Keep Smiling - Travel Day (1)

[KeepSmiling]

Travel Day

The journey begins. We always split our travel day into two days as we live on a Little Rock and can't trust the weather to make the trip to London and on to Orlando in one day.

The weather today was horrendous. Hadn't slept particularly well due to the wind and rain and we awoke just before six to howling wind and pouring rain.

Teddy decided he didn't need to go out just yet so I faffed about and stripped the bed much to Grumpy's disgust as he didn't quite grasp the importance of leaving the house ready for our return.

We both showered and put our travel outfits on. At this point I was still keeping my fingers crossed that the rain was going to stop as I didn't fancy trying to carry off a wet t-shirt style contest between Grumpy and I and having carefully selected what to wear the weather wasn't going to hamper my plans.

Made sure the kids were up as we went downstairs for breakfast and Teddy finally went outside.

Washing machine on, breakfast had, Teddy's stuff packed and we headed off to doggy day care to drop him off. I won't lie, there were tears. Teddy is an absolute sweetie and is my shadow and I'm going to miss him terribly. Thankfully their daughter loves him almost as much as we do and he's going to be well looked after.

Dropped the car to my work garage and home for last minute tidy and instructions to eldest son who is staying home. Mickey shaped Post it notes stuck to fridge reminding him to eat, take care of himself, take care of house and to be good! I'm pretty sure he will eat but the rest is debatable. Watch this space.

Washing machine finished so hung everything on the towel rails so as not to come home to it as know it's very unlikely son will go near the washing machine... Watch this space!

Taxi arrived promptly and we were off. Check in was a breeze and 3 of us got through security with no problems. No surprise that Grumpy's bag had to be emptied and everything swabbed testing for explosives. There's always one and it's always him!

Slight delay to our 10.20 flight due to late incoming aircraft as a result of the high winds. Grumpy and Grumpy Jnr were monitoring its progress on their flight app and were very relieved when they could see it start its descent and when it finally landed.

We were called to board 30 minutes after we had been due to take off and thankfully the rain had stopped so we remained dry.

We took off at 11.10 and it was bumpy. As we shot up the runway we were swaying from side to side, thankfully as soon as we exited the clouds the sun was shining and the flight was much smoother.

Landed at 11.53 I'm going to retract my comment about the smooth flight. Bumpiest.landing.ever. Worst than Tower of Terror!

Attempted to check in to Premier Inn but we were a bit early so had a quick bite to eat at the Costa with a nice strawberry iced lemonade. Nearly as nice as the Pink Lemonade in Disney.

Checked in and dropped the bags off in our room and headed back to North Terminal to top up our Oyster cards before jumping on the train to London Bridge at 14.06

A quick visit to the Sky Garden, Primarni and the Aston Martin shop (can you guess who went where?) and then we were back on the train to Gatwick to do twilight check in. We love this as makes for a much more relaxed travel day (2) in our opinion. There was no line and the gentleman that checked us in the as lovely and told us to pop by in the morning on our way to security to collect our free ice-cream. No guesses where the kids are insisting we go in the morning!

Once we had our boarding passes we headed to Giraffe for a lovely dinner. Two burgers, 1 meat flatbread and 1 chicken linguine and then we shared a chocolate brownie and a cookie dough dessert. We all enjoyed our meal!

We enjoy playing queen rummy so as it was only 9pm we headed to the Premier Inn Bar (after Grumpy Jnr made a quick pit stop in the room to grab a packet of sharing chocolate buttons) and had a round of drinks followed by a seven hand game of cards. A great end to a great day. Grumpy Jnr won which meant for a happy bedtime. (Not competitive at all!)

Lights out at 11pm with everyone excited for travel day take two!

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New Photo Added by KeepSmiling - 30 Jul 19 11:17 PM.

[Jules32]

looking forward to reading along

[mick]

Good first travel day

Joan

[tomjoe]

Great first travel day, gets you in the mood,

[TinkerBabe]

Love reading travel days! All the excitement is ahead, can’t beat it! Looking forward to part 2 😊

[Kat11]

Looks like you had a great day. I recognised the photo at the sky garden it’s lovely up there.

Following along 😁

Kat

[Michyloulou]

Great 1st travel day & trip to Sky Garden. I can imagine tears at leaving your Teddy, I think I’d be the same!
Looking forward to following!

[margyloveswdw]

Looking forward to reading along.