Would You Go On A Solo Sun Holiday?

I've been loads of times - we usually stay in Sta Eulalia on the east coast but that's total sleepy hollow, full of retired English people. The best cocktail bar I've ever been to is there, though!

San Antonio I personally think is a kip, but it couldn't be further from my scene if it was the moon, and clearly ticks boxes for loads of people.

Ibiza town is gorgeous, particularly the old town - we got an AirBnB for a couple of nights there a few years ago, right on the edge of the old town, and it was great value.

People think of Ibiza as party central - but there's really only San Antonio and the few clubs on the far side of the harbour in Ibiza town are hopping - the rest of it is a total hippy dippy relaxed vibe, and really lovely.

And Formentera is a short ferry ride away, and is absolutely beautiful. Quiet, relaxed, fabulous beaches.

Couldn't recommend it all highly enough.

The flight over is usually a nightmare though - 5.55am with roaring drunk stag and hen parties filling the plane 🙄

Well from reading this thread there are clearly no boardsies interested in sun holidays.

I always find when people jump to poo poo the sun holiday that they really do lack any imagination. Just because you go somewhere sunny on a package holiday doesn't mean that all you're going to do is sit around the pool / beach all day and eat and drink. If that is what you choose to do then fair play to you! Nothing wrong with it. But until I entered the stage where most of my friends have young kids, any time someone gets home from a sun holiday they'll tell you about all the activities they got up to over there. I've been to the canaries twice in recent years (well, maybe the last 10 years, but recent enough). I got to go scuba diving both times, rented a car each time for a couple of days, did the volcano tour, a days cycling, etc. In both holidays, we spent a few hours on the beach for one day of each and went to the pool together for about an hour on one of the trips. There's so much to do on them if you want to do stuff.

Now that we're in the young kids stage, I think they'll be our holidays for the next while, but with minimal activities. I can only imagine how horrible a city break would be with a toddler and a baby. So I think we'll be doing the sun holiday thing that people mock for a couple of years and we'll be grateful to be getting to do it. And in 2028 we'll go skiing unless the world melts before then.

Funny, I was the opposite - I found sun/beach holidays really stressful with kids. I felt there was more pressure to do all those activities you mentioned, plus added heat issues and never being able to take an eye off them for a second because of the pool/sea. We did plenty of city/rural cottage near a city holidays when they were smaller, which I found a lot more relaxing (morning in the city looking at a church or a museum - a lot of them surprisingly kid friendly, trip to a playground after lunch, afternoon back at the hotel/apartment etc, evening meal). It's only now that my kids are a bit older and good swimmers that I find sun holiday more relaxing.

Very interesting to read this! We've only done one trip since having our first and it was a villa in Spain. It was fantastic, but there were two of us to one kid, so she was quite easy to manage. She was far too young for activities and hardly walking so they weren't a concern. Whereas if we'd been in a city - getting her into a car every day, in and out of the buggy, car journeys - they would all have been very challenging, just with the stage she was going through. The museums / churches would have been grand I expect, as they would have just been different places for her to explore. This year we'll be bringing a baby too. I really don't enjoy walking around Dublin with a buggy, I can't imagine other cities are much easier. And you can't move big distances with a baby and a two year old and with feeds you can't just get up and go. You might try and then get delayed an hour because the baby demands milk and that's how long that feed takes. Which then makes meal times very tricky. Hmmm, I still think the sun resort will be the winner for us for the next couple of years.

I'd have thought though that as the kids get that bit older the museums and churches would be very boring for kids? Compared to watersports and other activities. I must say even aside from kids that I've gone off museums / gallaries / churches. If I'm doing a city break now I'll probably do a walking / bike tour, research places I might want to eat than and then look for things particular to that city. As impressive as impressive churches are, there's an element of monotony with them at this stage. Yes, it's massive, yes, the stain glass windows are beautiful, wow, it's incredible that they were able to build it then and that it took so long, etc, etc, etc. Same with gallaries and museums - wow they have a picasso / van gogh / Klimt / whoever here, but really I need someone who properly understands what they're looking at to explain the significance of it to me. If not it's just me looking at a pretty picture and if I didn't recognise the artists name I probably wouldn't have looked at it twice. The modern art gallaries are a bit more interesting, but if you go to them in every city you're getting a fairly narrow experience of the cities you visit. They don't tend to be too specific to the city they're in. Some of the museums can be good, but again you need to be careful with them. it's very easy to end up wandering around them burying your head in a booklet and just looking up to see what you were reading about. Maybe I'll go back to the gallaries / churches / museums in years to come, but they're definitely not a priority for the moment. Maybe I won't, maybe they were just something I did in my teens / early 20s and then grew out of.

Well, maybe its my kids (I mean we are both slightly nerdy so maybe our kids are too) but they have always found something to enjoy in a museum or a church. But you approach them differently than if you were on your own. You don't spend as much time as you might have, you pick certain things, you choose particular museums (music museum in Brussels was a huge hit with my then 4 year old and her baby sister, Auckland museum was a hit at many ages from 1 year old to 7 years old, really surprisingly Waterloo museum was a hit at 4 and 8, and then, at a bit older, we had to threaten 10 year old with not getting lunch if she wouldn't leave a particular room in the British Museum! We didn't bring then 3 year old to the museum in Hiroshima, although 7 year old did go, but the younger one enjoyed the park outside. I could name plenty more). Loads of museums and churches have kid focused things too. And seeing some of the stuff through the eyes of a small child is an interesting perspective. They've been going to churches, museums and galleries since they were born because we wanted to go there. They just didn't get a choice in learning how to behave in and enjoy that sort of place.

And as for the logistics in cities. We may have been lucky with the age range in that there was only ever one in a buggy/pram at a time. But a bus trip from the accommodation to the museum is an activity in itself. And sometimes it doesn't go well, and there's a bit of a disaster, but that's just life with kids.

I did and I'd do it again.

I like city breaks but I think I suffer from overwhelm at the prospect of cramming in as many museums, galleries, shopping jaunts, etc. Plus, in a lot of cities, being a single woman who's walking around looking for a restaurant to eat in is a complete pain.

Absolutely, I am very fond of my own company.

Funny enough I always got it the other way around, people telling me I was boring for going on city breaks. The same people that go to Santa Ponsa every single year.

I'm not judgmental of people that go on sun holidays. Each to their own. I was just saying that the people who thought I was boring for going on city breaks were the same people that went to Santa Ponsa every year. That to me would be boring but I don't judge others for doing it.

Yup.. went to Greece once, met some locals and made friends. Now me and my family go back every year.. same people all older and we all have kids