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For two parents who love to holiday the location of our boys first trip was always going to be an important step! In our non parent lives choosing a holiday location was so simple, step 1, pick a place that looks nice, step 2, go on Sky Scanner (other sites are available) and book some flights, step 3, check out the accommodation available and book the cheapest 7/10 or above option! It really was that simple, in fact I have been known to skip step 1 and just jump straight to sky scanner. That option is liberating, it is the non-spontaneous persons version of just turning up at the airport and booking a flight to the first place available like they do in the films (does anyone actually do that? Are you even allowed to do that in this day and age? Surely not?). This option has seen me end up taking my wife to Copenhagen on our Mini-moon (the word makes me cringe, I really will take any justification for a trip away) a gamble which 100% paid off, what a lovely little city Copenhagen is, the stereotypical Scandinavian buildings, the vast open parks, the billions of Michelin star restaurants and the wonderful museums (although be warned the Carlsberg museum does not do what it says on the tin, trust me!). In fact as I sit here I rack my brain for anything I didn’t like about that place and the only thing that comes to my mind is the fact that you had to remortgage for a drink, a round of one beer and one cocktail set me back €20!

However having a little man in the world largely changes all that, you can’t just take a 5month baby anywhere (not if my wife has anything to do with it anyway). So as all good parents do when they are facing a question they do not know the answer to I turned to Google. If you need to know when babies start teathing, or what nappies are the best Google is the place to go, although it should be noted that I strongly believe Google should come with strict controls or a warning for parents. I remember the first or second night we brought the little man home from hospital I found my wife at about 3:00 Googling cribs with next day delivery because the little man wouldn’t settle! Completely irrational behaviour, but a grizzly baby and limited sleep makes you do irrational things and Google plays to that!

So of I set, the world at my finger tips as they say, all I need now is a clear, concise search, something like … ‘Best places for holidays with babies’. Now don’t get me wrong there is a lot of rubbish but if you sift through that you will come across gold, and for me gold was a Telegraph article from February 2017 ‘The 10 best beach holidays in Europe for families with babies and toddlers’. For a man that loves lists this was the ideal article and for me there was only one option after reading this article, Numeral Uno ‘Salema’ a little village in the South of Portugal. According to research it offers beautiful beaches, a peaceful environment, some quaint little restaurants and most importantly some guaranteed sunshine!

With the location nailed on I turned to the logistics of getting there, and more importantly getting there on a budget, now I have never been a plane snob, as long as it gets from A to B that will do me, however now I find myself reading reviews on which airline is the most child friendly, which flight times are best for children etc. However as I read these reviews it crossed my mind … What difference does it make, at 5 months old it doesn’t matter if I am on a luxury plane or a budget airline, either way the boy is going to be on my lap! So with that in mind my choice was made … Ryanair it was! What we save on flights we can spend on accommodation! Surely this plan is going to be floor less I mean we are going to spend about 4 hours in total on the plane and over 100 hours in the accommodation, I mean that’s logical, right? Whilst I am confident in the choices made regarding flights it must be noted I haven’t had the best experiences of budget airlines, I mean once I was meant to land in London Luton and actually ended up in Birmingham, and then there was he time I intended on flying to the Netherlands and the pilot preferred a trip to Germany (yes you read this correct twice I have landed in an unintended airport) but surely this bad luck can’t last, can it?

So for the final part, for me the most important part, the accomidation. Now if you thoughts I have had some bad experiences with flights my accommodation experiences are potentially worse, to give you a slight insight into this I will give you a brief story about a trip to Hanoi, 2 weeks into a trip to South East Asia I rocked up to a hotel which according to Agoda was a pleasant little hotel with some nice reviews (nothing against Agoda at all, I think have used them loads and have 1 bad experience). Bare in mind at this point we had already been traveling for about 10hours to get here including a rather epic trek through the city with out bags. When we get to our hotel it doesn’t quite look like the picture but it’s about 10 at night and we could all do with a bit of sleep so we check into our hotel and go up to the room. As I said with airlines, I don’t want you thinking I am a snob but I do have a few basic standards, and this place didn’t quiet add up, firstly when we walked in there was rat feces all over the floor, not ideal but with the level of tiredness I overlooked it, secondly the bathroom, due to a complete lack of piping it was impossible to wash your hands without also washing your feet, again not ideal but I can survive that, thirdly as I jump into bed my wife noticed the floor wasn’t the only place to be covered in rat feces. To top this story off when we complained they offered us an upgrade which we considered, in fact we even went to have a look at the upgraded room, however my wife’s face when we went to see the ‘upgrade’ was amazing, this ‘upgrade’ contained even more rat feces than our original room. It’s safe to say we didn’t hang around very long. Any way back to Portugal and our first holiday with the baby boy. Based on these experiences we weren’t cutting corners this time round. We went for a nice little apartment, 2 bedrooms (one for us and one for our best friends/ child’s god parents who decided to join us), a living area and a small kitchen, nothing too flash but with excellent reviews and most importantly a cleanliness rating of 5/5. Again I am sure this will backfire but with reviews like that what could possibly go wrong?