In my opinion the 'free' child care came into the same category as the 'free' meals and the 'free' wine with the meals, which as part of the holiday package ... was included in the price of the holiday.
Neither was it just as simple an option as it might at first appear ... I think the McCann party weighed up the options and based on proximity enabling checking the sleeping children at regular intervals made a choice which turned out to be a disastrously wrong one as far as Madeleine was concerned ... and one which they have to live with for every day of their lives since.
SnipIn the evenings, babysitting at the resort was a dilemma. "Sit-in" babysitters were available but were expensive and in demand, and Mark Warner blurb advised us to book well in advance. The other option was the babysitting service at the kiddie club, which was a 10-minute walk from the apartment.
The children would watch a cartoon together and then be put to bed.
You would then wake them, carry them back and put them to bed again in the apartment.
After taking our children to dinner a couple of times, we decided on the Wednesday night to try the service at the club.
We had booked a table for two at Tapas and were placed next to the Doctors' regular table.
One by one, they started to arrive.
SnipMy phone rang as our food arrived; our baby had woken up.
I walked the round trip to collect him from the kiddie club, then back to the restaurant.
He kept crying and eventually we left our meal unfinished and walked back again to the club to fetch our sleeping daughter. Jes carried her home in a blanket.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/dec/14/ukcrime.madeleinemccann==========================================================
SnipThis is an area you would not associate with crime, let alone the abduction of a child.
SnipThe resort, however, offered a baby-sitting service for 15 euros (£10) an hour, which was staffed by a member of the daytime nursery teams, or a ‘dining out club’. This involved parents dropping off children at the crèche where they would be supervised watching videos until they went to sleep. Parents would then return before 11.30 to scoop up their sleepy offspring.
I can imagine the McCanns’ dilemma.
The ‘dining out club’ was more than a five-minute walk from where the McCanns stayed along cobbled streets or a winding pedestrian path through the apartments.
It’s not far - it worked brilliantly for us on most nights - but it would have felt much further if you had to ferry thee children there and back (and hope they were still asleep after doing so).
Plus parents were required to wait until children under two, which includes the McCanns’ twins, were asleep.
We talked to parents who said this was enough to put them off the option.
The McCanns opted instead to eat 40-50m from their apartment, not much more than a pool’s width away.
https://blogs.thisismoney.co.uk/2007/05/my_experience_o.html