Having been here now for 5 nights, I can say I am really glad we’ve arranged our trip this time to – mostly – be spending around a week in each location, although already this time in Barcelona seems to be rushing by.
Last time we travelled overseas, we had just Liam, who was then not quite two, and we had a number of stops of two-three nights. There were good reasons for that, namely, trying to fit people in, not wanting to put people out by staying with them for too long, and having limited money for accommodation on the places where we couldn’t stay with anyone, for whatever reason. But by the end of five weeks, we were all feeling a bit tired and cranky.
You’d think those reasons would be more true this time, traveling with three kids, but somehow it hasn’t worked out that way. We are still spending the shortest times in the places we have to pay for accommodation, and we’ll have the road trip up to Portland to visit my brother and his family, where we’ll stop a night or two on the way up and one on the way back, with only four days there (they have a new baby and no older children so we didn’t even ask them to put us up), so that will be quite disruptive for the kids, but mostly we’re spending a good chunk in each location.
There are a couple of people we visited last time who we are just not managing to fit in this time, which I’m sad about, but with three kids and the longer overall trip (there was no Europe component last time), I think it’s more important than last time for them to have time to settle.
The time in Barcelona *is* flying though, and our kids are going to really miss having the other kids to play with when we get to Greece.
