THE CHEAPEST FAMILY HOLIDAY

Tina Gladstone,
National Post
Published: Sunday, November 8, 2008

On a trip to Amsterdam, Tina Gladstone visits her daughter, Amelia, back in Toronto.

It was the first night of my honeymoon in Lisbon, five years ago. David, my husband of two days, and I had just come back to our hotel after dinner and a long climb up the hill. We poured ourselves a glass of wine and went out to the balcony. The room wasn’t fancy, but the nighttime view over the lit up, hilly cobblestone city was gorgeous.

Instead of enjoying my good fortune, I found myself having a bout of anxiety. My daughter, Amelia, then five, was far away, and our 12-day trip seemed too long. I missed her, and worse, I worried about her feeling abandoned. Things got better as the trip went on. I phoned her a few times, and once we passed the midway point, I relaxed. But I didn’t get everything I could have from that holiday.

Still, I wasn’t willing to give up on travel. Every couple needs time together occasionally — without their children.

Amelia is 10 now, which makes leaving easier. But the real change isn’t her age — it’s technology. When I travel now, I take my laptop with me. I’ve got Skype, which not only lets us talk to each other, but we can actually see each other onscreen. And it’s free. She and I can stay close, which lets me be present, wherever I am.

Last year, David and I went to Paris. A few days into the trip, I took Amelia on a tour of our rented apartment — here’s the kitchen, here’s the view from the balcony. I even took my laptop down to the local square where we (sort of ) had a coffee together.

So this fall, when David asked me to go with him on a business trip to Amsterdam, I jumped at the chance. My hazy memories of the city from 20 years ago (a drugfuelled, backpacker holiday) were good. Knowing I’d be able to “visit” Amelia while I was away meant I could have long, lingering dinners without feeling separation pangs. And I could take her on a mini-tour of a new city.

We arrived on a Saturday morning. A day or two later, as I started to feel her absence, there she was, just out of the tub, wrapped in her fluffy pink robe, her hair combed back. I showed her our hotel, which was built into 10 tall, interconnected, 17 th-century Dutch row houses. I took her down the stairs, through the hotel lobby and out to the street just as a couple of boats drifted by on the canal.

Even though the connection sometimes wobbled (her face would pixelate), the 10 minutes we spent together online gave me just the dose of her I needed. I got to be in Amsterdam, to focus on the lovely city, its slow pace, its virtually car-free downtown. A walker’s paradise.

I never tired of looking up to the tops of the buildings, admiring the big windows, the ornamental façades (said to distinguish one house from another before the city had street numbers). I took particular delight in looking for the engraved year the house was built (the oldest one I saw was 1559), and in seeing the occasional building that was so slanted that it seemed upright only because of the goodwill of its neighbour.

In the middle of our trip, we had our first cold grey day. It was nice to lounge around the hotel room, but I found myself getting homesick. Is it me, I wondered, or are all mothers like this? I thought I might catch Amelia after school. I opened up Skype and called her. A few seconds later, I saw my surprised daughter wheeling around her dad’s computer and plunking herself down in a chair.

She told me about her day (an unpleasant squabble among her friends) and I told her about mine (a visit to Anne Frank House).

That night, I went out to dinner with David’s colleagues. They were curious about what I did while he was busy with work. I told them I was writing this story — about the joys of Skyping with my daughter while on holiday. The conversation came to a halt. The group of them, ranging from 25 to 60, looked at me blankly. “That’s a newspaper story?” an elegant, grey-haired man said. “When our children were little and my wife and I left town, we preferred not to think of them much at all.”

I gave a shy shrug and admitted that perhaps we coddle our kids a bit too much here. And perhaps we do.

"HowTo"

Skype is free, easy to download and simple to install and use. Just follow these steps: Go to skype.com Click on the Download button in the top left-hand corner of the screen A new page will pop up — select the button for your type of computer (Skype will work on any PC or Mac that’s reasonably new). You don’t need any special software, but to videoconference you will need a webcam and a microphone (many laptops now have these built-in). If you don’t have them, they’re readily available at any computer or electronics store. Once you have registered, making a video call is easy. Open up Skype and click on your friend’s name (you add names to your list much as you do in any chat program). If your friend has a webcam, too, you can talk face-to-face. If not, they’ll be able to see you, and you’ll be able to hear them. Now you can make free calls to anyone with Skype, anywhere in the world.