bank. We saw soo much and experienced some amazing things. Our eldest really wanted to see the Eifle Tower; his face was just priceless. We went to some botanical gardens in Dijon and spent the whole day exploring. It was amazing. Barcelona has an amazing Aquarium and - obviously - beach.
Holidays totally depend on what your looking for. Perhaps try a holiday village? Greece has some amazing holidays villages with kids/families in mind.

Most people I know go off peak and for a week/ long weekend. As for the saving five hundred thing, if I could save that much it would be for the kid's future, not a holiday!!!

We’re spending 10 days in a very nice hotel in Tenerife and yeah it costs £5000. It’s all inclusive and we’ll do a few boat trips and shows and a water park when we are out there. We rent a flat. We are not millionaires! However, once a year or so we do like to treat ourselves and have a really lovely time somewhere sunny. We have to go in the summer holidays too - the same holiday would be 3000 cheaper if we went during term time.

I'm a soon to be Grannie (YAY!!) May I suggest taking it back to basics? Take away the iPad's, etc.Children should be able to play. The holiday industry has you by the short and curlies (pardon the expression). Take your holiday in term time, just make sure that you can prove it's an "educational" experience. I worked within a school environment for 11 years. No one was fined, because it was obviously educational. Visit a cultural site or three. Give the children a cultural project - investigate the environment, wild life, how are local children different, that kind of thing. End of term or beginning of term is preferable, nothing much happens in school then, new classes getting established, etc. I think you'll find that some Mediterranean holidays are better for kids in late Sept/Oct temperature wise and you can still achieve that healthy glow! It's a win win thing. It's also cheaper, late bookings wise, etc. Hope this helps xx

OP follow Nikki Garnett Mid Life Chic blog, she has three boys and she always gives some really good ideas holidaywise think you will find it very useful.

We're going to Kephalonia, 2 weeks self catering 3 star, 2 adults, 2 kids for £1600.

We just don’t go because as a family of 5, even in term time, we were looking at £2.5k for 1 week abroad - I just don’t have that kind of money! We tend to go to havens etc, but even they are getting ridiculous. £1k to stay in a caravan for a week in August! We just can’t afford that right now!