Nearly 2 weeks of no blogging can only mean one thing – holiday! I will most definitely be making up for that over the next couple of weeks and be warned – an awful lot of holiday posts will grace your computer screens! I’m also going to be sneaky and say this is our Ordinary Moments for the past 200 weeks as I seem to have forgotten to keep up with that too!!
Last year, between my parents, brothers and us we decided to go on a big group holiday in 2016. We searched and searched high and low for the perfect place and we ended up booking a beautiful villa in Spain before Christmas ’15. Things changed, plans moved and a few of us had to opt out. The villa was huge and would have been too big for just the 10 of us that wanted to still go away so we ended up booking a hotel in Kos, Greece for a week instead. And boy, are we glad we did!
We had never been able to afford to go abroad on such a big holiday, what with having babies every couple of years and starting up our businesses, moving house and getting married it just never worked out. Life has somewhat settled down for us over the past year or two and we were all so so excited to celebrate life calming down with a family holiday.
It was the first time Oliver and Elsie had been on a plane and Harvey doesn’t remember when he went on one at 18m old, so it felt like his first time too which made it really special. They were all most excited about the flight and although Harvey was quite nervous about it, we had a marvellous journey going out so it instantly put his mind at rest. In actual fact they are all saying it was one of their favourite things about the whole week!! Travelling with family also made it really special.
Our flight was delayed by just over an hour on the way out so we didn’t arrive at our resort until nearly midnight. The kids were all running on adrenaline and what better way to start off your holiday than with midnight crepes! These then became the highlight of every breakfast every morning and all 4 children were fuelled on pancakes with nutella and lemonade!
The resort we stayed in was called Akti Beach Club. It was perfectly located right on the beach and just a short 5 minute journey into Kardamena which during the day was quiet and quaint, the complete opposite to the nightlife we had heard about! It is quite a large complex and our rooms were situated at the far end of the resort which meant it was a few minutes walk to the main restaurant and reception area. This also meant where we were was really quiet and if you didn’t want to be near any entertainment then you could set up camp at our nearest pool and not be disturbed. I can’t get over how calm and relaxed it felt the entire holiday, you would have never have known it was such a big hotel! There wasn’t much of a fight for sun beds and there was always enough room and every meal for all 10 of us to sit together. There was always a kids pool with every main pool which meant we could sit at the side or on our sun beds and the kids could play in the pool without a worry. It was waist height on Elsie who isn’t a very tall 4 year old so it was absolutely perfect for them, and for us! It meant we could do a lot of relaxing and sunbathing whilst they were happily playing in the pool and we could join them when we needed to cool down!! It really was the perfect set up for families. Although it isn’t a hotel aimed solely at families, it was a great mix of the two. Perfect for adults and enough things to do for children that they weren’t bored.
We spent our first couple of days literally by the pool side, eating and drinking cocktails and soaking up the sun. It was super warm the first half of the week so we really made the most of it! We also did an after dinner stroll along the beach front which was utterly divine. That milky light is just perfect for photographs and although I really tried to hold back on taking 2 million photos, here are some snaps of the first few days. I am going to do a few posts about the holiday as there are too many things to talk about and too many photos to post all on one! So apologies if you are uninterested in holiday spam, maybe give it a couple of weeks before coming back 😉
We also videoed our holiday so be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven’t already! Our first video is live!
Char x