The 'Suns' Road Trip 2022 - 1 : Getting There

[anji]

Florida 2022 – The ‘Suns’ Road Trip – 1 : Getting There

Pre-Travel and Travel Day are combined – they all seemed like one big day anyway!

First job was to take our cat, Pepper, to the cattery. We were in no rush so let her do her normal stuff and them I ambushed her while she was sleeping again – popping her into her carrier before she’d realised what was happening. We’d purposely not even got the cases down yet either so as not to spook her. It’s an awful job otherwise!

After dropping her off to her ‘hotel’ (lovely place it is too!) we returned home to pack and put the piles of accumulated stuff into our cases! We aimed to leave about 2.30pm to avoid the traffic on the M25 before Gatwick.

The journey was OK apart from some slowness on joining the M25, as ever! We arrived at the Holiday Inn and parked up, said goodbye to the car and handed the key in. We were leaving the car here for the whole time and staying the night in the hotel – a change of plan as the Government had requisitioned the Sandman Hotel a couple of weeks before. Rude! The room was lovely – standard HI stuff.

At this point I was worried as I had not been able to check in online, but it was fine for Will. I knew in my heart that everything was OK with Verifly etc but that little voice was nagging. We decided to go to the North Terminal and try to check in that evening. This was also a good chance to try out the Hotel Hopper bus.

The bus arrived on time (every 20 minutes) and took us to the North Terminal. No sign of any BA staff of check in as all their flights had left for the day. The check in kiosk didn’t work for me either – so wasted journey and a disturbed night’s sleep! We went back to the hotel and had some dinner in the restaurant. Will had a burger and I had salmon, both good, with a bottle of wine and we watched some TV before turning in for the night.

We were on the bus again at 7.30am and our flight was 11.15am. Again an easy bus trip, even though it stopped at a couple of other hotels in each direction, and we headed to BA. A fairly large amount of people were waiting to check in but it didn’t take too long as there were a lot of desks open. I was checked in easily after explaining I couldn’t do it online – I had just been randomly singled out for extra security! Phew! Must admit to tearing up at this point as I was so happy and relieved after everything that we were actually going!

We had coffee and pastries in Starbucks and visited W H Smiths and soon it was time to board. I was pulled aside for extra checking, hand swabs and all, but everything was ok of course. I’d prebooked double seats at the back of the plane with our Avios, so we were the first on of the cheap seats people when the plane boarded from the back to front! Everything was on time more or less and the pilot explained we were going further north than usual to avoid approaching winds. I was SO glad later that we’d not gone a day or too later because of Storm Eunice. The takeoff was a bit bumpy, to say the least, but the rest of the flight was fine and the seatbelt light never came on.

I watched American Pickle and Locked Down – two films I’d not heard of and would never had watched otherwise. Both were excellent and funny. I also watched Freddie Mercury’s life in 10 pictures taken of him with the people explaining what they meant. Will mainly read, did his Suduko, crosswords in Mojo magazine and Metro he’d saved and the in-flight Who Want to be a Millionaire. There was a lot of snow I could see over NE USA, well down below New York.

We were both disappointed with the food. Choice was chicken & mash or vegetable biryani. We both had the chicken and left half of it. Very watery mash, strange taste and not nice. They redeemed themselves by the dessert pot though. The salad was bulgar wheat and also not good. The rolls served before landing were great though – I had cheese & chutney and Will chose the turkey.

As we were first on the plane, of course we were last off. They announced not to stand up and we would exit by row number. Nobody took a blind bit of notice and it was the usual free for all. I didn’t hear row number called at all. We were almost last into immigration and we were there for over an hour! Only one officer in each booth instead of 2. Luckily we were the only flight. They took the children (not many but included an extremely tetchy boy!) off to the USA only section to hurry them through. Not the best start.

Our cases were waiting for us after so long and we headed off to Avis on the shuttle and train. I was very excited to hear the safety announcement – Floriday speak! Short line of 4 for Avis and we were glad because some of the other companies had massive lines of people. Even so this took another 20 minutes of waiting and then we were off to the garage, having declined the Sunpass as we were only going through one toll, to find our Toyota Rav4. It had an Ohio plate and was called Franklin, which was obviously the dealer but we stuck with it! Red and rather large but a joy to drive.

The journey to Clearwater was straightforward and we’d done it before, but it was now getting dark and I knew we’d miss the sunset. Never mind, plenty more to come! We checked into the Clearwater Beach Hotel and had a lovely room overlooking the inner bay harbour and pool. Photo taken in the morning!

Tired and hungry by now, we headed out for food. We went to Post Corner Pizza and shared a Buffalo Chicken Pizza and had some Bud Lights. It was good to be able to eat outside and be warm! We walked back to the hotel, unpacked the packing cubes a bit for our 2-night stay, watched a bit of Weather Channel tv and slept very well. We’d made it!

Up for breakfast next day and a trip on Little Toot and to Caladesi Island!

Sorry – I’ve rambled. Well done if you’ve stuck with it!

Index - https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/sho...2#post15302382

[mick]

Travel days are always tiring


Joan

[munmun]

I love Caladisi

[Melbatb]

Always worrying when you can’t check in even though you know everything is in order.

The view from the hotel looks amazing! So nice to feel the sun on your back!

[Nesbits]

Lovely. An Anji trip report

[MOUSEMARSH]

Hi Anji

Looking forward to reading this, we love our Road Trips round Florida, love Clearwater and the views over the Bay.

[margyloveswdw]

Loving the view from your room! Looking forward to reading more.

[smithlane]

I’m finally getting around to reading all the trip reports!
Sounds like a fairly smooth travel day, I too would be stressing that I couldn’t check in online 🥴.
The view from the balcony of your room is fab and makes the long day totally worth it!

[scottishnellie]

Looking forward to reading the rest of this as it sounds like the kind of trip we will do when we are child free!

[anji]

Originally Posted by smithlane

I’m finally getting around to reading all the trip reports!
Sounds like a fairly smooth travel day, I too would be stressing that I couldn’t check in online 🥴.
The view from the balcony of your room is fab and makes the long day totally worth it!

See more...

Check in was a total pain but all worked out in the end - admit to a couple of tears of stress release once I had my boarding pass in my hot little hand!

The view did make up for it - although we had to wait until morning to see it properly!