The one where 4 become 3. New England and Orlando July 2019

[i love jack]

Pre trip 2019

So, no sooner had we landed last year the usual post holiday blues kick in. I find the easiest way to get over them is to start planning the next one!

Last August we spent two fantastic weeks in Florida, we cut down Disney to 4 days and felt like we ‘did’ Universal and we had lots of down time. Our thoughts on returning were that we could quite happily return this year for a two week holiday and not do any parks. Just eat, swim, shop relax. Sounds perfect...

First our introductions, we are:

Me, Emma, 40 something, This will be my 16th trip to Florida I think (having just had another sneaky week gate crashing mum and dad) I am the main planner, photographer, Bath and Body lover! Although trying to go cold turkey on B & B.

DH Andy, 50, I think this will be his 10th visit. Andy is our driver, voice of reason but generally happy to go with the flow (though mainly it’s ‘my’ flow!).

Josh, 17, in his first year of A levels, busy working part time at Costa, learning to drive and playing hockey.

Dan, 15, rugby and Fortnight or is it Fortnite mad. Very excited for the holiday for reasons that will become clear...

So, we like a little family conference and called one soon after returning last year where we presented the idea to the boys of going back to the villa we’ve stayed in a couple of times but not doing parks. Josh then drops a bombshell, I still can’t believe it. “I don’t want to go” what! ? He said he wasn’t as keen on the pool as the rest of us and would rather stay at home or possibly go away with his mates. I definitely wasn’t expecting this. We discussed this further and Josh said he’d really enjoyed New York (that was 2016) and would fancy a city break, but wasn’t keen on a Florida trip again.

So, back to the drawing board I go and consider some two centre options. I read quite a few trip reports and suggest Boston. This piques my interest and I think about spending some time on Cape Cod and possibly fulfilling something on my bucket list...Ben & Jerry’s!

But Josh still says no. Ok then. Holiday for 3 and no need for Hershey to go to kennels. I’m a bit distraught- is this the beginning of the end our family holidays? Andy however immediately works out that there are ££ related benefits to being a ‘3’ and Dan is delighted at the thought of being an only child for two weeks!

Flights

So I think the minute we could book flights we did! We are flying from Heathrow to Boston with Virgin. We had quite a debate about seats and decided to book Economy Delight rather than Premium. We flew out Delight last year and the leg room was fantastic.

Our return flight is Miami to Heathrow again Economy Delight. It was a good price to fly from Miami and we did this last year.

We fly out at 16:30ish which will be strange as we’re used to flying in the morning, and this means we don’t need to book a Premier Inn for the night before.

We haven’t yet booked the internal flights. I’ve looked on Sky Scanner and it looks like we have the option of Jet Blue, Delta or Spirit so any advice/recommendations would be welcome.

Accommodation

We arrive in Boston at around 18:40 so have decided to stay by the airport for the first night. I converted some Tesco vouchers to hotels.com vouchers and have booked the Hyatt Regency Boston Harbour. It looks very nice, I was swayed by this fire pit!

It’s a 25 minute walk to the sights so we plan to have a quick visit into Boston on the Sunday morning then pick up a car from the airport.

The next part of the trip was a huge dilemma. Where on Earth to stay in New England? Again I consulted the Dibb and read reports but I still couldn’t decide. Cape Cod looked beautiful, we love a beach. I found a lovely campsite in New Hampshire and had lots of recommendations for Acadia in Maine. Arghhhh I just couldn’t decide. I was feeling the pull of mountains and lakes rather than beach so eliminated Cape Cod. I considered a bit of a road trip, looked at Kamp of America, hotels and Airbnb’s until my head hurt! I put it on the back burner until January 1st and then decided I needed to book something.

I’d found lots of lovely looking cabins on Airbnb during my previous searching. This is something new to us as we’ve never used Airbnb. Again I got some tips from the Dibb to narrow my search and I decided that rather than trying to match up a good cabin with a good location I would just choose the cabin that best met our needs. I wanted two bedrooms, a comfy looking lounge, a fire pit, a moose head and curtains! Can’t bear the thought of being in the middle of nowhere with no curtains!

The one I decided on is near Conway in New Hampshire. Actually I’m really happy with the location. It’s around 3 hours from Boston, 4 hours from Acadia and 2 hours from Ben & Jerry’s. It’s on the edge of the White Mountains and near the Saco river. There seems to be lots of things to see and do nearby including, I believe, tax free shopping.

Diana’s Baths

Echo Lake

We are going to stay here for 6 nights then head back to Boston to catch a flight to MCO.

Then a relaxing week in the villa we’ve stayed in a couple of times.

Where the plan will be visiting our favourite restaurants.

Favourite shops.

Favourite places.

So just need to book internal flight, car hire and airport parking.

Thank you for reading and if anyone has any suggestions for places to go/things to do/places to eat in New Hampshire I’d be grateful to hear them

[Gryff]

We've used spirit loads of times absolutly fine join the flying club around $9 each saves baggage fees etc
We won 10'000miles. In November traveling with them to and from Vegas so we've got a trip to Boston from MCO and Return for buttons
Looking forward to your updates

[mick]

Emma

Looks good so far and looking forward to further updates.

Mick & Joan

[AlexE]

We did some of this in September. Be sure to visit the Flume Gorge in the Franconia NP. Acadia was amazing.

[i love jack]

Originally Posted by Gryff

We've used spirit loads of times absolutly fine join the flying club around $9 each saves baggage fees etc
We won 10'000miles. In November traveling with them to and from Vegas so we've got a trip to Boston from MCO and Return for buttons
Looking forward to your updates

See more...

Thanks for the tip

Originally Posted by mick

Emma

Looks good so far and looking forward to further updates.

Mick & Joan

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Ooh need to do estas but plenty of time yet

Originally Posted by AlexE

We did some of this in September. Be sure to visit the Flume Gorge in the Franconia NP. Acadia was amazing.

See more...

Thank you, I’ll have a google of that

[Goldia]

I'm sure you will have a fab trip just the three of you, but I imagine it will be weird not having your eldest there.

I hope you enjoy New England. I've been a couple of times. Once when I was 17. We stayed in Groton Long Point near Mystic it was a beautiful little town. We also went to Boston last winter, it was really fun walking around the city, I'm sure it will be better in the summer though, certainly a lot warmer anyway.

I hope you have fun deciding on which restaurants to visit and good luck with your B and B withdrawal.

[Melbatb]

It sounds like a fab trip!

Our DS (17) is insistant that we do a last family holiday before he moves almost half way across the world for his studies! For once we are looking a lot closer to home...

[i love jack]

Originally Posted by Goldia

I'm sure you will have a fab trip just the three of you, but I imagine it will be weird not having your eldest there.

I hope you enjoy New England. I've been a couple of times. Once when I was 17. We stayed in Groton Long Point near Mystic it was a beautiful little town. We also went to Boston last winter, it was really fun walking around the city, I'm sure it will be better in the summer though, certainly a lot warmer anyway.

I hope you have fun deciding on which restaurants to visit and good luck with your B and B withdrawal.

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It will be weird!
Thank you and thanks for asking where we’re going it spurred me on to write this!
Can’t wait to plan the finer details like food

[i love jack]

Originally Posted by Melbatb

It sounds like a fab trip!

Our DS (17) is insistant that we do a last family holiday before he moves almost half way across the world for his studies! For once we are looking a lot closer to home...

See more...

Aah well that’s nice, it’s going to be so odd without ours. where and what’s he studying?
I’m excited now

[Pumba75]

Very happy to read this - sounds like a great trip, minus a son & going cold turkey on B&B?!

M x