A different town, a different play park, a different ice cream.

The sentence above pretty much sums up the week.  The start of the week saw us embark on our first foreign holiday as a family.  I had taken tips off everyone on how to keep my little cheeky monkey quiet on the flight and approached the trip with a little trepidation.  But I needn’t have worried as he was a superstar.  Needless to say I had EVERYTHING you can imagine to entertain him packed away in my hand luggage – dinosaurs, sticker books, reading books, jigsaws, crayons, Hudl, teddy bear, blanket.  In fact my hand luggage contained nothing for me at all.  When I ran out of things to entertain him with it was time to explore the plane.  I must have walked half way to Spain and back going up and down and up and down the aisle.  But it was all worth it.

When we arrived in Madrid the weather was warm but not too hot.  Luckily for us this meant that it was pleasant enough to go out and about exploring the surrounding towns and villages.  Before Harry we used to drive up and look for somewhere to stop and have a meal and a nice glass of wine, this time we looked for a play park to eat the picnic food I had assembled that morning.  Definitely different but no less enjoyable.

The highlight of our holiday has to be sitting in Retiro Park in Madrid feeding the turtles sausages off a stick.  A very kind Mum sitting next to us offered us their spare stick and shared the sausages she had brought so that we could join in.  It was magical watching Harry’s face as the turtles swam up and took the food off the stick that he was holding.

Unfortunately it wasn’t all perfect.  Harry picked up a cold on the flight and I failed to pack the one thing that every Mummy needs to have close to hand – Calpol.  We have so many bottles of it at home that you would think we are sponsored by them. He also managed to fall off the sofa on to the unforgiving tiled floor whilst trying to lean over and stroke the dog.  He wandered in to an ant’s nest resulting in little bites all over his chubby little body. He fell over in the park and ended up with a mouthful of sand from off the floor and finally he banged his head on a see-saw.

Despite the bumps, bruises, cough and snotty nose, we all had a great time and hailed the holiday a success.  It has given us the confidence we need to go and book another holiday abroad.  I just hope he didn’t lull us in to a false sense of security….