Bayous to Beaches. 4 States 4 Weeks. Pre Travel Day

[WileyCoyote]

Sunday 29 September

Welcome to From the Bayou to the Beach - A 4 state road trip over 4 weeks taking in Florida, Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina. As the majority of the holiday takes place in or around Florida I am writing it here but will link the non Florida days in the General Trip Section as well

This is us

Two fifty somethings, often found in bars in New Orleans

We have had a tough couple of years with life randomly throwing crappy stuff at us like confetti so this trip was all about living life in the moment and loving every minute of it

The link to the pre-trip is HERE.

It’s shorter than usual as I vowed to myself not to start one until I had finished a blog, or diary, about my surgery and brush with ovarian cancer at Christmas last year. Its not even a diary really, more a random set of mainly drug induced (prescription only!) jottings that I hoped could help someone else on their own journey to recovery. It’s just reached its first thousand views and I have had a couple of messages from people commenting that it’s helped - that makes me so happy. If you are interested, or think it might help someone you know …..do pm me or have a look at the pre trip.

What with writing that and working, I ran out of time to finalise the holiday plan. Oh the Dibb shame.

We were going with a reasonable list of things to see and do and most importantly there was a list of places to eat. We are notoriously dreadful if we are hungry and wandering around looking for somewhere - it ends in disaster, without fail!

On to pre travel day.

The day before had been a bit stressful.

Well, relative holiday stress that is.

We are going with Norwegian and I just find missing the extra 3 kgs per person that you get with other airlines cause me so much stress.

We had already booked an extra case for coming home which was in one of the other cases and of course that gobbles up some of the weight.

Despite packing light (and we did wear pretty much everything), I was struggling to make it all fit, especially as I wanted to organise the cases to work with the number of stops we were making - 10 hotels in the first 11 days.

I also had all the heavier and larger toiletries for the longer stay in Florida.

Yes, I know, I could buy these out there.

In the end Andy said, just add another case.

It’s so simple isn’t it.
So obvious.

I wondered if it would have been cheaper to ditch the toiletries and buy them there but as we used all the cases and allowance on the return, we would have needed to buy an extra suitcase instead so clearly not as cost effective. Ha ha. Holiday maths is amazing.

I hate luggage with a passion.

As a side note, the Norwegian flights in hindsight were really not as cheap as I think we told ourselves.

It ended up as £539 each for the flight, the meals and the extra cases.

That was with the bagging extra legroom seats for free as they do now charge £75 for these.

But I am sure we could have got a similar price with another carrier in the end after adding back in all the extras.

And the food service is not as good.

Hubby still a big Norwegian fan. Me, not so much now.

All this stress and that’s just the cases. Ha Ha

Eventually they were sorted, clothes all into cubes for different days and arranged so we would open up one case at a time.

Packing chaos stage

I thought this cover was a good idea and then decided it wasn't as the elastic strap at the base would catch in everything

The hats were such a pain … all very well thinking you will be all stylish travellers like Dirk Bogarde and Bridget Bardot but more like Billy Ray Cyrus and Bridget Jones in reality

The cubes and packing plan mainly worked although my notes tell me I still spent a fair few morning re arranging cases. I am sure this is not linked in any way to the shopping haul.

When Pre-Travel day arrived, there wasn’t much left to do and no mad cleaning as DS1 would be at home. There was a big cook up to make sure he would be well fed

Suitable out of office message was put on

And new phone cover on - even tho there is no Disney this trip

I checked us in on line to the Premier Inn - this had been paid for already (£92) to include breakfast but we hoped to be there in time to venture out at dinner time.

Not a bargain price but I wanted the convenience of being near the terminal.
Andy will be in sole change of the cases as I can’t really lift them and I didn’t want him battling too far with them.

See how thoughtful I am.

I also added early check in to our upcoming flight to New Orleans which was $60 across the two flights. I was hoping this would avoid the overhead storage carnage we have previously encountered on internal flights.

At 1030 on pre travel day, Andy enquired if we washed his jogging trousers now whether they would be dry in time.

Not that we have had the trip planned for 6 months and I have been packing the case for the last few days.

Unbelievable.

They were duly washed and hung out to dry - they can’t be tumbled in case they shrink. Well, he’s gonna have a soggy bottom if they don’t dry in time …

Then was the part of pre travel day that drags.

You have finished the final running around and are just waiting to set off.

We watched the Grand Prix and generally faffed about waiting for our taxi which pitched up at 3.15.

I did get a bit tearful saying goodbye to DS1, a combination of knowing I would miss him (and the doggos) and the realisation that after all the waiting I was finally going away.

Gatwick is always a bit of a pain of a journey and as Andy and the taxi driver were talking footy, I decided to put my earphones in.

I did pick up some of the conversation when the driver asked where we were going and was a bit alarmed to hear Andy say we were going via Atlanta at some point (hmmm, no, I don’t think so).

This is the joy of the non-planning partner.

There was also a lot of confusion about where we were going in the taxi.

The flight tomorrow is from South Terminal but we were staying at the PI North so after several minutes of exchanges where I was trying really hard not to say “No, non-planner, I AM right, it is North”, I just pulled up the postcode and that settled it.

Tsk Tsk.

As is tradition it rained. All the way.

As it’s a road trip, I thought I would get you in the mood -here is some road

The journey took just over 2 and half hours.

More road

Not helped by the taxi driver still taking us to the OTHER PI which is just a little way from the terminal.

We finally got there

and there was further faff about where we would be picked up on our return.

Do remember this - I will NEVER book us to stay at a terminal from which we are NOT departing or arriving again.

I couldn’t see what was so hard to grasp myself but it clearly was.

At check in, I added on the dinner to the booking as we now didn’t fancy going over to the terminal.

Andy went over to get us booked in - it was 6.15 and they gave us a table for 7.45.

Who comes up with the interior furnishing here? Have they tried wheeling cases over this carpet? It’s the most wheel resistant fabric I have encountered ... we struggled to pull or push the cases against the infernal flooring and I only had the small cabin case to wheel.

I reckon it was the weight of Andy’s (still wet) joggers that were hanging off the cases that were causing the anti-drag factor, but he was not a happy chappy.

Naturally, we were the furthest possible room from the lift and quite possibly actually in that other PI which is offsite we walked so blinking far.

We were both a bit grumpy by now with the travel, being hangry and grappling with the cases so it was a relief to get into the room and just take a minute to chill out

It’s the normal PI room.

Enhanced though with the two half open bottles of wine that we brought with us as they would surely have gone off while we were away.

These were duly consumed while we looked over the dinner menu and I unpacked our stuff for tomorrow. Room approx. 5 mins after arriving

I put a few things on this shelf under the hangers. And then promptly covered them up with clothes. Do remember this ….

Menu was in the room so we decided what we wanted before hand while finishing off the bottles of wine we had brought from home.

There was a queue to be seated , it moved quite quickly. No fast pass lane. Tsk tsk.

Went for the Lamb Koftas and Chicken and Chorizo skewers - split them so we had one of each. Both very nice

Beer and House Rose

Mains - we paid £2 extra for the mixed grill and I had the bacon double cheeseburger. Meals took a little while to come out but were both really very good.

We had been chatting to the table next to us who were celebrating an 80th birthday , they very generously gave us a slice each of their M&S cake so no need for dessert

We thought about a drink in the bar but it was packed out so couldn’t be bothered.

Back in the room, with the aircon cranked up to speed the jogger drying process, we checked in that all was ok at home.

We must have watched something on tv for a bit - no doubt it was wildly exciting but not exciting enough for me to have made a note.

I checked umpteen times that I had an alarm set but as that means having the sound up on the phone, it also meant a lot of pinging noises until I had the sense to turn off message notifications.

A deep and refreshing night of sleep then lay ahead

Of course it didn’t, its pre travel night for goodness sake.

It is holiday law you must meet travel day completely knackered before you have started!

Travel day is HERE