We booked a long weekend to Tenerife to celebrate our anniversary. I did want to go to Santorini, but we wanted to book the flights with our Avios reward points, and couldn’t find any flights to Santorini but we did find some on the Tenerife route. This trip was meant to be a child-free break, but in the end, we had to bring our kids along. I was worried about the flights as the one on the way back was quite late and we wouldn’t have booked such a late flight if we’d known it wouldn’t be just us travelling. Also at four and a half hours, this was the longest flight we’d taken with kids. We were booked into the Jardin Tropical which was, until a few years ago was an adult only hotel!
A four and a half hour flight with kids
The flight on the way out was actually pretty good. We’d bought Chloe (4) and Will (2) these JVC earphones, and downloaded some films onto Netflix on my phone and Chloe’s amazon fire. We also had sticker books, and lots of snacks. The kids didn’t sleep at all on the flight, and Will fell asleep in the taxi on the way to the hotel.
We arrived at the hotel, and walked into the serene lobby area of the hotel, we had to wait for about 15 minutes to check in which was quite a challenge with 2 tired and hungry children. When it was time to go up to the desk I realised Will had filled his nappy, it was an exploding one and there was no baby changing facilities, so I had to change him in a toilet cubicle! I also had to take his shorts off as they were solied. While this was going on my husband and Chloe were sipping their welcome drinks. Not a good start!
Once we’d seen the room, we headed down to dinner, this was the first holiday we’ve been on with buffet meals included, and it was great to be able to get something for the kids to eat straight away, especially as it was gone 7pm now.
Siam Park
This huge Thai themed theme park, has got to be the best waterpark in the world. It’s worth planning your visit a bit (we didn’t!) as you can get a bit lost trying to find the rides.
We settled in The Lost City which is the splash park. Chloe (4) loved it, bit Will (2) was a bit spooked by the huge Buddha’s head which fills with water and tips over the park. We got Will to sleep, and then Chloe and I went to explore. Chloe is about 1.09m and a lot of the rides have a minimum height of 1.10m. We’d all been on the Lazy River when we’d got there so I was looking for another raft type ride that Chloe could go on. We decided to try the Mekong Rapids even though Chloe was a tiny bit shorter than the minimum height. We had to queue for about 10 mins, and then as we got to the front, we were pulled out of the queue to check Chloe’s height. We were told we could go on, but just this once! Phew! Everyone in the queue cheered!
Chloe loved that ride the best and still talks about it today!
Vivo mini golf
We met up with some friends who were also staying in Tenerife that week. We met at the pirate themed
Vivo golf, in Las Americas, for an early evening round of golf. It was hard work trying to play with 4 kids (2 of them toddlers who kept picking up the balls), but it was lots of fun. We got about half-way, before we decided to call it a day!
We then went for some post golf drinks at the very chic Papagayo beach club, we weren’t allowed inside with the kids as it was now past 9pm, but we had the terrace to the right of the bar to ourselves to enjoy some sunset cocktails.
Unfortunately, the next day we had to fly home. This was the late flight I’d been dreading. The thing about flying with kids is it is so unpredictable, you just never know how it’s going to play out!
This flight was stressful because there was an older boy sitting in front of us with his Dad. At first, he was making Chloe and Will laugh, but then he started taking their toys. Then he tried to sit in our row. The people behind me were getting annoyed, and asked me if he was my child. My husband asked the child’s Dad who was just laying his head on the tray table with his eyes closed, if he could calm his son down, to which he replied that we should’ve told him earlier! I was waiting for the lights to be dimmed. When they did, Chloe and Will relaxed a lot more, but typically neither of them slept until we landed.
I don’t think I would do a short break like this with children again. I felt like it wasn’t long enough a break to relax. It takes children time to settle in to the holiday routine, and by the time they had done that it was time to go home.
Nature & Nurture 