As per my last blog, we had a weekend in Bruges just before Christmas, and I’d recommend it as a mini-break destination, especially at this time of year. It’s much closer than you imagine it to be – just over an hour’s drive from Calais. And it really is a beautiful destination – amazing architecture, lovely canals, museums and medieval buildings.

We managed to fit in a visit to the Historium, the Salvador Dali exhibition, the chocolate museum and the cathedral, as well as a boat trip on the canals and a large amount of exploring. There’s lots more for families to do that we didn’t have time to fit in – plus, of course, hundreds of different beers to drink (and don’t get me started on the chocolate…).

And while the December weather limits you slightly, it also brings with it Christmas markets, an ice rink in the main square and beautiful Christmas lights and decorations everywhere.

If you fancy trying Bruges and are looking for somewhere to stay (particularly as a family), then I’d definitely recommend the Novotel Brugge Centrum, where we stayed. Here’s my cut-and-paste review from Trip Advisor:

We stayed as a family of four in the Novotel for a weekend break in December, and I really can’t fault it. Firstly, hotel prices in Bruges are not cheap – and while the prices at this hotel might not be cheap in themselves, they certainly represent good value for Bruges, particularly when booking far enough in advance. The children stayed free in a superior room and had breakfast free if the adults paid for it, which made the hotel particularly good value for families. The location is very good – in the centre of town and an easy walk to the bell tower and the other sights, and probably a ten-minute walk to the train station. If coming by car, it is easy to find and there is an underground public car park right next to the hotel, where parking costs 8 or 9 Euros a day. The room is a reasonable size, and we found the beds perfectly comfortable. The toilet is separate from the bathroom, and there are toiletries, a hairdryer, TV, mini-bar (which just contained water) and a free safe. There is also free Wi-Fi throughout the hotel, which was a bonus. There is a door between the bedroom and the hall area outside the bathroom, which means that parents have somewhere to sit other than the bathroom once the children are in bed! The breakfast offered plenty of choice (hot and continental) and was all very nice. We also ate dinner in the hotel restaurant one evening, and the food was delicious. The staff were really what made the hotel – everyone was very friendly, both at reception and in the restaurant – and made us feel welcome as a family. You can often be made to feel uncomfortable bringing children to a city hotel, but the children were given a gift at check-in and again at dinner, and there was an area for children to play in the reception (and also outdoors, but it was too cold!), with an impressive computer ‘table’ and an X-Box. We would certainly stay in this hotel again, and would wholeheartedly recommend it to other families looking for a hotel in Bruges.

Here’s a video of our room in the Novotel Brugge Centrum. You can visit my YouTube channel (Holiday Obsessive) for more holiday-related videos (with more to be uploaded soon…).

I like where I live. For those that don’t know me personally, that’s in a little village in Kent in the south-east of England. I don’t just like the village itself – although I do like it, very much – I like the actual position of the village. I’m surrounded by beautiful countryside, much of it walkable from my front door, yet a main town – well, city, actually – is just a couple of miles away (also walkable if I had to!). If I go north, east or south, I’ll reach a coastline – I have the choice of sand or pebbles, plus some beautiful white-chalk cliffs. And if I go west – north-west to be precise – just 60 miles away are all the sights and sounds of London. Okay, so we haven’t got moors or mountains, but we have got the best of most worlds. A stroll through fields to a country pub? Check. Day at the beach, building sandcastles? Check. Quick visit to town for some shopping? Check. Bracing cliff-top walk? Check. Castles and cathedrals, museums and monuments, woods and wildlife parks, cinemas and soft-play – most things that you want can be found within a 20-mile radius of where I live. Living close to our capital city also brings a host of benefits – just a relatively short drive or less than an hour on the fast train means that it’s easy to pop to London for the day or for the weekend. It’s easy for us to see all the tourist sites and then some. It’s also easy to see a West End show or a concert at one of the wide variety of venues London has to offer. And have I mentioned the weather? Generally speaking, the south-east is pretty lucky – we’re in a little pocket that usually gets ignored when bad weather hits the rest of the UK. Obviously we don’t always get off scot-free – we had some ‘interesting’ flooding last year. But we are usually warmer than a lot of the country – right now, it’s a beautiful sunny day, while large amounts of the country are covered in snow.

So how does this relate to holidays? If I like where I live so much, why do I keep escaping it? Well, that’s another reason I like it so much. I’ve already mentioned the ease of a short break in London. It’s also simple to get to Sussex, one of my favourite UK counties – lots of beautiful coast and tons to do for children. Admittedly it’s not best-located for most of the rest of the UK; to get out of Kent, hitting the M25 is almost unavoidable – and anyone who’s been on the M25 knows it’s akin to sitting in your driveway with the engine running for an hour. But outside the UK? Well, that’s a different story. We have five airports within relatively easy reach. Sadly, none of them are that close (RIP the so-convenient-but-never-quite-took-off Manston Airport), but Gatwick and Stansted are both just over an hour away. We also have Heathrow or Luton not too much further (depending on the state of the M25, of course) or the as-yet-untested-but-may-be-useful-one-day London City. The joy of this is that we can go pretty much anywhere we want without having to worry about connecting flights, and we get far more choice over flight times and prices. Often, one airport works out cheaper than the others or has better flight times, and lots of airlines (budget ones in particular), only fly to/from certain airports or only to limited destinations from some of these airports. Having Heathrow, the country’s main airport, nearby is particularly useful for long-haul destinations, as flying from many other UK airports would involve a domestic flight to Heathrow first.

But the real pull of our location is our proximity to France; we’re less than half an hour away from Dover, and it’s only 20 miles from there to Calais. Admittedly, that’s still an hour and a half on the ferry, but that’s not so much different to getting the (slow) train to London. It’s a much easier way to go abroad than flying – no parking problems, quick check-in, no hanging around, and it’s much quicker to get to Dover than Gatwick. The Eurotunnel is even quicker, and the Eurostar quicker still – although the prices increase accordingly. Still, it’s pretty amazing to be able to get on a train in Ashford and be in Paris a couple of hours later! But back to the ferries – we’re lucky enough to be fairly frequent winners of ferry tickets (and there’s another blog story), which means the ferry is usually our transport of choice. And, once in France, the rest of Europe is easily reachable – less than an hour to Belgium, and the Netherlands aren’t much further. The ability to pop across to the continent for the day or a weekend is a pretty good one to have. Recently, we realised we had a few ferry vouchers to use up before they expired, so we scheduled in a day-trip to Boulogne, managing a visit to Nausicaa, lunch, a play on the beach and a walk around town, and were still home for dinner. A couple of weeks later we went to Bruges for a lovely Christmassy weekend. I feel so lucky that such trips are relatively easy for us to do. We’re also lucky enough to usually have the time over the summer to drive down to Spain, taking our time by stopping frequently throughout France – and Monaco, Andorra, Luxembourg… Of course, you could do it much more quickly if you had less time, and you’d save an absolute fortune on flights.

This summer, we’re planning to capitalise on our location and head to France again, probably driving down to Spain and perhaps even visiting Italy. And in the meantime, just a stone’s throw away, we have Canterbury – famous for its cathedral; Dover – famous for its castle and white cliffs; Margate – famous for its sandy beaches; Whitstable – famous for its oysters… Living here, I really do feel that the world is my oyster.

After our holiday to the lovely Bitacora in Tenerife, we decided we wanted to go back next October. As anyone with children will know – as will teachers – going away in the school holidays costs a fortune. Tour operators hike their prices up to more than double sometimes, and we have long since accepted that our holidays will always cost a bomb compared to those out of school holiday periods. However, airlines and a lot of hotels don’t seem to be quite as bad as tour operators, and you can often save a lot of money booking your holiday independently, especially if you do it early. So that was my plan. I waited until the flights for British Airways were displayed for the correct outgoing date (355 days in advance), I winced at the fact that the price was higher than for the week before, and then I waited for the return flights to be displayed. And when I looked back in a week or so, ready to book, I was horrified that the flights were no longer one hundred and something – they were now £228. Each way. Yes, over £450 for a return flight to Tenerife. I hesitated, as you would. I double-checked easyJet but they only displayed flights up until next September, and October flights wouldn’t be available until April. The chances are they’d be cheaper, but only if I booked them as soon as they became available – but dare I risk booking the hotel and then not being able to get flights? Or leaving it until April, only to find the hotel was full? Decisions, decisions. I checked Thomson and Thomas Cook – still more expensive than booking independently. I checked Monarch – almost the same ridiculous price as BA but horrible flight times. Reluctantly, I checked Ryanair – outbound flights were available (and very cheap) but returning flights wouldn’t be available for months. I almost considered booking one way and crossing fingers I could get return flights later. In the end, I gritted my teeth and decided to book with BA… only to find that the flights had gone up to £323. Yes, each way. Yes, £656 for one return flight to Tenerife. Yes, I could fly to New York or Hong Kong for less. What was going on? I checked again later to make sure I hadn’t imagined it. I checked Monarch, and their prices had also gone up – so had the package prices with Thomas Cook and Thomson. Clearly, everyone had decided that Tenerife is the place to be next October, and the airlines and tour operators were responding accordingly. Sadly, we had to decide Tenerife was not the place for us to be after all – no matter how nice the hotel was, we couldn’t justify spending that sort of ridiculous money. Maybe we’d try easyJet next year and see what happened.

But the thing is, I don’t give up easily. A couple of days later, I checked BA again, just in case – still £323. I checked again a few more days later – still £323. This went on and on – I’m not really sure why I kept trying, because it was clear the price wasn’t going to change. But then it did! After over a month of trying, I checked again and the price had gone down to £169! I had to double-check to make sure I hadn’t put in the wrong date, but it was real! I didn’t know why. I didn’t care why. I know for anyone who holidays at other times of year this is still expensive, but after £323, this was cheap!!!I booked the flights there and then.

And the moral? Keep trying. Shop around, keep checking the websites and don’t give up. Holiday prices change all the time and sometimes the most unlikely tour operators end up being the cheapest. Cinderella, you WILL go on that holiday!

Yup, here it is, another cut and paste job from Trip Advisor. This is the review of our most recent hotel, the Bitacora in Playa de las Americas, Tenerife. It’s particularly worth a read for anyone with children, as I really would recommend this hotel for families. The kids’ clubs and the animation team are brilliant, meaning the kids are happy and you get a few hours’ peace. It’s also a great place to go in October half-term, as the temperatures are still hot enough (30 degrees while we were there) to go in the pool and the sea – plus everything is still open (unlike the ghost towns we’re used to in October)!

I’ll start with the ‘negatives’ to get them out of the way – and this is only me being picky. The first is the sun bed situation – you see it at all hotels, but this is definitely the worst I’ve seen! People are literally up in the dark to put towels on sunbeds they have no intention of using until the afternoon. We generally found sunbeds without too many problems, but we did have to search sometimes, and we wouldn’t have found four together. The rules of the hotel state that sunbeds shouldn’t be reserved and that towels would be removed, but I didn’t see this enforced at any point. There were so many sunbeds that were barely used and it would have been nice to see towels removed from sunbeds that are unoccupied for more than an hour – however, I do appreciate this is difficult and time-consuming to enforce. The light on our balcony didn’t work for the duration of our holiday. We did speak to someone at reception at the beginning of the holiday, but nothing was done about this. However, we weren’t too worried, as we took the desk light from inside and put it on the balcony – had we complained again, I’m sure it would have been fixed, so that is partly our fault! The only other thing I would say is that the air-con wasn’t particularly effective. I’m not sure if that was just our room or across all rooms. Many areas of the hotel felt like they could do with better air-con – it may be that it is turned down for October, though, as it was unusually hot while we were staying.

I have a few pet hates – in fact, the older I get, the more I realise how intolerant I am. Near the top of my list are rudeness and unfairness (injustice would probably be a more intelligent word, but that implies something deep, and my gripes are often quite petty), and these are often inextricably linked. One example of this is queue jumping, which is clearly both rude and unfair – why should anyone think they have the right to push in ahead of other people who have been waiting longer? We’ve already established I suffer from Queue Rage (see my earlier blog post about queuing in Hong Kong) – well, sadly, I also suffer from Plane Rage. Specifically, I have a problem with reclining.

I appreciate that planes will always cause personal space issues – sitting in close proximity to others in an enclosed environment is never going to end well. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a row to yourselves, you’ll always have those issues that are unavoidable when you’re sitting next to someone else – should I leave the armrest up? Is it okay to put my reading light on? How do I take my cardigan off without smacking my neighbour in the face? What happens if I fall asleep and start leaning towards them or, worse, dribbling on them? And my personal favourite is the toilet issue – just when is it a good time to ask them to move so that you can go to the toilet? What happens if you really need to go when they’re asleep or are still eating their dinner? On a recent long-haul flight, I found myself sitting next to a rather odd passenger. She refused all food from the cabin crew and she didn’t leave her seat once. On the plus side, as I was in the aisle seat, I didn’t have to get up for her. On the downside, she had no awareness of personal space whatsoever – she spread her blanket, cushions and goodness knows what else out across her lap – and some of my lap too. She also didn’t think about me when removing her jacket, resulting in a sleeve in my mouth. And don’t get me started about the incessant leg-tapping for the entire hour before landing. Still, I’ll let her off – she was obviously nervous (is that what sitting next to me does to people?). And, on the whole, despite the general inconvenience, most awkward situations can be avoided with a little consideration for the people around you.

So why is it that some people seem incapable of consideration when it comes to reclining their seats? Maybe it’s because it affects the people behind you and you can pretend you don’t know about it. But it does affect them and, if you have a particularly inconsiderate person in front, it can ruin the whole journey. Anyone who’s ever been on a plane knows just how little room there is between your knees and the seat in front – especially on a short-haul flight. The minute that seat in front reclines, you have even less. Your knees are pressed up against the back of the chair, it’s hard to watch the television (assuming you have a seat-back TV), there’s no room on your tray and don’t get me started about attempting to eat. Now, I appreciate that on a night flight or a long-haul flight, people like to sleep. I’m a bit unusual in this respect, as I can’t sleep on planes, but I wouldn’t deny anyone else. When the cabin crew dim the lights and everyone around you is snoring – yes, this is the time to recline your seat. Yes, it’s annoying for me, while I sit there wide awake – but, to use a phrase I learnt in Australia, I just have to suck it up. Plus, if the person behind me is also reclined, I’ll recline myself and get comfy. But if all the lights are on and it’s daytime – especially if it’s a short-haul flight – no way!!! How can people not understand that reclining their seat affects the person behind them? Surely it’s selfish to recline your seat just so you can have more room to get comfy and watch TV, while the person behind you suddenly has even less room than they had before, and has to put their head on its side to be able to watch the TV properly. Of course, they could always recline themselves to redress the balance – but then the person behind them would have to recline and so on. I don’t help myself in this situation, because I refuse to recline my chair unless the person behind me is asleep or reclined (preferably both) – so I end up squashed, uncomfortable and seething with resentment.

On a recent daytime flight to Tenerife, we were sat behind a foreign family who didn’t speak much English. No sooner had they sat down than the grandad had reclined his chair to the maximum level. Now, nothing about the family’s demeanour suggested they hadn’t flown before – but surely anyone who’s been on a plane knows that ‘seats should be in the upright position for take-off’? For once, I wasn’t too worried, as I knew the cabin crew would soon tell him to put it back up. Then, just as I was putting something in the seat pocket, the grandma in the chair in front also reclined. I couldn’t help it – it took me by surprise and squashed my hand – I cried out. The grandad immediately turned round. ‘Is okay?’ he asked. What I really wanted to say was ‘No, it’s bloody not okay. It’s selfish and inconsiderate and you’ve left me with no room. Please put your seats back up.’ However, being British, I just couldn’t do that. I resorted to smiling politely and pointing out that the cabin crew would ask them to put the seats back up for take-off anyway. ‘Ah,’ he said and they put the chairs back up. I breathed a sigh of relief. But no sooner had the plane left the ground (and while the cabin crew were still seated) than both seats reclined again. So did the mum’s. And the dad’s across the aisle. They stayed that way for the whole journey. What made it worse was that the plane wasn’t full, and the two seats next to the dad were empty, so the family did a lot of seat-swapping. Which meant that, for large amounts of the journey, there were empty reclined seats in front of us while we struggled to eat from what little of the tray was accessible.

Pure selfishness is what it is. Rude, thoughtless and clearly not fair on the people behind. Why can’t they introduce a reclining rule so that it’s only allowed at certain times on certain flights – and outright banned during mealtimes? Or, better still, get rid of the reclining feature altogether so everyone can sit there wide awake like me?! Grrrrrrrrrr! Anyway. Rant over. Time to go and watch TV from my reclining sofa – knowing there’s no one behind to get squashed.

I thought we had all that airport hotel stuff sussed out. First we discovered the joys of the family rooms at the Gatwick Hilton, and then we found out there was a Premier Inn within walking distance of the airport. Problem solved. And then we had to go and book flights leaving from Stansted….

We spent the summer touring Australia and Hong Kong. Five weeks, ten flights, eleven hotels/apartments and an awful lot of driving. You’d think I’d have a lot to say about all that – and you’d be right. The trouble is, I don’t seem to have as much time as I do things to say. What have I managed to do so far, in the nearly-two months since coming back? Post one hotel review and video and add a few photos to some older reviews. Epic fail. What makes it worse is that I’m off again tomorrow to Tenerife, and I haven’t even begun to catch up on the last holiday. Oh, and there was a weekend in the Cotswolds in there somewhere that hasn’t even made a mention yet. We have a weekend in Bruges planned in December, and I wonder if I’ll have even finished my Oz hotel reviews by then. Ironically, when I started the blog, I was worried I wouldn’t have enough to write about. I mean, I know I go on holiday a lot, but I’m hardly an expert – what would I fill the pages with? But it’s turned out that I can’t even keep up with the holidays I do have! The trouble is, there are so many funny stories from each holiday, but by the time I get home, I’ve forgotten about them. And much as I enjoy writing, I don’t want to spend my time on holiday blogging, as I’m missing out on essential holiday time! I also think it’s important to post reviews on Trip Advisor (and here), as I use it so much myself when I’m planning a trip – plus I like to balance the unreasonably negative reviews (and there’s yet another blog subject). But that’s yet another thing I don’t seem to be able to manage. Life just always seems so busy – and it feels hard to justify blogging when I should be working or doing jobs around the house. If only I could be paid for this! The obvious answer, of course, is to stop going on holiday so much – just think of all that extra time I could spend updating my blog! And I’d be sure to have caught up before I go away again. It kind of defeats the object of course…

Anyway, apologies for this nothing-y blog – nothing funny, nothing informative. Just a post for the sake of updating my blog really. Sorry – I promise I will be better next time. And in the meantime, just to make it almost worth reading, here’s a pretty photo from my recent trip to the Cotswolds…

This was the first hotel on this summer’s epic tour and a continuation of my recent upgrade luck. We didn’t really know what to expect from a hotel in Hong Kong (other than small rooms, according to everything I read), but we were very pleasantly surprised. Hong Kong hotels aren’t cheap, especially when trying to find a family-sized room, but the Cosmopolitan Hotel was pretty reasonable (relatively). It was a good place to stay with children, and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Hong Kong. The only thing missing, really, is a pool, but you can’t have everything…

Anyway, here is my cut-and-paste review from Trip Advisor, along with a couple of photos and a video if you scroll to the bottom.

We stayed at the Cosmopolitan for a total of five nights, either side of a trip to Australia. We booked a family quad room but, on arrival, we were told we had been upgraded to one of the recently refurbished rooms which was, apparently, slightly larger than the room we’d booked. The room was by no means huge (especially in comparison to the rooms in Australia), but it was large by Hong Kong standards and perfectly spacious enough for the four of us plus all our luggage. The room had clearly been newly done-up – everything was clean, new and had a luxurious feel to it. The beds were very comfy and we slept well, despite both children sleeping in the same double bed. There was a large-screen TV with a few English-speaking channels, a mini-bar (not cheap but not astronomically priced), complimentary bottled water, tea- and coffee-making facilities, a hairdryer, a free-to-use safe, an alarm clock with an iPod/iPhone docker and an iron and ironing board. Robes and slippers were provided – both adult and child-sized. Another nice touch for the children was the soft toy and snack box they were given on arrival (the nice lady at reception even gave me one too!). The bathroom was small (especially the bath!) but smart and clean, with a lovely hot shower, plenty of towels, and toiletries and other bathroom goodies provided. The air-con was very efficient, and a blessing after the temperatures outside, although it did get a little cold in the room sometimes. We were on the nineteenth floor (although there are a few floors missing due to cultural reasons – 4, 13 and 14), so the view was amazing. We could see part of Happy Valley racecourse and out over Causeway Bay, which looked beautiful when lit up at night.

The best thing about the room, though, was the handy smart phone, free to use during your stay. You could use this for the internet when you were out and about or to make free international calls to selected countries (including the UK, USA and Australia). You could also use it as a Wi-Fi hub to hook your own phone up to, which negated any issues of chargeable Wi-Fi in the hotel (although this was free anyway in the restaurant and reception area).

When we told people that we were planning to visit Alice Springs, we got some interesting reactions from people who’d already been there. In fact, ‘interesting’ was probably the most common adjective used, and it clearly wasn’t meant in a positive way. We managed to figure out that the ‘interesting’ mostly involved the local indigenous people, but not much more than that. We therefore weren’t really sure what to expect, but we visited with an open mind nonetheless. We didn’t spend a lot of time in Alice, as it was just a stopover for our trip to Uluru, but overall we liked it. It’s not too big, although it is fairly sprawling. It has a nice little town centre, with lots of shops selling art and other interesting bits. We ate some of the nicest food that we’ve eaten during the whole Australia trip in Alice Springs. Oh, and they even had free WiFi in the town centre! But I can understand why people had negative reactions; at no time did I ever feel unsafe, but I did sometimes feel a little uncomfortable. And this discomfort was related to the local Aboriginals – not to the people themselves, but to the stark sense of separation that can be seen in the town. Having now visited a few cities in Australia, I honestly can’t remember seeing any Aboriginal people in Sydney, Melbourne or Perth. That said, the main cities are multicultural melting pots, where Asian people now outnumber Caucasians, and you’d be hard pushed to register anyone’s ethnicity or background. But in Queensland, we saw lots of indigenous people. You wouldn’t particularly notice unless you were specifically looking (which I was, after Alice), as they are, as you’d rightly expect, integrated along with everyone else. Not so in Alice Springs. There, the segregation is stark and shocking. We couldn’t fail to notice the Aboriginals, because they were always grouped together, and were never with anyone of a different ethnicity. They often took up whole areas of parkland, where there would be maybe 20 indigenous people all sitting together. As outsiders to the area, we felt uncomfortable with the situation – was the segregation by choice or not? Do the Aboriginal people prefer to stick together or are they shunned by the rest of the town? Or do they, in fact, shun the rest of the town? We felt like it would be an intrusion to go and sit in the same areas – but was this in our heads or not? Would we have been made to feel unwelcome or even asked to leave? Or would they have been pleased not to be ignored? Or would they (most likely) not have given two hoots what we did or where we went?! Coming from a country where integration is key and we are taught that race and colour are irrelevant (as is the case elsewhere in Australia), we found the segregation frankly disturbing. Anyone who knows any history will know how the white men basically stole Australia from the Aborigines a couple of hundred years ago. And anyone who watched the recent John Bishop’s Australia will also know that some of the atrocities that happened to the Aboriginal people were frighteningly recent. Yet what we couldn’t figure out was whether these atrocities are continuing in Alice Springs, through the segregation, or whether this segregation is actually the Aboriginal people maintaining their right not to mix and conform to the ‘white’ way of life. Similarly, it was impossible not to notice from their dress that poverty is an issue for the indigenous people. But, again, is this a terrible situation where they are discriminated against when it comes to jobs and therefore struggle financially? Or is it a lifestyle choice, where money is largely irrelevant to the Aboriginal way of life? In the other areas of Australia that we visited, the Aboriginal people seem to be very much integrated and living a ‘Western’ life. But perhaps this is actually the sadder situation, where their culture has been forgotten, or at least inhibited? I very much hope that the segregation in Alice is down to the choice of the local Aboriginals to retain their culture and way of life. And, if that’s the case, then it’s well worth the discomfort of a few British tourists!

I first got the holiday bug aged sixteen, when I went with my best friend to stay with her sister on the Greek island of Mykonos for three weeks. It was the first time I’d been abroad, first time on a plane and, unsurprisingly, the first time I’d been away without an ‘adult’. It obviously sparked something, because the next year I went to Amsterdam, Tenerife and twice to Paris (those are the ones I remember). I think this set a precedent, because I’ve gone on holiday at least four or five times a year ever since – gradually to more ‘luxurious’ destinations and then, soon after having the kids, on cheaper options. The ‘holidays’ vary wildly in terms of destination, duration and accommodation – from a night away for a wedding or a five-day city break to a fortnight on a Spanish beach or five weeks travelling round Australia. The point is, by my estimation, I’ve gone on at least 100 holidays since my childhood. And on all those holidays, prior to this year, have I ever been upgraded? The answer, as far as I can remember, is a big fat no! Of course, some of those holidays – camping, staying with friends – wouldn’t have given me the option to upgrade. And, (very) occasionally, we’ve paid for the upgrade ourselves. But the other 80+ holidays (I’m guessing wildly at numbers here)? Not a hope! I suppose the closest we’ve ever come was the year we got married (not our honeymoon, I hasten to add, when we didn’t even get so much as a bottle of wine for being newlyweds!) – we booked a week in Crete and, a week or so before we were due to go, we got a letter saying that our hotel would be closed due to lack of demand, so they had moved us to another hotel. The new hotel had an extra star compared to the original so, technically, it was an upgrade. But it wasn’t the hotel we booked, they obviously didn’t have any choice in the matter, and it might not actually have been any nicer – therefore it doesn’t count.