Post-holiday reflections

We have three weeks of school holidays in October and since my oldest son started kindergarten, we’ve always travelled to Menorca for 10 days.

I love beach holidays, particularly in the shoulder season. Sure, the weather can be unpredictable, but this year, we were lucky. The temperatures were not too hot, around 22-25 degrees, and while the pool was quite fresh, the sea still had the perfect temperature.

We’ve been going to the same place for 3 years now. If you’d told me that I’d become one of “those people” who always go back to the same spot 5 years ago, I’d probably have thought you were crazy.

However now that I’m a mother with a toddler and a first-grader, I see so much value in going to the same place:

• The October holidays are for rest and reset. Lazy days in the hotel, by the pool or at the beach. Half-pension so we don’t need to worry about where to go for dinner. We go with the flow and do what we feel like, taking into account everyone’s needs. The resort we go to offers just that and we all love it. We could of course change resorts each year - but why add the stress of uncertainty and discovering a new place if we are all happy with the one we have.

• The kids’ club is amazing! They have activities for babies, toddlers and older kids. The staff is great. Many of them have been there for years so our children already know them and are (mostly ;) excited to go back. You can feel the joy in what they are doing and I think that’s something very important when working with kids. This year, my 6-year old could participate in the activities for older kids and asked us every morning to go play football after breakfast (he also asked several times to go play Switch / Playstation with the older kids, but hey, we are on holidays!). 

• It’s just by the beach - and honestly I’m ok sitting by the seafront, watching the waves, reading my book all day long. 

• There are some adult activities too, like Zumba (which I love) and football (which my husband loves).

• Food’s great, there’s live cooking stations with meat, fish and pasta and every night, the two restaurants have a theme corner, so there is also quite some variety.

• While Menorca as an island is rather small, I love that nothing is more than a 40 minute drive away. This is perfect for a half-day trip before heading to the pool or the kids’ club in the afternoon. We’ve explored some parts of the island but there is still much left to explore (especially as the kids grow older and we can explore differently each year).

• The airport is a 20-min drive from the hotel and you don’t need to be there more than 1.5h before your flight. Security is a breeze and everything is very close by. There’s child-friendly toilets and some small play areas, as well as a few shops & restaurants. While of course the time at the airport is relatively short compared to a whole holiday, our experience in Crete a couple of years ago (while I was pregnant for the first time) was slightly traumatic to me and I wouldn’t want to travel through that airport for example with young kids.

Photo Credit: Lynn Welter

Making space for rest

Somehow I have felt a certain discomfort during these holidays. We spend a lot of the time in the hotel, we’ve been sick during parts of the holiday each year, despite having a car we maybe used it 2-3 days out of 10. It’s the kind of holiday I’d have considered as boring before having children. 

Just like I grew up believing that I needed to do more, work more, be active all the time, I had a certain expectation towards holidays. Before having children, my husband and I travelled a lot - visiting friends all over Europe, going on city trips together, spending time in Singapore, exploring new places. Even if we did go back to certain places (Copenhagen, Brighton and Paris because we have friends there), we were always doing things. 

And somehow, when I got back to work, I often did feel exhausted, because I didn’t take the time to truly rest. But also, I could rest in the evenings or on weekends, as we didn’t have children.

I always thought beach holidays were not my thing. Both my parents don’t swim, I grew up in a landlocked country and while we did travel regularly, going to the beach (or the mountains for that matter) was not the type of holiday that my parents were drawn to. The first time I went on a beach holiday was when I was 17 and I went for two weeks with my best friend and her family to Marbella in Spain. I remember that I really enjoyed the holiday, hanging out by the pool, reading, doing some day trips - but it also felt quite unusual to me.

It was only 15 years later that I went on a beach holiday again. In 2017, two years after my husband and I got married, I got pregnant - and suffered an early miscarriage at 6 weeks. While my then gynecologist kept talking about the statistics and how frequent this was, emotionally I hadn’t been prepared for this and the drop of hormones felt very challenging. We were supposed to travel to Singapore a month later - and for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like sitting on a plane for 12h, meeting our family and friends that I love dearly, potentially answering questions about having children… So my husband and I postponed our flights and booked at the last minute a two-week beach vacation in Mallorca, Spain in an adult-only hotel.

It was our first beach holiday as a couple and it felt lovely to just hang around, read books, swim, drink cocktails by the pool, go for walks and do some small trips around the island. We went with the flow with no pressure and it was exactly what I needed to heal - physically and emotionally.

That was when we decided that beach holidays would become our thing - or one of our things. A year later - when I was 10 weeks pregnant - we travelled to Crete in Greece. Then, when our son was 6 months old, we went back to Mallorca with him, which was a lovely experience (and in hindsight so much easier than now with a toddler and a 6-year-old who doesn’t like walking). 

Then the world shut down for a bit, our second son was born and in his first year, while the world opened up again, we preferred  going to Singapore and Brighton to spend time with friends we hadn’t seen in a while. 

But after that, with the start of kindergarten and fixed school holidays, the topic of the beach holiday came up again - and we ended up picking this place in Menorca because my sister-in-law and our travel agent recommended it.

With two children, our pace is slower. We stay in the resort a lot. We don’t explore around the way we used to. We only go for short walks.

Allowing myself to be - and why it doesn’t come easy

It feels hard to me to just rest and relax. To do nothing. To read books. To watch the waves. To go to a place and not see the local culture - or at least not much of it. I love travelling to places where we know people because we can explore the cities like locals. Not just do all the touristy things but also find less crowded but beautiful areas. 

This year, I forced myself to slow down. To take a step back. To walk a bit slower instead of rushing. To sit by the ocean and just watch. To take a moment just to breathe. 

Photo Credit: Melchior von Rotz

It wasn’t as relaxing as the holidays we’ve had before the children. But it felt nice to just be. 

Allowing myself to be is a work in progress. After years of doing, it doesn’t come natural to me. I don’t go on holidays and feel instantly relaxed. But after three years at the same place, I see the progress. 

Adjusting to a new environment feels easier because we know what to expect. The kids now start remembering the place, the kids’ club, the people there. We don’t have the novelty of discovering a new hotel - but in this season of life, that’s ok! 

We still have the possibility to explore around the island as we’ve only gotten a glimpse of it so far. But I’ve let go of the feeling of guilt that I didn’t get to see it all. I’m trying to accept that these holidays are for us to rest. For each of us to get to do some activities they enjoy. For the kids to play and swim. For family trips to the zoo and surrounding towns. 

I don’t know if this will be our holiday destination for the next 10 years. But I can imagine going back for a couple of years, depending on what the kids want. That will give me time to practise relaxing on holidays, allowing myself to rest and just be. In our fast-paced society, where being burnt out and stressed is praised, it’s something that we need to learn again. To allow ourselves to take things slow, to let go of work, our phones. To let ourselves rest and relax again. 

I notice how stressed I am, how much pressure I put onto myself. But these holidays have also shown me the progress I’m making. The little moments of rest I’m giving my body daily, teaching my nervous system that it’s safe. It’s a work in progress and I am trying to be patient (definitely not my strength). 

I am grateful to get these opportunities to find some rest at a beautiful place by the beach.