{"id":49,"date":"2006-07-19T19:00:05","date_gmt":"2006-07-19T18:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=49"},"modified":"2010-09-23T05:01:04","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T11:01:04","slug":"and-not-a-hi-de-hi-heard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/and-not-a-hi-de-hi-heard\/","title":{"rendered":"And not a ‘Hi-De-Hi’ within earshot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend we enjoyed a family holiday (4 days – does that count as a holiday?) at one of the CenterParcs here in Belgium (De Vossemeren).\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve never done one of these kind of places before (I think us Brits have a natural aversion to anything that even vaguely smells of a Butlins Holiday Camp), but yes, we did actually enjoy<\/em> it.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not necessarily my first choice of vacation [I couldn’t sell the family on a 10-day meditation retreat…], but the kids loved it and if they’re happy then the holidays are a lot more relaxing for us parents, too.<\/p>\n

The kids spent most of the time in the pool (there’s some great <\/em>water slides) or cycling around (see below), although there were a ton of other activities they could have been doing.\u00c2\u00a0 I think we saw less than half of what was on offer.\u00c2\u00a0 We went with another couple and their children and had villas next to each other, so once we’d gotten our respective children to bed we could just sit out in the 30-degree heat enjoying a drink and some (generally) decent conversation.<\/p>\n

The high-point (at least for me) was getting Finn riding a bike properly (i.e. without stabliizers) – a bit late at 7yrs old, but that’s probably more down to my lack of teaching than his aptitude.\u00c2\u00a0 Though really he had little choice – I hired him a bike without stabilizers, and told him that if he wanted to come anywhere with us he’d better learn fast.\u00c2\u00a0 (I felt a bit like my dad teaching one of our dogs to swim on a family vacation by repeatedly throwing him into the middle of a river and making him swim out….).\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, once he’d gotten the hang of it, there was no stopping him (literally – he still hasn’t worked out where the brakes are) and spent the rest of the weekend cycling everywhere.<\/p>\n

The alternative high point was seeing Dave (the other dad) wiping out in spectacular style whilst racing on a child’s bike on our first night there.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately he\u00c2\u00a0got road-rash like you wouldn’t believe which necessitated him taking a trip to the local hospital and then sitting out\u00c2\u00a0the rest of the\u00c2\u00a0vacation (no cycling, no swimming).\u00c2\u00a0 So I guess it was more of a low point for him.\u00c2\u00a0 But my, how it made us laugh!\u00c2\u00a0 Still does, thinking about it now…<\/p>\n

Anyway, on the whole the (mini) vacation went pretty well.\u00c2\u00a0 The kids didn’t want to leave, and the wife is already talking of returning again later in the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend we enjoyed a family holiday (4 days – does that count as a holiday?) at one of the CenterParcs here in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[80,65,79],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-life","tag-belgium","tag-cycling","tag-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}