**Kylie & Carley's California Adventure- Pre Travel Day**

[xxSmileyKyliexx]

>>>INDEX HERE<<<

Wednesday 31st October 2018

Ahh pre-travel day, we always love this day feeling the excitement of going on holiday and leaving Southampton. Today was hopefully going to be a chilled smooth one. The plan was to travel to our hotel at Heathrow, have a relaxing pamper day, watch films and then later grab ourselves a nice dinner before getting an early night. We woke up at around 7:30am after having such an unsettled sleep. Last night we had gone to our spray tan lady’s gaff to get ourselves a ‘winter glow’. It had been ages since either of us had gotten a spray tan for our holiday but we were feeling really fat and hideous in summer clothes with our white pasty skin so decided we would get one this time. God knows how, but I always look thinner and healthier with a tan, my clothes look much nicer and I was wanting to fit in with all those LA babes Anyway, Carley stayed round mine afterwards which made for a very uncomfortable nights sleep. Not because she takes up all the room or digs me in the ribs or anything (that’s usually me) but because of the tans. Imagine feeling all tacky and sticky having to be careful not to scratch yourself or apply pressure anywhere (because that would leave white patches), it is a pain in the a*se, especially when there are 2 full figured woman in a double bed. It didn’t help that Carley was freezing for most of the night and I was boiling. Also I was looking after an injured shoulder as a result of a restraint at work and Carley had sore feet from the pedicure we’d had yesterday. The woman literally must have hacked at her feet because she could just about walk, she said it felt like walking on hot coals. I thought pedicures were meant to be relaxing? My back was also hurting because I went a bit mad on the massage chair whilst there too. We literally sound like and felt like a couple of old woman. We should have been excited jumping out of the bed but instead we complained about our aches and pains and about the rubbish sleep, and then Carley kept farting so she went for a dump whilst I picked out my crusty bogies. Such ladies.

Recently dad had been renovating the bathroom (well and the whole house) so it still wasn’t complete, the toilet had been changed and the chain wasn’t working, I had to fiddle around with parts in the cistern to make the toilet flush, that was a lovely sight seeing Carley’s floater first thing flushing the chain for her as she couldn’t do it A half renovated bathroom also meant that the shower was out of bounds. Brilliant. Here we were covered in tan looking cremated, smelling like biscuits and we couldn’t even have a shower. To be honest I should have been used to it by now. The shower had been out of bounds for ages! I came home one day to find a massive hole in the wall surrounded by bricks, the bath ripped out and a ladder in place instead of stairs. Cheers dad! I’d been having to have showers at my brothers or at work, such a pain!

Anyway let’s actually move on from the tans. We limped down the stairs (an actual staircase now instead of a ladder!) in search of breakfast. I grabbed some crumpets with loadsa butter and a cuppa tea, Carley had the same but with a pack of prawn cocktail crisps thrown in too.

We scoffed this whilst trying to print off Carley’s ESTA and the last few days of the itinerary. This was a complete fail as the printer decided not to work, how?! It had worked everyday leading up to the holiday and on the last day when I needed to print a few last bits off it just died on me, typical! We chose not to worry about it too much instead putting on that ‘holiday road’ song and some song from lilo and stitch. We must have got a buzz of excitement (finally!) as we were dancing around and being silly, then I went too far and decided to jump on the bed… not the best idea with my big ass! I soon stopped when I heard a snapping noise come from somewhere…oops! Time was going quickly so we had to put our sensible heads on and start getting ready, finish packing, download some programs onto my iPad for the plane etc. My big bro (I say big bro but he’s actually younger than me) Peter popped round at about 10am to exchange birthday cards and wish us a lovely time. It would be his birthday too whilst I was away, I’ve literally not been in the country for his birthday for years! We had a quick catch up and said our goodbyes, there was a time when I used to cry every time I said goodbye to my family when going on holiday, I used to do it when leaving work too Nowadays I have learnt not to cry like a big girl pants and to just get the hell outta there! It didn’t take too long to finish packing and get ourselves ready (after all we couldn’t have showers!) we took a pre-travel day selfie and then hoofed the cases downstairs..well Carley did as my shoulder was painful. The taxi was due to pick us up at midday, this is the one thing I had paid for this holiday! If you read the pre-trippie you will know that this holiday was all paid for courtesy of Carley for my 30th birthday! I booked it through a website called airport taxis or something at a reasonable price. We did think about getting a train or coach but that would mean a lot of faffing about which neither of us could be a*sed with. After checking and double checking some more that we had everything and me ensuring my room was fresh and spotless for when I came back, we moved the cases outside and waited for the taxi. I took a pic of the empty living room hoping that it would be a bit more homely on my return. Our driver arrived on time and we were soon on our way to Heathrow.

It felt really good and comforting having Carley by my side. This time last year I was travelling up to Gatwick on my own ready for my solo trip to Disneyworld (link here if you haven’t read it>>**Smiley Kylie Goes Solo Nov 2017** and it’s complete!) I had loved my trip there but did miss Carley, I was so happy that we were together again The drive was uneventful and went smoothly. We didn’t hit any traffic or encounter any accidents, our driver was called Dominic and he barely said a word to us. We were fine with that but he could have put the radio on or a Disney cd or something We kept ourselves occupied by taking selfies, looking out for planes and updating our insta stories. I’d never really bothered with the instagram stories before but wanted to update it this holiday so my followers could see what I was up to. Not that I have many of them but some are Disney friends who I knew would appreciate seeing everything Disney! The drive only took just over an hour meaning that we arrived at our hotel at 1:10pm. Proper eager beavers! We couldn’t even check in until 2pm! We always like to get to our hotel on check in though and spend the day there just relaxing and starting the holiday early. We pulled up and thanked Dominic for the great conversations and made sure we had everything.

That's my Eeyore pillow pet by the way, he comes everywhere with me! We had researched which hotel was good to stay at near Heathrow and the Premier Inn (bath road) seemed to be a favourite so Carley had booked it months in advance. Plus you can’t go wrong with a Premier Inn, we love the beds! My mum actually has a Premier Inn bed because she couldn’t find a bed which she could sleep in properly for years, 1 night at a Premier Inn and she’s ordering the bed It was nice to see that the hotel had made an effort for Halloween, there were decorations and pumpkins in the lobby area with bowls of sweets. We headed to reception to see if they had any rooms ready and to our surprise they did. I asked if they had any rooms available where we had a view of the planes which we were told they did. More so for Carley, she is a bit of a geek when it comes to planes. On one of our previous trips she’d downloaded a plane tracker app and was pointing her phone at planes on the ground and in the sky to see where they were headed The lady on reception was friendly and booked us in for dinner at the hotel restaurant for the evening.

Our room was on the top floor which wasn’t very high actually, I hadn’t realised the hotel was only on 2 stories, I immediately assumed it was like the one at Gatwick! I must have sounded like a right idiot when requesting to have a room high up to see the planes. We had a slight view of the planes which was obstructed by trees, but to be honest we barely looked outside anyway and shut the curtains blackening the room out like proper hermits. The room was the same as any other premier inn room, basic but had everything you need, obviously I unpacked what I would need for the 1 night stay as I cannot live out of a suitcase even for 1 night! I always love the feeling of arriving at the pre-travel day hotel, it’s when reality kicks in that you’re on your holidays and that you’ve got the whole week ahead to look forward to.

We spent an hour just chilling out and then realised we were starving. In hindsight we probably should have gotten a meal deal or something, just to fill the gap until dinner. Instead we went to see if they were serving food in the bar and luckily for us they were. We chose a table in the corner as always because I hate sitting in the middle or with my back to people and then made our orders. We both went for the chicken and bacon club sandwich which came with chips and drinks were large rose wines. The barman was a nice guy asking where I was travelling to and making conversation. I had more conversation with him in 5 mins than what I had with the taxi driver! We sat and sipped our wines whilst waiting for the food feeling very content and relaxed. The bar was only small but cosy and quiet. There didn’t seem to be many people who were off on there holidays though, maybe they would be here later in the day. There were a lot of business type people having meetings, it was peaceful in there until we showed up with our laughing and burping

Me and Carley always love to people watch. On the table in front of us there was about 7 men all Chinese but one white guy who looked completely out of place, they had laptops with them, we wondered what they were there for and I was tempted to ask but figured that was being too nosy. We also spotted a man walking past the bar area in a suit with sunglasses on (why?!), he stopped and was looking towards our direction touching his ball sack area. I thought it was just me that had noticed at first but Carley had as well and we were rolling about laughing. Not sure what his deal was! Mate there’s a time and place to touch your sack, Christ! Soon our food was on the table and we were tucking in. The sandwiches were stuffed with chicken, bacon and salad with melted cheese on top, lovely jubbly! We enjoyed the food but both felt really full and wondered how we would manage to eat dinner later. It’s funny that when your holidays start all people seem to think about is food!

We headed back to the room once finished and Carley rang down to reception to change our dinner reservation for later, this was done without any issue so we assumed it wouldn’t be busy. For the next few hours we pretty much did nothing which was nice! We had planned on having pamper time with bath bombs, face masks etc but then realised this could ruin our tans so we didn’t bother! I had a lovely shower which was much needed, my foo and pits were stinking by this time! Shower time for me nowadays is a long affair, I have a full head of mini lock hair extensions in at the moment which take some time looking after! Washing them, drying them and then styling takes forever! I love my hair when it’s done though but my god it’s a pain in the backside and so time consuming! This is a before and after pic, so much hair!

When I got out the shower Carley was in the bed all cosy watching Jeremy Kyle and playing candy crush. We chilled for a while munched on some Halloween sweets and eventually moved our bums to get ready for dinner.

The usual selfie taking commenced with Halloween filters obvs and we enjoyed listening to the greatest showman soundtrack too. I wasn’t sure on the film when it first came out, I didn’t watch it until like a year after and then absolutely loved it! The songs are so addictive, I’m always playing it in the car with Stanly so now he knows the words too and we just sing along

We got to the Thyme restaurant for our reservation at 7:30pm and were seated in between 2 other parties. I hate these kind of tables, always feel like they are listening to and judging us, when the reality is that they probably don’t give a ≈≈≈≈ and are just scoffing their dinners.

Our server, Guilia was friendly and didn’t rush us too much but also didn’t take forever to come back, she always kept an eye on us and our drinks which is great service and how it should be. We had rose wine for drinks again large ones and also a glass of coke. I really fancied some wine but also a nice cold drink of coke too so just got both! We skipped starters and went straight for mains. I chose the smoked haddock and mozzarella fish cakes which came topped with a poached egg and a side of salad and chips. Carley went for the double cheese and bacon burger which came with chips and coleslaw. She laughed stating that this would be the first burger of many for the holiday This is why I went for something different and the sound of the fish cakes sounded lovely. I wasn’t wrong, my meal was so tasty, I don’t often have fish cakes and I do love smoked haddock so these were delicious, especially with the poached egg on top. Carley enjoyed her burger as she does with most burgers! We left the salad and coleslaw, I’m pretty sure nobody ever eats this, they must have loads go to waste!

The restaurant was quite busy compared to earlier when the hotel seemed only to be full of business people. Now there were families dining together, young children, couples etc who I assume were off on there holidays tomorrow. We spent time chatting away, you’d think that spending so much time together that we’d never find any conversation to have but we are always chattering away finding something to talk about or reminiscing about things. We updated our stories and were being silly as always. We spoke about the week ahead and what we were looking forward to the most. We were both so excited to actually stand in Disneyland, the park that started it all, the park where Walt Disney spent his time, we were intrigued to see how different it would be to Walt Disney world and what the castle would look like etc. We chatted for ages, had a heart to heart, I was thanking Carley for making this holiday happen and at one point we were a bit emotional (it doesn’t take much) and we’d had wine too We decided to order dessert me going for the sticky toffee pudding with custard, and Carley chose the chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream and salted caramel sauce. Both were delicious and we were soon feeling stuffed again!

It was about 9:20pm by now and we’d been in the restaurant for nearly 2 hours, it went so quick! We made sure to leave Guilia a tip and that’s when I noticed that In the change was one of those Beatrix potter 50p coins with tom kitten on. I immediately took that off the tray to give to Stanly as he collects 50p’s, I was amazed at the coin and was googling it afterwards thinking it would be worth money, turns out it’s just worth 50p

We noticed that the lobby was so busy compared to earlier! There were Chinese people everywhere, looked similar to a student gathering in Southampton, I swear that 99% of the uni students in Southampton are Chinese. People were sat everywhere with their cases and bags, half of them were on FaceTime on their iPads. It was so loud too! We were glad to get back to the room. First we stopped at the vending machine though so I could get some rennie heartburn stuff, I always get terrible heartburn and had forgotten to buy some before today! The vending machine charged me £3, what a rip off! Once back in the room we got ready for bed, organised ourselves and got out our clothes for the morning. We couldn’t watch Hocus Pocus as planned because we’d forgotten to download it and the WiFi wasn’t great so we had to give it a miss! So our pamper day and film watching was a fail today but we’d had a relaxing day and enjoyed ourselves anyway. I wrote out my notes for the day, something I’d be doing every night now for the next week. We were in bed by 10pm and chatted until we fell asleep

[DizzyDisneyMum]

Yay, I've been looking forward to this! What a lovely relaxed pre travel day. X

[Beaker's Fluff]

Can’t wait to read along...
Been looking out for this.

[loldis]

Yay! Was happy to see this pop up in the posts list, off to a great start already.

[sotagals]

Yay you've started - looking forward to travel day.

Love your attention to detail - well most of it anyway

[sizzle]

Looking forward to this as I have my first trip to LA in April so am hoping to pick up some tips/ideas

[anji]

Great start I agree about the Southampton students, especially in summer! Can't wait to read the rest.

[Tinkermom]

Looking forward to the next part ☺️

[EJSakaAnna]

So glad you're writing this in your usual style Kylie, kicking off with poo chat .

Everyone looks skinnier with a tan, I'm sure thats a proven fact. Love your new hair!

Lunch and dinner look yummy for chain hotel food. Can't wait to hear about your antics together! xx

[xxSmileyKyliexx]

Originally Posted by DizzyDisneyMum

Yay, I've been looking forward to this! What a lovely relaxed pre travel day. X

See more...

It was one of the most relaxing pre travel days I’ve had! Thank you for reading x

Originally Posted by Beaker's Fluff

Can’t wait to read along...
Been looking out for this.

See more...

Aw it’s lovely to see that people have been looking out for my reports, makes it worthwhile

Originally Posted by loldis

Yay! Was happy to see this pop up in the posts list, off to a great start already.

See more...

Yay, thank you!

Originally Posted by sotagals

Yay you've started - looking forward to travel day.

Love your attention to detail - well most of it anyway

See more...

This made me laugh, I should probably try and filter it but then it wouldn’t be a true representation thank you for reading!

Originally Posted by sizzle

Looking forward to this as I have my first trip to LA in April so am hoping to pick up some tips/ideas

See more...

Aw wow you are going to love it!

Originally Posted by anji

Great start I agree about the Southampton students, especially in summer! Can't wait to read the rest.

See more...

Honestly it’s madness! Thank you for reading along!

Originally Posted by Tinkermom

Looking forward to the next part ☺️

See more...

Thank you lovely!

Originally Posted by EJSakaAnna

So glad you're writing this in your usual style Kylie, kicking off with poo chat .

Everyone looks skinnier with a tan, I'm sure thats a proven fact. Love your new hair!

Lunch and dinner look yummy for chain hotel food. Can't wait to hear about your antics together! xx

See more...

I know right I’ll never change thank you, this hair is driving me crazy now though! I actually love the dinner different to the norm! Thank you for reading along xx