Knowing that the tube would be crazy bust I devised a quicker and more ingenious way to get to the airport- Get the stopper into north london, Change at West hampstead, get the London overground to South Acton, Walk a mile to Acto tube station and do the last bit of the trip on the tube, completely avoiding central london.
Totally genius.
Except that overground line was closed for engineering works.
2 hours 4 trains, a lift, a 2 mile walk around the tower blocks of Acton and a rail replacement bus later we finally arrived at The Doubletree by Hilton.
Only to be told that they were really very sorry, but our rooms wouldn't be ready to check in for 40 minutes.
So we availed ourselves of the bar. I had a tea.. which was delivered as a coffee... and traff had a beer which they managed to get right.
When you check i the give you cookies. very ice cookies, but its still a bit of a weird concept.
The rooms were lush as you would expect, nice big beds and lots of free pens!
We couldn't get the boarding passes online so we went to the airport in the evening. after much too ing ad fro ing ad £40 on taxis it turned out that because John was a naughty boy and had to get a visa from the embassy he had to collect his boarding pass on the day of the flight, from an airline representative.
So, we went to get some dinner. John really wanted to get a harvester meal for dinner, and after discussion with the taxi driver and a google search we found the nearest on in Ruislip, 10 miles away, So we embarked on a epic 20 minute drive on the M4, and M25 only for it to be fully booked with no tables.
We ended up across the road at "The Duck House" pub. The food was really good- Traff and I both had portabello mushroom burgers and they really were the best I've ever had.
If you're ever randomly in Ruislip, go for it.
We got back to the hotel, had a night cap and hit the hay- bed about 10, up at 4am for the flight and lost and hour for daylight savings.
Don't we look bright eyed and bushy tailed for 5am?
All the flights went fine- I bought a puzzler book so I was perfectly happy. I did also try to have a nap but traff got rather excited when we were flying over greenland/iceland/the atlantic/canada/ america and kept trying to show me things out of the widow. good geography lesson. rubbish game of I spy. when over loud your options really are "I spy with my little eye, something begining with W/S/C/S"
which would be "Wing" "Sky" "Clouds" "sun"
We landed in new jersey and John got whisked away by airport security they were nicer to us- the guys who stamped our passports through Traff looked like the singer from taproot and kept asking "Are you sure you're not in a band?"
They returned him to us with enough time to go to a "bar" before catching our connecting flight (Which I managed to get on using the wrong boarding pass!) gin and earl grey cocktail. yesssss.
We got to Orlando fine, Picked up the SUV and Ray drove us to International Drive.
Our hotel Is massive- very USA.
All Motel style rooms with balconies and a pool. It also has a huugggeeee shiny sign up on the main road so we found it before the sat nav.
W got settled into our rooms- The went for dinner i the hotel as we were too tired to go very far. We had planned to go ad watch Wrestlemania at the Geek Easy Bar ad Comic book shop. Not a Chance!
We had pizza at the pool bar- no word of a lie it was the size of a bicycle wheel and equally thick. I managed to eat half and had the other half bagged up to go. I don't think I can face eating it but It seemed too wasteful to leave it!
**NB- I'm having distict difficuly typing- I bought my old laptop and because the battery is dead and only works when plugged in, I chucked it in my hold bag as it would have been useless on the flight and just a pain in the arse to carry. It seems to have taken a bit of a direct hit at some point and the keyboard is rather random.
Apologies for missing letters.
Usually easy to fix, but the mouse pad is also a bit dodgy now. it keeps randomly highlighting ad deleting stuff!
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