Van Life

We're back from our slightly unconventional and risky holiday! We survived!

As most people will know we're not a normal couple in many ways, normal people don't quit jobs to cycle to Kuwait for fun. Normal people don't attempt to laminate ham, but in recent years we have become a bit more regular: jobs, mortgages children, bla bla bla. It's now over 3 years since I laminated ham. So we were never going to go on a conventional package holiday; staying in the sun in a nice hotel with not a lot to organise ... that actually sounds lovely. But why do that when you can stay in 6 different forms of accommodation, including a noisy stag night kind of a hostel, and a cold van with a 1 year old and a 4 year old?

We chose April as the time for a holiday because Eric will be 2 in May and your second birthday marks the end of free flights. Also we didn't realise the south of France/north of Spain is actually not that hot in April.

We chose to go between Nice and Barcelona because basically we just looked at a map and thought that looks nice. It was probably a subliminal message from seeing the name "Nice." But theres some good places on the way like St Tropez, Marseille, a nice little town called Gruissan and Perpignan. (I remember how to spell that by thinking of a granddaughter asking her grandmother who is a pig farmer "when you make sausages how many sausages PER PIG NAN?")

The View from Colline de chateaux in Nice, there's 337 steps the lift was broken so Dan carried the pram all the way!

We've always been fans on France, I love cheese and Dan came out of a French woman. He speaks excellent French on account of the French woman speaking to him in French as a baby. I don't speak French but I did once do an internship in mime, which others referred to as "the french exchange". When I do attempt to parle le Francaise I always make a bit of an idiot of myself, like the time I meant to say "I'm really happy for you" but I actually said "Je suis tres jolie" which means "I'm very pretty".

And this trip to France was no different. While buying a postcard instead of saying "do you have stamps?" I said "do you want stamps?" as if I was offering to pay for the postcard in stamps rather than money. I also accidentally said "bonjour" to a German couple in Spain and tried to pay with English money. 

After 2 days in Nice we went to pick up our Van. We have hired a motorhome once before which had a shower and kettle and built in hobs and stuff. This was not that. Technically it had a shower, if you don't mind getting naked in the street and pouring cold water on yourself. Most people mind that. Technically it had a toilet ... well it was kind of like a fancy potty that need emptying every 5 days. The potty didn't have it's own space so toilet time was family time, and if you were pooing everyone knew about it. You also couldn't flush the paper and so there was just a bag of paper you would like to flush attached to the tap of the sink.

Driving around in the day was great. As a vehicle it worked well, there was enough space when the beds were folded away and we managed to see some great beaches and interesting places. We used a company called Indie Campers their USP is that you can hire and drop off in most major European cities, so we just paid a bit extra to not do a round trip.

As a home the van was less fun. Cooking was on a one hob portable gas stove. We ate tinned ravioli twice and just for a treat one night, just to mix it up, we had fresh ravioli. Sleeping arrangements were bunk bed double beds. Eric has never slept in a bed, as opposed to a cot, before and hasn't yet learnt the skill of not falling out of bed. So the first night I slept with him on the bottom and Dan and Percy slept on top.
But when the beds are out there is really no space for 4 suitcases 2 car seats and a pram. So we had to not fully put the lower bed out. It's hard to explain but basically apart from the first night I slept with Percy in the top, Eric slept in the bottom and Dan slept in an "L" shape only half in the bottom bed. What a hero! It was cold at night in the van, so we had to boil a pan of hot water to make a hot water bottle for night time. While I was doing this I remembered that we had left our heating on at home. We were paying to heat a 4 bed house while freezing in a van. That package holiday didn't feel such a silly idea at that moment!

Obviously Percy didn't sleep right on the edge like this.

Dan and Eric

For two nights while we still had the van we visited Dan's aunty in Marseille. That was a real treat, not only did we get proper beds but she cooked us some amazing food, including lobster! All this while she herself was on a detox where she only drank homemade smoothies and the water left over from cooking vegetables!

Dan's auntie Beatrice

One of the best things about holidaying in France is having a croissant everyday for breakfast! But one year old Eric, having never left the country before was not very cultured. On waking up he would whine "honey hoops, honey hoops " so we gave in and bought some honey hoops. For some of the holiday Percy has been going though a slightly annoying "I'm bored" phase. I gave him a bit of a talking to about how lucky he was to be experiencing a different culture etc ... in that annoying patronising way mums talk to their 4 year olds. I asked him to give me an example of how things were different in France and he said that (without any sarcasm, because he hasn't learnt that yet) "French honey hoops taste slightly different to our honey hoops."

Our trip ended in the lovely city of Barcelona, I really liked it there.

It's a major city with a beach so theres loads to do, but the stand out bit for me was our local park. I've never seen a park this good. It has a tropical boating lake, some very cool plants, a statue of a mammoth, a fountain and a really cool play bit that we called "the nursery". It was like a playground with toys, and a couple of members of staff keeping control and even an indoor bit with jigsaws and blocks and stuff, all free! We hired a family bike to cycle round it.

I want to buy a bike like this and travel round the country on it for our next holiday.

Our holiday ended with a very early morning flight, we had a taxi booked for 4:15am. We thought getting up at 3:50am (2:50 english time!) would be enough to get up and dressed. Everything was packed and organised the night before, but at 4:15am I was running down the 5 flights of stairs like a maniac with a toddler under one arm and a ball and coat under the other. getting my own back on all the stag parties in the hostel with the screams from Eric.

We made it. I'm ready for a break now though.