Travelling with Twins: The Long Haul

Daddy vs Chips IX.

I have previously written about our ventures between the British Isles with the twins here, expressing my preference for Irish Ferries over my once beloved Ryan Air. In the past, Da-da-da and Ma-ma-ma have only had the courage to take the twins on the aptly named Jonathan Swift catamaran, which can cross the Irish sea in under two hours and is described by its owners as a ‘Fast Ferry’. Recently though, we succumbed to winter weather fears and traveled on what I can only assume should be called the ‘Slow Ferry’. It went so well, I will not be visiting the budget airline websites anytime soon.

So what makes a three hour plus journey with little people appealing? To put it simply: space. The twins have now reached the age where they want to explore and a large ferry offers no shortage of places to discover and things to see.

Feeling like we were in a luxury hotel, we started our journey with a trip on the mirrored lifts (since having children I now understand why lift designers add mirrors: they are an effective source of social control):

We then ran around the corridors and tried (and failed) to recreate that scene with the twins from The Shining:

After that, we played on the wonderful, if slightly dark, on board playground:

And then engaged in that age old parenting trick of letting the kids “play” on the arcade machines without putting any money in:

By the way, if you are wondering where Cillian went while Saoirse was in the entertainment area, he had run off to the bar for a cold one:

And when the twins got tired, we retreated to our utilitarian cabin where they were able to watch Go Jetters (thanks iPlayer) and eat bits of cold omelette without being interupted by other passengers.  Ma-ma-ma had smartly added this to our booking for under £20. It helps, she says, to book these quite late when the prices go down.

And so to the result:

Daddy wins! A solid win for Da-da-da who, given he did the driving, takes full credit for the success of the entire trip. The booking, packing and snack preparing, which incidentally were all done by Ma-ma-ma, contributed little compared to Da-da-da’s all-round greatness!