‘I wanted every decision made for me’: a package holiday to Corfu

Trek the Himalayas if you feel like it, but sometimes all you really want is for someone else to do the cooking

Over the pandemic I sat in my house and dreamed of a holiday. I sat in my house, the same chair, the same view, the same arguments over the same toys, and over the months I honed this dream. Some people fantasised about trekking through the Himalayas. Some about exploring jungles, or paddling on a secluded beach, or dashing through Manhattan. I wanted somewhere I wouldn’t have to cook. I wanted a holiday where every decision was made for me, where we could make up for some of lockdown’s panic by lying worriless in the sun, some of lockdown’s lack of childcare by sending the children to play in a room that did not also contain us. I wanted an all-inclusive family resort, somewhere warm, and I wanted it badly.

So, having started idly scrolling options in 2020, two treacherous years later there I was, on a package deal to Corfu. We hadn’t been on holiday in three years: a lot was riding on this. I was travelling with my family, including a toddler born at the beginning of the first lockdown, who had never had a holiday in his life. We were curious to see what he would think of swimming pools, of other people, what he would think of the sea, and of being lifted 31,000ft into the air while beside him a stranger watched Friends without headphones. Turned out the answer was: liked it.