concertman

European travel

My family at a table on a train

I love train travel.

It's faster than driving. There's much more personal space than flying. The views are often very scenic. It's usually less stressful.

Usually.

So we are in Tarragona Spain this week. It's school half term in the England, which means that everyone with school aged kids in England is on holiday. All at the same time. It's absolute madness.

Previous to this year we were a homeschool family while this had it's challenges in some ways it gave us a lot of flexibility. We could choose to take our holidays at less busy times. It was cheaper (waaaayyy cheaper), less busy, and less susceptible to disruptions.

We are now a family with two kids in the school system. While this has had some big benefits for our kids, I'm currently hating what it's done to our family holiday time. We are locked into always going on holiday at prescribed times throughout the year. Which means all the travel companies know this and the prices are hiked up to ridiculous levels. I hate it. Hate it.

Anyway, I state this because like I mentioned before that we are in Spain. We were scheduled to return on Friday. That was until the French train conductors decided to go on strike this Fri-Sun. So our train through France on Friday was cancelled. We either have to wait to go back on Monday, or go back tomorrow. Well both kids have to be in school on Monday and Mary has to work over the weekend. So we are having to stress out getting new train tickets so we can start our trip home tomorrow.

Of course we didn't get the travel insurance so we have to incur the extra costs on top of the already stupidly expensive, overly inflated prices.

There's nothing I can do about it. So I complain about it on my blog and others might read it.

Oh well 😫