When our
first ever holiday as a family almost got cancelled twice, we might have wondered if
this was just not meant to be. Just as any other aspect of living with a baby
compared with living as a couple, travelling with a baby seems a daunting
prospect. Ours had the added complexity of cancelling a trip to Hong Kong at
short notice due to a severe outbreak of SARS (Avian Flu), then our baby coming
down with a nasty stomach bug just before we took our replacement holiday to
the South of France.
The doctor’s advice? He’s got a stomach bug wherever you
are, so you may as well be in a nice place.
This was
possibly the first piece of really good travel advice we had. Whilst the
journey itself involved enormous quantities of baby wipes, spare clothes and
muslin cloths, its much easier looking after a sick baby in pleasant warm
weather. The practical aspects helped of course: tiled rather than carpeted
floors, and the ability to run around with less clothes, which also dried
quickly. And of course after a couple of days he was fine anyway and the proper
holiday began.
The Cannes Film Festival was in full swing when we arrived, an occasion filled with the
kind of glamour that one rarely associates with travelling with a small baby.
However this does mean that there is lots going on – babies like people
watching as much as the rest of us. The other great advantage is the enormous
quantities of staff in the beach-front restaurants to take care of our very
need. At one point, our baby had 3 waiters all to himself, one to adjust his
high chair, one to adjust his personal sun-shade, and another whose
responsibility seemed to be to just fuss around him. We were quite entertained just watching this.
As our
first trip, it was quite a revelation to see how children are welcomed into
restaurants in Continental Europe compared to the UK, even somewhere as smart
as Cannes. We also found that going into the foyer of a five star hotel foyer
to find somewhere to change a nappy was quite acceptable, staff pointing us in
the right direction and even passing me wipes in the way that those chaps in
nightclub toilets inexplicably pass you a towel to dry your hands on.
We have a
general principle of not going back to the same place twice, on account of
there being rather a lot of the world to see. However we have stayed in
apartments in the South of France several times since this first holiday as our
family grew. We generally fly Easyjet to Nice, and take a bus to Cannes or
Antibes where we rent an apartment.
One of the
great aspects of this area is the train line running along the Mediterranean
coast. Not only is it immensely scenic, but it conveniently links numerous good
days out. On this trip we stayed in Antibes and tended to take a train to
Cannes, but also whizzed up to Monaco, as well as exploring the pretty harbour
and streets of Antibes itself.
As a first trip, this was a marvellous confidence builder. We had really doubted going after the earlier hitches, and had been pretty negative about the end of our selfish holidays as a "young" couple. But we ended up with a new found confidence to explore more as the family grew. Which it did, rather more quickly than we expected!
