Summer 101

"Can William come and play please?"

Being new at long summer holidays, I hadn't entirely appreciated that all it meant was kids, kids, kids and more kids. Till you almost want to scream. No need to point out this was Week One. Also no need to point out that this was the life I longed for (Tyler already has, at his peril).

So I really know I'm not going to get your sympathy vote when I say that 'Living in Paradise' is now playing havoc on our summer plans.  The very last thing that I want to do is (1) See a palm tree and (2) Sit on a white sandy beach drinking mojitos.   

What I really want to do is (1) Have my hair done in a proper hair salon (2) Buy shoes that arn't Brazilian, gold or have dingle-dangles (3) Catch public transport, preferably underground (4) See a painting that consists of more than primary colours (5) Listen to some music that has a minimum of  30 professionally-played instruments (6) Eat something which dosn't have scales, like venison for example.

I have actually noticed that many, many people from here seem to decamp to the North West states at this time of the year. Vancouver and Seattle must be throbbing with recovering Caribs, all drinking in the good coffee and pavements. The occasional frosty morning. Some Nirvana, maybe?

Anyway, suffice to say, we should have planned all of this at least 6 months ago like everyone else, but we havn't. We've already got a week in a little rented boat to trawl around the islands and play pirates. This is of course the part that Tyler and the boys are looking forward to and it will be lots of fun, provided no tropical storms or hurricanes interfere too much.

The second leg of the holiday is the Culure & Shopping part, and requires travelling to some shops in a city ( yes yes yes yes). Problem is we can't decide on which city. There are many boxes to tick, but primarily we need a city that will still feel like a holiday (boulevards, good food, glamour) but wont bankrupt us (New York). We're also not very good with cold anymore and nobody welcomes extended inter-continental travel with 3 young kids.

It's sounding suspiciously like San Juan (Puerto Rico) Notorius Capital of High Bling, but I'm still doing my due diligence on this.

Next year of course I'm going to start planning our summer holidays right after we get back from skiing at Christmas, but for now we have a few days to work out which city has the best Gap but the least amount of palm trees.