We're all going on a Poly-holiday - October 2019: Day -1: Pre Travel Day: Rain rain go away

[bambikate]

Day -1: Rain rain go away
Friday 11 October 2019

Index

Pre Travel Day - Travelling to London, staying at Premier Inn Gatwick North Terminal and dinner at Thyme Restaurant.

This year's pre-travel day was a little different for us. We had moved into our new house 3 days before so we had a ton of boxes to unpack and had booked the day off work to unpack.

My Mum and Dad picked the girls up from school for us to give us some extra packing cases / unpacking boxes time.

By the time they arrived back we had packed and weighed our bags, packed the car, filled it with fuel, checked the tyres, checked in online and got the girls outfits out.

My headbands and ears stash...



The girls quickly got changed and we said our goodbyes to my parents and posed for our traditional - "off we go on holiday" photo on the sofa!





After some more goodbyes and some cat sitting instructions we were off!



We left a little later than planned and the weather wasn't on our side. It rained for almost the entire journey.








We listened to a lot of music on the way, had some snacks and the girls also read their magazines and had a little nap.

We stopped for some double chocolate chip frappucinos, a latte and a PSL en route.



It was soon dark and this, coupled with the poor visibility from the rain made for a treacherous final leg of the journey but thankfully we all got there in one piece.

Our total journey time was 4.5 hours in the end

We drove into the car park for the meet and greet parking. This year we used Maple Parking and they were great. An efficient and friendly drop off, we managed to quickly unload our bags in the pouring rain and after handing over our keys we made a dash for the lift and covered walkway directly into the North Terminal. Super easy and convenient.

We made our way to the Virgin Twilight Check In Desk about 5 minutes before they closed for the evening and were greeted with a friendly welcoming face (I was expecting a "I'm going home in a minute you'd better not make me late" face) but were pleasantly surprised.

Check in was easy and we were handed our boarding passes and were down from 7 bags down to 4

Another short easy walk out the terminal doors, down the lifts and across the road to the Premier Inn, North Terminal Hotel (whilst dodging that pesky rain!)



The lobby was so busy there was a long wait for the lifts so we decided to take the stairs. Andy and I took 2 bags each and before you knew it we'd made it to the check in floor. We attempted to check in using the automated self service pods but it wouldn't work so we were transferred to a real person. After a few back and forth confusions with our name we eventually got there and were issued our room keys.

We were given room 216

See?


We were only on floor 2 so we took the stairs again and quickly chucked our bags into our room and went straight back down to Thyme restaurant for our (now late) dinner reservation.

It wasn't massively busy anyway as it was pretty late (we sat down to eat at 9:30pm). We ordered some drinks and food and finally started to relax!

Tired but hugely excited!





















The food was good, as always. We went with garlic bread for the kids' starters, lamb kebabs for mine and ribs for Andy's.

Andy had a pint of beer and I had a pink gin and tonic, the girls had lemonades.

For mains, Andy and I both had the piri piri chicken and the girls had pepperoni pizza.

We had booked and paid for the meal deal with our hotel booking, which included breakfast for all 4 of us and 2 courses and an alcoholic beverage for the adults so it was only the girls dinners to pay for.

We didn't really fancy a dessert just yet just wanted to chill in the room so we got the bill and picked up a couple of chocolate bars from the vending machines and headed back to our room.

We watched some TV in bed and ate our chocolate then it was time for bed.

Tomorrow... we fly to ORLANDO!

[Tangled88]

Yay love your trips reports, can’t wait to read along x

[LozzaManse]

So excited to read this!

[princess allie]

Looking forward to reading along.

[mick]

Good start looking forward to reading along

Joan

[Palm trees]

I'm looking forward to reading more of your report.

[vampiress88]

Good reas

[Clairebear]

Exciting! Can’t wait to see the rest!

[Floridafour]

Yay, something to look forward to on these dreary, dull January days. Thank you ! 😊

[slow.jo]

Excited to read about your trip Kate 😊💕
Jo xx