would you recommend your holiday to us?

[LowLevelWhinging]

We fancy somewhere new this year.

We are 2 adults and 3 kids (8,6 and 2).

We used to like villa holidays, but have had a couple of bad experiences with private villas in the last two years.

Have done AI in Turkey a couple of years ago, but not impressed with the crush around the pool and limited food options.

Definitely need a pool, maybe a beach. I would love to be walking distance to stuff but a short drive is ok too.

Since having kids we've done:

Fuengirola (a bit egg n chips IYSWIM)
Algarve - great beaches but villa got burgled. Albufeira a bit trashy too.
Turkey - never left the hotel as surrounding area was just massive dual carrigeway lined with hotels and nothing else.
Ibiza - was ok.
Puglia - holiday from hell

Anyone got any new ideas we could look at? 3k ish budget. (do we need bigger budget perhaps?)

thanks

Loved Lake Garda.

We stayed here last yr. 10 nights bb was 1900 Euros plus flights to Pisa w Easyjet £790 for 4, and car £300. 'twas awesome.

Good old Lanzarote, you can't go wrong! Playa Blanca is the best area IMO.

ooh, one of our best holidays pre-kids was camping in the Italian Lakes!

was there plenty to do with children?

thank you catz, I'll have a look

If the children were a couple of years older I'd suggest Singapore. Great weather, fantastic service, lots of shopping, loads of fun stuff to do - bird park, night safari etc

Cachet Travel. Lovely villa holidays. We have done Crete and Turkey with them - really recommend both, although Crete was more scenic.

Also, Kerala and Sri Lanka - both amazing for wildlife and things to see /do but then we are happy to move every day or two to see things.

What time of year? We go long haul every Easter with dd. First time when she was 6 months for a month in Bali. Mind you, you might struggle with the flights and accom. for under £3k.

www.hotelpirat.net/

We love the South of France. We have rented some really lovely villas with Pools.
I would recommend the Les Issambres area, there are some great rentals in the hills with a fab view of St Tropez.
The driving is easy. Amazing beaches and not as expensive as you would think.

these are brilliant, thank you, keep them coming too please!

Yes Lake Garda was fab with our children who were 7 & 9. The hotel had stuff going on, esp football each night for DS, and table tennis, swimming, mini disco which DD loved. As we had the car, we got out and about a lot, got a boat across the lake one day went to Limone and Salo, and went up the cable car to Monte Baldo which was fab (long queues for cable car so get there early ) with stuff to do at top, llamas and tubing and stuff. Also visited Sirmione, Pisa and Bardolino. Found some incredible places to eat, and had a good mooch round Garda and other towns.

uggmum, I love france too but haven't been with kids. My own favourite childhood holidays were in Frejus, but I guess it's changed a lot.

Can you recommend any particular villas? As I said above, we've been stung a couple of times in recent years.

oh, and it will be summer half term or summer school holidays.

We went to Lake Garda (Riva) last year with our baby DD, it was absolutely amazing. DD was too little, obviously, but there was a beach, with a slide floated out into the lake, bikes to rent, a swing park, the locals were soooooo friendly and kind. I'm recommending it to everyone

Do you mind me asking why Puglia was so bad -had it on my potential list for this summer?

sorry to hear about your Villa in the Algarve not what you need on holiday.

We used to holiday in Frejus too but now we are stuck to school holidays expensive to get the same size or type of villa we used to.

We have used Villa Parade a couple of times and stayed in Puerto Pollensa in Mallorca-lovely area.

We stayed here:

www.massereau.com/

We were there a couple of year's ago as our last big family holiday (3 DCs now all growing up!). We went with Eurocamp but I think would have got better accommodation by booking direct.

We are thinking we will go again just the two of us soon.

Loads to see and do in the area. Inland Provence but you can still easily get to the coast.

Lake Garda is on the list then.

and Mallorca, have heard other good things about puerto pollensa.

DP is liking the look of masseareau with the activities. Not really my thing, but if it keeps them happy!

magenta, we found the bit of Puglia we were in - Baria (Terlizzi) to be really run down and rough. Bari felt a bit threatening, not the picturesque, classy Italian vibe I was hoping for. No lovely markets, none of the coastal towns we went to were worth it. No beaches. Our villa on a vineyard was lovely but the owners had weird ideas such as letting random blokes in to use some areas of the house .

And the many many prostitutes lining the dual carriageways were nice

Hi, I agree with you about Albufeira btw , Portugal was one of our most disappointing ( and expensive) holidays.

Somewhere that ticks the box so much for us we have been 4 times, is the Dordogne region in France. There's absolutely loads to do - castles to visit, canoeing, river beaches, velorailing (google it),pretty historic town centres and boat trips, plus the food in the region is excellent.

There are loads of good villas to rent, because we only have one DC we either share with friends, or do grouped accomodation for some company, but most have pools. Usually the accomodation is not super ritzy but it does the job. Chez Nous has a lot of options. This is where we are staying this year www.lesgrangesmontignac.com/, so far the owner seems nice, we picked it because it's walking distance to Montignac which is a lovely village.

You should be able to do it within budget even for the English school holidays as the flights to Bergerac/Bordeaux don't seem to go up as much as more standard holiday destinations.

We have done Tuscany in the summer but found it to be too hot and we couldn't find a villa within walking distance of a village - plus one day randomly a bunch of about 10 Italians arrived and started walking through all the rooms, apparently the house was on the market, but they didn't think to let us know that they would be coming. We have been to Puerto Pollensa , that was nice, lots to recommend it as a beach resort if that's what you are looking for.

we stayed here in Corfu last year and it was great!

Have you considered Menorca? There are lots of lovely beaches, apartment style self catering hotels with pools, public buses are fantastic if you don't want to hire a car, if you do the island isn't very big so you could visit several beaches.

Puerto Pollensa is lovely and ideal for DC.

You could consider Rhodes in late August, we have stayed in Pefkos and there are lots of apartments and hotels with S/C options. Lovely beach, lots of restaurants and bars and shops within easy reach, often with play equipment for young DC. Very family orientated resort. We stayed at the Island Blue on a B&B basis, there was a main bedroom with ensuite shower, a balcony, a kitchenette, and a separate adjoining twin bedroom with ensuite which might be good for the DC. Means you're not stuck out on the balcony while they get to sleep.

A few we have stayed in are booked for most of the summer season already. I'll have a look for you and see if I have details of others.

I love Frejus old town. There are some lovely restaurants there. We love st maxime too. Quite busy but a pretty harbour and great choice of restaurants.

There are so many fab beaches around this area. My dc love Aqualand in st maxime.

Gran canaria.