Stay at the perfect family friendly Aquabelle!

As locals, we get to enjoy our little seaside town all year round. Trying to sell a stay in winter to our traditionally summer-only visitors is quite difficult. They don’t see the Peninsula as a winter time destination.. it’s all crowds, sand, summer, BBQ smells and the carnival  for them!

Sure, we agree, Rye is quite possibly the quintessential Australian summer destination; campers on the foreshore, fisherman on the pier, a sea of umbrellas, a flotilla of blowup flotation devices and the smell of sunscreen…. all of it screams holiday. But the winter… the blowy beach walks, the pristine coast, the quiet, less frenetic pace, the relaxed long brunch reading the paper in a sunny cafe window..soooo good! We want to share.

So I decided to try something….

I offered a pretty irresistible deal to one of our family of Aquabelle regulars to stay in Rye on a weekend, during the deepest darkest coldest month of the year. I wanted to see if I could change just one family’s perception about when to come to Rye.

Mrs X immediately said , “no thanks.. Rye is our summer place.. it’s not where we’d even think to pack the kids up and go in winter.”

I insisted they try it, threw in some discount vouchers and at such price how could they say no! Surprisingly I didn’t hear from them all weekend.

On the Monday, I called the Mrs X and asked… “Well?”

She gushed, “I have already written my TripAdvisor review! We had the best time! And guess what.. the weather was really horrendously bad on the first day.. so we stayed in, talked, cooked and chatted and really enjoyed just hanging out, so rare these days with the kids running off all the time. That list of winter time things to do was a winner and the board games were great. The sun just streams in through the balcony doors and somehow the sky blue is more intense. When the sun finally came out we ran through the mazes at Boneo, sat in the steaming Peninsula Hot Springs like a family of 4 Japanese baboons and then we ate a huge parmigiana at the Rye Pub while the kids ran around and we drank red wine. The best thing was, we had most of the places to ourselves without the summer scramble.

You were right.. we were wrong.. A family getaway in winter.. in Rye is quite the opposite of what I expected ….fantastic..” YES!

We say.. how very Aquabelle!

Recently we invited our favourite photographer Breeana Dunbar down with her little family to document her stay in a photo essay. Enjoy her lovely photos and at the same time get some inspiration for your next family getaway in Rye.