The tick boxes to cross

It took us ages to decide where we wanted to go on vacation.  One thing we knew for sure: we wanted a relaxing time out at a pool: no city trip, no road trip, no sight seeing, just splashing in the pool.

As Maartje Luif describes in one of her blogposts when describing her search for a new house, we were making mental crosses as well. We were marking tick boxes in our head for all potential destinations and trying to make the table as complete as possible.   But the most complete solution didn't exist, so every tick box crossed meant another criteria remained unticked.


  • No big time zone difference (avoiding a jet-lagged baby, especially upon our return)
  • No long flight (avoiding the mission impossible to keep a crawling active escaping toddler happy for hours while not upsetting the other passengers too much)
  • Sun (Enough heat to spend the day with a baby in the baby pool  ...yet not extreme  )
  • Pool
  • Not insanely expensive
  • Early november
  • Not in an area where our government keeps giving negative travel advice 

I hadn't realised beforehand that planning a vacation in November either was close-by but chilly or far-away and hot.  Meditterean was scratched out because weather could not be considered as "reliable hot" .   The last criteria had scratched out our guaranteed choice of always: Egypt.  But where to go if you don't go to Egypt? Boohoo, I want to go to Egypt. 
So for 2 weeks we went back and forth in our discussions between the Emirates  ((too?) hot, further away, associated in my mind as Islamistic Las Vegas = Dubai)   and the Canaries (not hot enough?, closer, get-away of retired people,  high season in nov)


In the end we were really happy about our choice. ...just back from a relax sunny vacation.




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