So how is dinner going to work?

[minipie]

Just booked on a bit of a whim a holiday to Tenerife in October and am now (a bit late) thinking through the practicalities. Previously we’ve either done SC or been to resorts in countries which are ahead of the UK time zone wise - so the DC stay up with us to eat and (in theory) wake up later.

Tenerife is the same time zone so they’d be eating at 6ish and bed by 7.30. That’s much much earlier than DH and I would usually eat and will feel a bit odd (and DH will be hungry again by bedtime!).

What are our options? Hotel babysitter - but it won’t be someone we know? We will be using kids club but that feels different as they are awake and in public. Or do we just have to eat early and stay in our room from 8pm to our bedtime? Room service is pretty limited I believe and also not included in HB.

Is there a solution I’ve missed? They are 6 and 4 so too old for sleeping in the buggy (not that that ever worked for us anyway)

The DC's might even enjoy being up later. They are after all on holiday.
Have a great time

We could never do the later bedtimes, we just had grumpy badly behaved children.
We used to either
Get interconnecting rooms
We've had random babysitters too, we usually get the children fed, ready for bed and then a late babysitter, so that they're almost asleep.
All being in one room is not fun

You could have your main nice and long meal at lunch time and then a quick supper in the evening? So that you’re not all super stressed trying to enjoy a long meal with tired kids...and as a PP said have a glass of wine in the room when they’re asleep and have early relaxing nights

Thanks everyone. We do have two rooms plus balcony - with my DC’s bad sleep habits there is no way I’d try all of us in one room, would rather stay home! So we will have somewhere to sit after they are in bed. It’s just the actual eating since there isn’t any s/c and not much room service. I think we’ll go with a combination of big lunch/eat with the kids/get an early night plus a night or two of babysitting so we can do adult dinner. We might keep them up late one night and see what happens...

I was a bit concerned about this too OP. We are ahead by an hour and it’s actually worked out fine. We keep her up a little later and sometimes she will fall asleep in her pram and other times she’s happy to stay awake. She has an additional nap throughout the day because the heat zaps her and it fills the hour or two less she has during the night.