We went on holiday.

No really, a proper vacation.  My parents flew out to meet us in Italy and we took a 2 week break from our family RTW trip and went on a true European vacation, visiting Italy, France and Spain.

I can hear your thoughts through the screen, "But you are on a year long vacation!"  Yes, I see your perspective, we on a long trip and we are not working,  but going away for a year is quite different then a typical vacation.  Although I love our Big Trip, I would never use the word holiday or vacation in describing our year long travels.

Our RTW trip isn't planned like a vacation. It really couldn't possibly be.  Can you imagine trying to secure accommodations, cars, and other logistics for a year long trip to 15+ countries?  No, we have nothing besides our main flights between distant countries or continents already booked.   Within a country everything is open.  Usually a few days before our departure from one area I start looking into a possible next destination.  Normally I hope we see or hear something along our travels to help steer us to our next stopping place.  Sometimes it just comes down to searching on the web and what is logistically possible.  It takes considerable time researching how we are getting from point A to B and where we will be staying.  In general we have giving up the idea, at least for now, of just showing up and finding a place like in our earlier travel days, pre-kids.  Yoda and Zuki don't particularly like walking around a new place, laden with their packs, searching for accommodations suitable for 4, within our budget.  Seeing as we enjoy settling into a place, normally staying a minimum of 4 nights, but regularly 5 to 10 nights, it is easier to find a "perfect" place on the web than on foot.  

But on vacation, much of the logistics are already pre-planed and that is exactly what my dad did for our two week road trip.  He found us great accommodations, arranged for a car which could fit all 6 of us, sketched out possible driving routes, and read up on the local foods and activities in the areas to which we traveled.  It was wonderful having a break from the responsibility of those sorts of arrangements for a short while.  

The lady's voice on the underground was speaking to me. 

"Mind the Gap", she politely stated in an upbeat tone.   

I have always adored this quintessential English announcement on the London underground, advising awareness of the space between the train and the platform but this time my tired, jet-lagged brain deciphered a personal message.  She secretly was pointing out for me to be conscious of the vast geographic, cultural, and social "gap" between Latin America, where we had just spent 3 months shaping our new nomadic family lifestyle, and the European continent on to which we had just landed.  At least that was what I understood.  My ability to receive this unique message may have been somewhat shaped by shock as only moments before an automatic door had separated my family, leaving Zuki and I standing on the platform mouths agape, as Kiko and Yoda were wicked off in a train down a dark tunnel.  

Funny enough, in the pre-trip mania we had had multiple conversations at home as a family over dinner about the protocal for this type of scenario, where one member of our family is left alone either on the platform or in a train on the underground.   This was prompted by another family's travel blog which described a similar fiasco and their prearranged plan of action.  We had gone over our family plan multiple times, just in case, never really thinking we would be needing it.  

But we did, the very first day we landed in Europe and the very first time we traveled together on the underground!