Vacation traveling with teenagers is a lot different than vacation traveling with young kids. It feels harder now, because they are so much more opinionated about what they want to do, or rather about what they DON’T want to do, which is invariably whatever WE want to do. But we mostly manage to compromise or get someone to give in, and mostly everyone gets to do SOMETHING they want to do, and everyone ends up satisfied, for the most part. Though it sometimes takes a lot of eye-rolling and sarcasm to get there.
And nowadays, it’s all about the free Wi-fi. Everywhere we went, the first thing the kids (and sometimes us, too) did was check to see if there was free Wi-fi. Addicted!
I don’t know why we don’t go to England more often. It’s so close and it’s really cheap to get there, though London is always more expensive than I think it should be. I love that everything is in English, and that the subway is so easy to get around on (TubeMap App made it even easier!)
One of the things I really wanted to do was go see a play or a musical, but alas, they were all so expensive or else nose-bleed section seating and then time got away from us, but that’s now on my to-do list for the next time. I DID get to go in lots of bookstores (all English books! Wheee!) and, AND I got to walk around an entire antique market in Covent Garden, which was enough to satisfy the craving for antiquing that I never get to do with anyone but my mom, even though I had to drag Martin around by the ear listening to him complain the entire time. Mom, where are you when I need you??
The first week was spent on a canal longboat and is a whole post in itself. Then we went to Salisbury for 2 nights and saw Stonehenge, Old Sarum and the Salisbury Cathedral. And London was last, for 3 nights. Pictures to come and much more about my thoughts and impressions of our latest family vacation.
The only bad thing? I STILL have a slight swaying feeling leftover from the boat. …when we googled how long it takes to get your land legs back, the answers were everywhere from hours to WEEKS. We got off the boat last Friday MORNING so it has been nearly a week for me. Everyone else was back to normal after a day or so, though Martin says he still feels it a little when I complain about it.
Also, tomorrow is 4 weeks since I stopped drinking soda. I had ONE coke during the trip and then a couple of sips the night we had KFC (eating cheap). I think that’s pretty damn good for a solid Coke fiend like me to make it through a month with one soda. Kudos to me! I still think about it a lot, and it was really hard during the trip, because the kids were ordering and drinking Cokes with every meal until I finally said something and Karin switched to mineral water part of the time, which actually helped.