A dose of sunshine

As you will probably know by now I am a great believer in a good dose of rest and relaxation and in making time for a bit of a ‘me time’.  I have to schedule in nights every week or so that involve a long bath with candles and some Lush goodies and curling up with a good book or magazine to ensure I don’t go a bit mad, and I also get a bit antsy if I go too long without sunshine.  It always hits me suddenly, after a long Winter or a particularly wet Spring (*looks sideways at Spring*) I will wake up one morning and think, “Right, that’s it, I need a holiday”.  I did this about six weeks ago and Tom and I started planning a trip to Morocco.  We were getting ready to book it when, one afternoon after work I had a call from Tom to say his van had broken down, and he’d sussed out that it was the drive shaft, which was going to cost about £600 to fix.  Bye bye holiday!

I trudged on regardless for a few weeks until the need became unbearable and I decided that the only option was to dip into my savings and treat Tom and I to a cheap and cheerful all inclusive holiday.  My only requirements were that it needed to be ASAP, there needed to be cocktails and there needed to be the possibility of me being horizontal in the sunshine.

Depending on how well you know me at this point will depend on whether you can guess what I did next.  Despite wishing I was more spontaneous I’m just not, and so the last week has been a flurry of internet research, cross-referencing with Trip Advisor and furiously jotting things into my notebook.  It makes it more difficult that neither of us had any idea of where we wanted to go.  I found out quite quickly that there aren’t really any websites that cater for the holiday go-er that with no specific destination in mind and so it took a lot of looking at every option on drop-down menus to find possible hotels and package deals, which was frustrating.  Luckily, a friend recommended Latedeals.co.uk which is great as they have an option for ‘Cheapest Destinations’ and then you can even look at their deals on a month view if you’re flexible about when you’re going.

After a lot of research we narrowed it down to Rhodes, Lanzarote, Majorca and Ibiza.  And because I am me I then printed up some cards with all of the different hotel options on and their ratings and Trip Advisor ratings! Cringe! We just couldn’t decide and this seemed the only way to do it.  After each compiling our pile of ‘top threes’ from the cards we found we both had the same hotel in our top two and so we went for it and booked it on Friday night.  We are going to Ialyssos Bay Hotel at Ixia on Rhodes.  I’ve been to Rhodes a couple of times and I’m really looking forward to going back.  I have some great memories of going to Faliraki in 2010 with my friend Carlie…

I always go ‘all inclusive’ on holidays as I love not having to worry about paying for food or drinks.  We’ll still go out for a couple of nice meals but it’s nice knowing everything’s all paid for and I can recline and drink cocktails without worrying about the cost!

My favourite all inclusive holiday was when we went to Barbados as a family a few years ago.  The hotel was unbelievable and it wasn’t your atypical ‘all inclusive’ with all your food ordered ‘a la carte’ and cooked to perfection.  The barmen were all cocktail enthusiasts and made us some amazing cocktails – nothing like a refreshing strawberry daiquiri by the pool at 10 in the morning – bliss!

I can’t wait for my dose of sunshine in a few weeks and I highly recommend Latedeals.co.uk if you’re looking to book some time away any time soon.  They also highlight great deals on their Twitter and Facebook pages.

Do you have any holidays planned this year?

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