DH is French, and all his family live in France. We have always visited them 3-6 times a year. We have 2 DC, who will be aged 5, and just turned 2.
It has been proposed that we all (MIL, her 3 children and their families) go away together for MIL’s big milestone birthday this coming Easter holidays. A particular destination in France was floated at the end of the summer holidays, just as an idea, because it “seems nice” and “we’ve never been there before”, and we initially said “mmm, sounds lovely”, but then the next day we looked up our travel options and realised it would be very difficult and expensive for us to get there from England, whereas it's fairly easy for the rest of them to get there. However, MIL, SIL and BIL did not take this on board despite us telling them, and they are now all adamant it absolutely has to be this destination and saying they will be really disappointed if we don't come. MIL has even offered to pay for our travel (which will be about 4-5 times dearer than what it normally costs us to travel to France). Here are the reasons we don’t want to go:
- No direct flights at all from the UK outside of summer
- Our travel options involve a combination of plane, train and ferry as foot passengers, but every option we've found would take two full days, with either a hotel stay at the airport or overnight ferry, at least 3 connections/different modes of transport, and involve either an extremely early start (5am) or extremely late arrival (1am)
- The idea of spending 2 full days travelling on trains, planes and ferries with a 2 year old makes me want to jump out of a window. We regularly do trips to France that take 1 whole day of travel, but 2 days feels like too much.
- There is only 4 days’ overlap between the French and English school holidays this Easter. This means, when you take away the travel time, it will leave us with one full day and two half days to spend all together.
I just do not think it’s worth all that palaver to spend less than 2 full days together, when there are so many other lovely destinations in France or elsewhere in Europe that would be easy for all of us to get to. We'd be happy to go pretty much anywhere else in France, we'd also be happy to go to this destination in the summer, when there are direct flights from England, and we’d also be happy to sit this one out, but MIL is adamant it has to be there, it has to be Easter, and she really wants us to come.
YABU – it’s not that much effort, and it will be worth it to make MIL happy
YANBU – that’s a massive effort, and not worth it for 2 days all together