2) Tourists love posing like idiots in front of ancient monuments.

3) The British are a lot better than the Greeks at monument information and interpretation. The philosophy schools, workplace of Plato and Socrates (yes them) had no sign you could see from the footpath. It was only by studying a tiny map really carefully, that we worked out what the scrubby area of land surrounded by chicken wire actually was.

4) The Aegean Sea is the perfect temperature for cooling down after dusty, sticky Athens.

5) Grilled octopus is delicious and not at all chewy.

6) Churches in Naxos are apparently never open.

7) The 2pm bus from Halki to Naxos town could give the Northern Line at rush hour a run for its money. I expect the kind lady who put Dickon on her knee wasn’t aware quite how heavy he was. I hope the fact she got off at A&E wasn’t down to us.

8) You can’t drink the tap water in Naxos, it tastes of salt. But bottled water is €2 for 9 litres and it turns out that the knee high taps around town aren’t actually for washing your feet…

2) It’s not wise to feed a pint of chocolate milk to a child after an hour walking in 36 degrees. Unless you want to see it again all over the cafe floor.

3) The Greek hillsides smell of figs.

4) If you drop your purse on a footpath from a monastery into the village, don’t rush to cancel your debit card, as a kind person might hand it in at the tourist office.

5) Oregano crisps are nicer than they sound.

6) Bakeries sell little homemade choc ices by weight. Five cost about 2 euros. Bargain.

7) If the playground is locked because it’s ‘out of order’, everyone will just climb over the fence to get in.

Yesterday we got the bus to Meteora. Comfortable as these things go and only took an hour longer than we’d been told. We stopped at a service station half way and tried a delicious sticky nutty jelly thing. Don’t know what it was called but the top had been caramelised with a flame.

Meteora is stunning. Huge grey sandstone rock pinnacles looming over the little village. There are six monasteries on the top of pinnacles and caves with rickety platforms, once home to hermits. This morning we climbed the steps to two monasteries in the shimmering heat. The churches are stunning, every surface covered with paintings, icons and carvings and silver and ostrich egg lamps. The devout kiss the paintings and a member of staff follows them round, spraying the glass with cleaner and wiping. Impressive levels of hygiene.

After a restorative ice cream, Dickon’s was banana with peelable edible jelly skin, we walked down the hill back to the village past bee hives, wild artichokes and shrines, the smell of warm figs pervading.

We’ve been listening to Percy Jackson and My Family and Other Animals, eating Greek salad (obvs), grilled meat and oregano crisps.

PS I can’t upload photos because I’ve used up my storage and I really can’t be faffed to work out how to sort that on my phone. If you want to see my pics, I’m on Instagram, user name vwallop!

So, packing.  On Thursday we’re off to Greece for four weeks, yes, I know, we’re jammy, and yes, Steve is able to get that long off work, one of the advantages of never getting pay rises. We’re flying Ryanair, as they’re £500 cheaper than Easyjet, which translates into an extra week in Greece.  But I’ve not heard great things about Ryanair and losing luggage, and they charge through the nose for check-in bags, and the queues for check-in at the airport are ridiculous, so we’ve decided to go hand luggage only.  It’s not as mad as it sounds, last year we flew hand luggage only to Switzerland by mistake after a fire alarm meant we almost missed our flight and had to hastily re-pack our bags and sprint straight through security. The kids are old enough to carry a decent sized bag; the boys have age appropriate kids’ backpacks and Eve is using my daypack. Steve and I have our trusty RTW backpacks, which we’ve taken the back support out of to make them shorter (I’ve obsessively measured everything about three times) and I’ve packed them very lightly so they’ll squash into the bag measurer. Then when we reach Greece we’ll re-pack so the kids aren’t carrying much and our bags are full.

Here’s what we are taking:

• 1 fleece each
• 1 hat each
• 1 swimming outfit each (kids have rash vests as well as bottoms)
• 2 swimming towels
• 1 pair of flip flops and 1 pair of trainers for me
• 1 pair of crocs for kids
• 1 pair of hideous but practical trekking sandals purchased in Broome, Australia for Steve
• 1 pair of PJs for adults and Eve and 2 pairs each for boys
• 2 pairs shorts/skirts each for adults and Eve
• 3 pairs shorts each for boys plus one pair extra
• 3 tops each for adults
• 4 t-shirts each for kids
• 1 pair of trousers each
• 1 long sleeved top each
• 5 pairs of pants each and 2 bras for me
• 1 silk sleeping bag each
• travel sized shampoo, toothpaste, suncream, moisturiser etc which we’ll replace with normal sized ones in Greece
• earplugs
• sanitary protection
• packet of tissues, hand gel and packet of baby wipes
• hair brush
• flannels and ziplock bags for cooling down on the go (put wet flannel with added ice cubes in freezer before you leave the house)
• first aid kid including steri strips, gauze, piriton, paracetemol and sting stuff
• 2 inhalers and spacer
• passports, print outs of ferry tickets, insurance stuff etc
• 2 iPhones, iPad mini with apps (games, Kindle, Greek language), audio books and a couple of movies and Kindle with books for kids and adults
• travel speaker
• charger, leads adaptor, headphones and splitters
• 2 re-usable shopping bags
• 4 guide books
• 3 paper novels
• kid’s activity book and blank notebook
• felt tips and pencils
• 1,000s of loom bands
• man bites dog card game
• dice game
• inflatable beach ball

I’ve packed the fleeces, but obviously we’ll be wearing one outfit, long sleeved top, trousers, pants, and all the shoes will be worn except for my flip flops.  We plan to visit a toy shop in Athens and buy the kids a couple of souvenir toys or games.  If we buy lots of souvenirs, we’ll have to post them home to my mum, but I’ve also packed mostly really old clothes, so some stuff may stay in Greece.

That’s it! It all fits easily in the bags we’ve got and I don’t feel like we’re having to do without. There will be quite a bit of washing to do, but if you’re going away for that long, you expect it. I’m pleased that we’ll be able to hop on and off ferries with relative ease.

What have I forgotten?

1) Britain is the second biggest consumer of chocolate in the world after Switzerland; we eat 7 kilos per person per year.  That doesn’t actually sound like that much does it?

2) A mammoth’s femur is longer and heavier than our rather stocky six year old.

3) French teenagers can play football and smoke at the same time.

4) Full fat milk has a blue top and semi-skimmed milk a green top in Spain too.  It’s very helpful but I imagine the European Parliament had a hand in it.  What would the Daily Mail make of that?

5) Nuns fart.  Really.  And when they do they make biscuits.

6) The Spanish for pig’s trotter.  Shame it was after I’d ordered what I thought was a pork chop.

7) How to get five seats in a row on Easyjet.  First, leave your morals at home…

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Keycamp offers self-catering holidays to over 90 top parcs across eight European countries, including Italy, Spain and Austria. Each boasts excellent facilities and a choice of stylish mobile home, chalet and even tree house accommodation. 
Seven nights from 23 March 2013 for a family of two adults and up to four children staying in a Villanova mobile home with decking and air conditioning at Keycamp’s Vilanova Park will cost from £252, accommodation only. Fly-drive and ferry packages can be arranged though Keycamp at a supplement. 

For the latest deals, further information or to make a booking, visit www.keycamp.co.uk or call 0844 406 0319. 

A while back, the lovely PR people from Keycamp asked me if we’d like a free holiday.  Of course I said yes, I mean you’d have to be daft not to wouldn’t you?  Where would you like to go they said.  Somewhere in the Autumn half term, not too cold, accessible by public transport, near a beach and with interesting things to do, I said.  Don’t want much do I?

They suggested Vilanova Parc, in Spain.  Not too far from Barcelona, twenty minutes from the beach by the regular bus service, local markets, five pools, a  jumping pillow and a junior disco.  Perfect I said, and off we went.

It was exactly what it said on the tin.  Apart from the weather, which was unseasonably cold, a fact I can’t blame on Keycamp.  The accommodation was spotlessly clean, had three bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, veranda, barbecue and a very welcome, welcome bottle of wine.  The Keycamp staff were cheerful, helpful and a constant source of swimming pool noodles, ping pong bats and snakes and ladders.  The parc was beautifully landscaped and maintained, had the advertised five pools, including, thankfully, one heated indoor one, two playgrounds, a restaurant at which we ate delicious rice with squid ink, and child friendly patatas bravas, a jumping pillow, a supermarket selling Dutch biscuits, and crazy golf.  Personally I think you can’t go wrong with crazy golf.

I’d never really stayed anywhere like that before.  I suppose it had similarities with some of the campsites in New Zealand and Australia, but they were a lot smaller.  This was as large as a small town, which meant I got lost a few times, but having an ATM, onsite medical help and a proper supermarket was something we never got in the Antipodes.  Mind you, in the Antipodes, we didn’t always have running water, but that’s another story.

The kids loved it and didn’t want to leave.  They made friends with other kids and sat swinging their legs on fences watching French boys smoking whilst playing football.  I can’t pretend I wasn’t faintly horrified, but that’s what holidays are all about when you are not quite a teenager.

And with the kids so busily occupied, I read three books in five days.  Result.

If you voted for me, thank you very much.  If you didn’t, I shan’t hold it against you, because I’m nice like that.

We then unexpectedly became the owners of a large, quite bouncy dog.  I wondered whether our no car policy would be tested, I had no idea whether the car club allowed dogs, and she’s a country bumpkin who’d never been on public transport.  But a year later, it’s going well.  The dog squeezes herself quite happily into the back of the Zipcar VW Golf for days in Richmond.  She’s sits, not very patiently, on the bus, attempting to leap out at every stop, for trips to Battersea Park.  And she has even travelled by escalator; paws splayed, alarmed look on her face as the wall moves next to her nose.  It helps that she rarely barks, loves people, and is very calm when she’s on the lead.

We’ve taken her on holiday by train a few times now.  People always ask us if we have to get rail tickets for her too, but dogs travel free.  I think she quite likes the train, she tends to be a minor celebrity with everyone stopping to stroke her as they make their way to the buffet car.  She’s so friendly that people can’t help but smile. Apart from the horrified family who were supposed to be sitting next to us but hurried away to another table saying “what if she does a poo.”  Honestly.

We’re generally considered odd, for choosing to live without a car in this day and age, but I think more people should try it.  It’s good for the environment, which makes me feel better about my hot bath addiction, and it’s really not as difficult as most people seem to think it is.  Even with a dog.

First up are some people after my own heart, who have blogged about taking their children abroad.  Dorkymum had a very big adventure in Canada, possibly TOO big if you ask her son.  The Sojourn Series went to Prague and discovered that pretty much anywhere is good with small children as long as you’ve got a swimming pool.  Kiddycharts has been to Austria twice in the summer and thinks the mountains are a great destination for children.  I couldn’t agree more, having had a lovely holiday in Switzerland a few years ago.  Actually Mummy visited the vineyards in Catalunya and can report that the wine was very good!

I almost didn’t include this one because I was so jealous that the Transatlantic Blonde was travelling to Mallorca WITHOUT her children. But hey, I’m generous.

I’m also a fan of tourism at home, discovering what you can find in your local area.  Yesterday we went to a rainbow beach, walked through a maze made of books and became citizens of Antarctica.  All for the price of a bus ride. Ever so slightly less successful on the outing front was Relentless Laundry.  I know it’s wrong to laugh at someone else’s misfortune, but she does tell the story very well.  And I now know why she chose her blog name.  Baby Budgeting has a very lovely friend who told her about a scarecrow festival which kept her children happy for a whole afternoon; we all need friends like that!  Little Sheep had a lovely day at Birmingham Thinktank, a place I’ve never been but now want to visit.  Northern Mum has been holidaying in the UK and is extolling the virtues of caravans, just as long as you don’t mind leaving your sex life at home.  Next time, I’d recommend she takes a tent.  And Geek Mummy has had her first proper family day out, it’s lovely when everything goes well and everybody enjoys themselves.

If you’re feeling crafty and want to make use of any ‘treasure’ from your latest outing to the park, have a look at Science Sparks Outdoor Craft Adventure post.  It’s a lovely idea and perfect even for little ones.  Also perfect for little ones is Red Ted Art’s leaf crown, especially lovely with Autumn leaves.

Family budgeting has tips for eating out without breaking the bank, very useful when you’ve got a horde of kids!  And last but not least, All Baby Advice tells us what it’s really like to get your heart’s desire and actually own a Stokke Xplory.

So that’s it, I hope we’ve inspired you with our tales of getting out and about.  There are still three weeks of the summer holidays to go!

Do you remember Victoria Wood’s Val de Ree (Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha) with the estimable Celia Imrie?  It’s a while since I’ve seen it, but as I remember, Victoria and Celia hike for the best part of a day across moors to reach their bed for the night in an windswept and inaccessible Youth Hostel.  When they arrive, their greeting could be warmer.  They’re told that they’re not allowed in until evening, despite the driving rain, and they spend some time trying to outwit the formidable manager by sneaking round the back.  When they finally make it inside, they’re forced to listen to an interminable evening lecture whilst eating one, only one, biscuit, then they’re kicked out again at the crack of dawn.  It’s an experience they wish never to repeat.

I’m happy to report that if Youth Hostels were ever like that, and I suspect that Victoria Wood was using a little artistic license,  times have mercifully changed.  You can stay inside all day, should you wish, eat as many biscuits as you like and compulsory evening lectures are thankfully absent.

What you do get is a clean, well-appointed, en-suite family room, a large self-catering kitchen with everything you’d need, a common room with TV, books and board games, a small shop selling food and drinks, and real coffee for breakfast.  The staff are cheerful, helpful, and a mine of information about the local area.  Did I mention the real coffee?

When were offered the chance to review a Hostel over half term, we asked if we could stay in one that was by the seaside, close to London and accessible by public transport.  The nice people at YHA suggested their Eastbourne Hostel, which fitted the bill on all three counts, including the public transport, which isn’t always the case outside of London.  The Hostel is on the edge of the town, a short bus ride from the beach and pier, right next to the footpath for the South Downs Way, and a shortish – depending on the length of your legs – walk to Beachy Head.

We ate proper fish and chips in cafe with formica tables and straws for drinks; sheltered from the weather on the pier, feeding two pence pieces into slot machines and coming away at least a pound poorer; found interesting shells and paddled on the blustery beach; got thoroughly muddy sliding down a bank, in the late evening sun on the footpath just behind the hostel; looked at Jubilee related art and made up words in the fab Towner Art Gallery; played new-to-us boardgames and discovered that Steve’s knowledge of boy bands is more extensive than any of us thought; and kept our spirits up on the slightly damp and extremely blowy walk to Beachy Head with large quantities of very sticky rock and a rousing rendition of Val de Ree.

I like to think that Victoria Wood would approve.

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If you’d like to stay in a YHA property during the summer holidays, click on the link below for a SPECIAL OFFER: £99 family rooms for 3 nights during the whole school holidays! Bookable until 12^th June for stays from 7^th July – 12^th September.  OFFER CODE: FAMSTAY-027.  WEBSITE LINK: www.yha.org.uk/small-world

We stayed for free for two nights at the Eastbourne YHA Hostel, where the manager makes very good coffee.  All views expressed are my own.