Cottage life in Slovakia

What luck that our friends from Sydney, Marcel and Kate, were visiting Marcel's family in Slovakia for a few months over summer with their boys, and that we hadn't yet been to Slovakia. Another country for the list*!

We enjoyed an absolutely fun-filled, chilled out few days with them in a holiday cottage really in the middle of nowhere, near a tiny town called Ilava, about 90 minutes from Bratislava.

Sampling the local food and drink

With three boys under three, we spent a lot of time mooching at home juggling nap times and chasing naked boys around the property and in and out of the paddling pool. Mini Yazz thrived on the experience of being around other kids constantly, and loved being able to crawl around in the nud.

Our cottage

Slovakia is full of thermal areas too, so we spent a lovely day at nearby Zelena Zaba thermal pools. Mini proved he's fearless when it comes to water (a good thing or a bad thing?) throwing himself around and especially enjoying a rather fast and crowded whirlpool feature. We also spent a morning exploring the castle and cobbled streets of nearby Trencin. And on our way from Vienna (the best flight option for us was from London to Vienna, where we spent a night in a hotel at the airport before hiring a car to drive to Slovakia) we popped in to Bratislava, waltzing across a bridge spanning the Danube and exploring the old town there too.

View from Trencin castle

All up, exactly the break away we needed, with plenty of sunshine, top-class company, food and booze. A heartfelt thank you to Kate and Marcel for being locals and arranging everything including goulash and Slovakian 'tea'. Blog post to come on the realities of traveling with babies though!

Mini-Yazz trying to break free

*A timely reminder to do a list of countries visited since moving to the UK before we lose track: Abu Dhabi (Dean), America, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Canada, Croatia, Denmark (Lou), Dubai (Dean), Egypt, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India (Dean) Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Luxemburg, Malaysia, Malta, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Singapore, South Africa, Wales.
And before we made the move: Australia, Hong Kong, New Caledonia, Rarotonga (Dean)

UK sand and sun - a weekend in Camber Sands

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside! Especially when the seaside is 7 miles of golden sand, who'd have thought that existed just two hours from London?

Well it does, and it's called Camber Sands. But as gorgeous as that sounds, we rather quickly realised that sand and an uber-curious-everything-in-the-mouth-nearly-crawling-six-month-old don't really mix that well. They mix - in a sort of sand everywhere, in the mouth, in the eyes, in the nappy - kind of way, but not well in terms of cleaning it all up when the six month old is so wriggly you'd think he permanently has ants in his pants.

But back to the break away: we recently spent four nights at Camber Sands, an easy drive from London and just five minutes from the beautiful old town of Rye. With the aforementioned six month old in tow, we didn't do much, but we did all relax and sleep amazingly being away from the everyday. One morning we just plopped mini-Yazz between us in our super king sized bed and all snoozed off for an extra hour. Must have been that sea air!

As well as a couple of wanders along the beach and an aborted attempt at fish and chips on the beach in the wind with the wriggler, we explored Rye by wandering its steep cobbled streets complete with timber houses from the 16th century and the look-out at Ypres tower over the marsh land. The best find was Knoops chocolate shop which does hands down the most incredible, chocolatey milkshakes and hot chocolate we've ever had. And we've tried more than our fair share of those over the years. They make it with loads of huge chocolate chunks, and you choose what chocolate you want - like an 80% from Uganda, or a 30% milk, and then choose other bits to add, like chilli or peppermint. 

One rainy day we drove to New Romney where mini-Yazz discovered his squealling singing voice for the first time over lunch at the lovely Aboyne House restaurant. Top timing. It's still a weird sight for us having him sit at the table with us and gobble down morsels from our plates (the one - ONE - trait he seems to have from his mum is a love for burgers. Seriously this kid is 99% a mini-Dean). We followed up with a quick walk at the Romney Marsh wildlife centre which was smaller than expected but a pleasant stroll with some history thrown in.

Learnings from this trip:

• babies and sand. Stupid idea.
• our Ford Focus is at the very limits of space when travelling with a wee one.
• we need a super King bed.