Mystery Vacation Revealed

When planning our family vacation this year we thought long and hard about what it was we wanted to get out of our vacation. Did we want to relax on the beach? Did we want to explore a new country?  Did we want to spend family time together?  Was it adventure or contemplation?  Was it pampering or learning?

First and foremost we wanted family time.   While we originally looked at warm weather resorts with "kids clubs," relaxing on beach wasn't really what we were looking for.  I love the idea of a kids club and certainly see many kids clubs in our future, but for this particular vacation we thought a kids club would cut into our desired family time.  M and I had already spent a month at the beach (and are still sporting our tans).  We were happy that Peter could join us there for a week.   The more we considered it, the more we thought that our ideal vacation this year would be one of exploration and adventure:  a "stay-cation:" a vacation in our home city of Amsterdam.

We prepared for this "trip" in a number of ways.  First we hyped the concept to M.  It was pretty easy to get him on board--staycation is a catchy title and he was pretty excited to have a week of exploration and learning, especially since Peter would be with us.  Next we made the decision to keep our holiday destination secret, mainly because we didn't want anyone judging our decision to stay put.  Finally we decided there were two rules to staycation:  (1) we had to do things we had not done before and (2) money wasn't an object, this was a vacation and a time to splash out.

Over the next few posts I'll detail the adventures we had during our week in Holland.