Holidays with extended families: Wish you weren't here
I can only conclude that you're having an affair!" my grandmother bellowed across her paella, waving her glass of Rioja perilously close to my new white holiday dress. There were 19 members of our family, spanning four generations, all sitting round the restaurant table on that balmy Spanish evening. But her eyes were firmly locked on her son – my father – with whom she was apoplectic for flirting with the friend that my cousin had brought along on our family vacation. It was at that moment I realised our holiday was beyond redemption.
My father has always been a flirt. But while his mother normally witnesses his inevitable beeline for women for the odd evening only here and there, we were by now on day nine of a holiday in a remote Spanish villa where there was little to do other than observe each other and our idiosyncrasies.
Believe it or not, we're a close family. We range from five to 84 years old and we genuinely enjoy each other's company. Some of my fondest memories are times spent altogether, laughing until my sides split. Which is why a fortnight's holiday seemed like a genius plan. And for the first... now, let me count... six days, it was everything we wished for. The views were second-to-none, the villa was straight out of an interiors magazine, the pool was vast, the company as good as ever.
But as the first week ended, the dynamics took an unexpected turn. The family's two keen cooks were getting tetchy about who was going to cook what and there were issues about some family members never seeming to have any euros to hand when the supermarket bill was divvied up. Why couldn't the men in the family ever help with the mountains of washing-up? And couldn't cousin Bill's second wife refrain from boozing long enough to notice her two pre-school children nearly fell into the pool twice?
Multigenerational holidays are on the increase. A study by Travelsupermarket.com has found that more young adults than ever are holidaying with their folks. Other recent research discovered that nearly three million families will go on a "greycation" this year – a term used to describe three generations holidaying together. Holiday companies including Center Parcs, Blue Chip Vacations and Explore predicted that holidaying with the extended family would be huge this summer, and the travel industry body Abta confirms that large family bookings (from groups of five to 10 people) accounted for nearly half (41 per cent) of all passengers last year.
My own experience begs the question why. The first answer is simple – money. Travelsupermarket found that younger people aren't known as the piggy-bank generation for nothing. Nearly a quarter of adults admit their parents have paid for or supplemented the cost of a holiday since they turned 18. But hold the tut-tutting just because you're older. One in 20 confesses their parents still pay for their holiday, regardless of their age, and 37 per cent say that's a major reason for sharing their hols with their kin. The "greycation" research is similarly disheartening, with one in five respondents admitting that they will take a UK trip with all the family expressly to save money. Worse still, 18 per cent of parents admitted the grandparents were there to provide free babysitting.
But take heart. Almost half said their aim is to increase time together between children and grandparents, with many stating that they were returning to a family tradition from previous generations. Likewise, nearly half of those interviewed by travelsupermarket.com claimed they travelled with their parents because they enjoy spending time with them.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
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