allie5
<font color=blue>WARNING! DHL men should be cautio
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2002
- Messages
- 1,572
Gatwick, Twilight Check In, Le Meridien.
Main Players
Allie
Neil
Jessamy (4)
Daniel Noah (2)
Nanny Sylvie
Guest Appearances In Todays Report
Grandad Mick
Karen & Family
Wednesday December 8th 2004.
Well, today is the day we have waited 8 months or more for! As usual, because I am a nervous flier, the build up to the flight is never a happy time for me, so Im more stressed than excited!
Today is also Jessies very last day at Nursery where she has spent the last 18 months and has been very happy so this is an emotional day! Even though the school she will be attending is attached to the Nursery (she will be just going to the room next door!!) I cant help but feel quite sad at this end of an era.
Neil scarpered off to work at 7am, leaving muggins here to do all the final running about. His last words as he walks out of the door were Oh, I need a repeat prescription .grrrrr. Have to spend the hour between 9am and 10 am waiting for the Doctor to come back from curing the sick to sign Neils prescription. Still, there was an interesting article on weaving in the Good Housekeeping May 1975 copy in the surgery. If I ever get abandoned on a desert island, rest assured I will be able to weave the most amazing creations from leaves and reeds
.
Pop into town to pick up last minute essentials Choklit (American choklit is NASTY), sucky sweets for take off (not relying on stingy Virgin Atlantic to provide a Foxes Glacier Fruit this year), sun cream (oh, how optimistic I was!) and a cheapo fleece from Primark (I have a tendency to lose fleeces so £5 was the maximum I was prepared to spend).
Back to give kids and mum lunch decided to cook something healthy as they would probably spend the next 3 weeks eating nothing but chicken and chips. Try to ward off scurvy by serving a fish pie with veggies with fruit for dessert. This was the last green vegetable to pass the lips of my son for 3 weeks I might add.
Drop Jessie off at Nursery at 12.30pm as usual. All the Mums wish me Happy Holidays as ask if they can fit in my case! I feel lucky that I will be out of all the Christmas hassle this year I have to say! Give the teachers some presents and leave with a tear in my eye!
Come home and put little Daniel down for a nap. Take the chance to have a long soak in the bath and calm myself down a bit. The flying nerves are really kicking in now and we dont even get on the plane until tomorrow! Realise that after I have picked Jessie up I wont be driving again and can have a medicinal Southern Comfort before we leave! Hoorah!
Whizz back up to Nursery to pick Jessie up at 3.10pm. She is not happy that her wicked family are forcing her to go to Disney World when all the other kids are going to have a Christmas Party, a Nativity and worst of all, she will miss Santa who has promised to visit Nursery next week. Manage to avoid too many tears by telling her that she will be going to MICKEYS Christmas party and that Santa is flying straight to Florida via VirginSleighlantic the very second after he has visited Nursery. Yippee, she is happy again and we arrive home all smiles! Mum has got Daniel up and dressed and we are almost all packed!
Neil rings from the station at 3.30pm and I generously offer to pick him up today, though he usually walks. We grin stupidly at each other in the car and cant help shouting in unison WERE GOING TO FLORIDA TOMORROW very loudly indeed. I think the people on the number 8 bus next to us thought we were certifiable, but we didnt care!
Finish the final bit of packing and run through the check list for the final time. Neils Dad, Mick is coming to collect us at 5pm. Kids are over excited so to calm them I offer quavers and choccie buttons. This serves as an adequate bribe till Grandad Mick arrives promptly at 5pm.
Cases are loaded onto the car note that we go out with 4 cases. We return with a slightly higher number. I may offer a prize if anyone guesses correctly how many we came back with.
Kids are strapped into their seats and we are off at 5:15. Traffic not too bad, though a bit sticky over the QE2 Bridge. Quite surprised to arrive at Gatwick just after 6pm. Not bad for rush hour! Squash cases onto a trolley, load Daniel into buggy and off we go to find the Twilight Check In.
There are about 6 families ahead of us in the queue, so not too bad, though Mum begins with her first whinge of the holiday and insists that I told her there would be No one here and we wouldnt have to queue. No Mother, I said it would be a SHORTER queue than it would be if we did it in the morning. She is heard to be grumbling for sometime afterwards though!
After a few minutes a young lady approaches and asks for our passports. Goodness, this was my first panic of the trip she scrutinises each one for about 5 minutes. At first Im not bothered, but after she did it once, she did it again then she keeps going back to Jessies. Now, I know hers is due to expire next year, but not till December .did I get it wrong, was it December 2004?????. Anyway, after the Spanish Inquisition, she FINALLY stuck her very important sticker on the back and that was that! Dont know what was so fascinating about our passports no one elses where checked for that long. Maybe she thought Mum might be one of those Black Widow terrorists possibly? She had a face as long a wet weekend, and looked like she would blow up a plane full of tourists given half a chance. I encourage Mum to look a little more cheerful when dealing with US immigration.
Hooray, we reach the desk at last! Our Check In lady was having a surreptitious drinky behind the desk so I joked that if it was a Gin and Tonic would she mind sharing? Now, in the past, this little pleasantry to a Virgin Check In Person would likely have resulted in 5 seats on the wing (outside) with the beef stew as the only meal option, however today, we were rewarded with a beaming smile!
Just a little background info here before I go on. I had rang Virgins Special Assistance department last week as I was worried about my son on the flight. I wont go into too many details here (more comes to light over the holiday anyway) but he suffers from a behavioural disorder and can be difficult in strange situations. I rang to ask if he could be seated on my lap with an extender belt for take off, but this wasnt allowed as he was over 2. However, I was told they would provide a 3 point harness car seat insert for his seat. This was a great relief as I had visions of him escaping from the lap belt. The special assistance lady also told me, that she would try to allocate bulkhead seats for us as well.
I wasnt holding out any expectations on our seating I had booked 5 seats together online, but I didnt really mind where we sat as long as Daniel had his seat insert and would be safe. Nice check in lady did all our bags (only 4, remember??!!) and gave us a big Virgin clear sack for our car seats. Neil had bought a luggage elastic to tie them together and make them more secure. I asked if we could do a bag drop in the morning for our overnight things and she showed us where to go with that for the next day.
I tentatively mentioned that Special Assistance were going to request Bulkhead seats for my son and I was happy to be told that yes, we had them. I did misunderstand her though as she said we ALL had bulkhead seats and it turned out we didnt, we had 2 bulkheads and then 3 across the aisle (we were all sat together, so that was just fine!).
Great! We are all checked in, so now its time for dinner! We had already decided on Frankie & Bennys upstairs, so off we trotted. We were seated straight away and it felt good knowing we were HERE and the bags were checked in, we had our boarding cards, we could CHILL at last! Even I wasnt feeling too bad, which seeing as I had to board a scary flying machine in less than 14 hours wasnt bad going!
In celebration, we order a bottle of our fave tipple, White Zinfandel (discovered by us in Florida circa 1996 and held a street party the day it went on sale in the UK a few years later). The kids had OJ and Mum a coffee. We ordered onion rings and garlic bread to start, chicken and chips for the kids (this will become a very boring recurring theme). Mum and I had sausage and mash and Neil had fish n chips
all good, hearty English fare to celebrate we were leaving behind this cold little island for sunnier shores (oh, how God must have chuckled at us toasting the departure of rain and cold for 3 weeks
.).
Just after our starters arrived, my phone bleeped with a text from Karen. Karen is a lovely lady who I met through the DIS several months back and co-incidentally we found out we were due to fly out from Gatwick on the same day on the same flight! Over the last months we have planned and plotted together all the aspects of our holidays and it has been tremendous fun! We have arranged a few things together, including meeting up tonight, a Wishes Cruise later on in the holiday and also a meet up with Anz and Andy, (another couple of DISers, who strangely enough are on our flight back!!!) at the Rose & Crown on Dec 19th.
Karen says they have arrived and are on their way up to F&Bs now! Its not long before she arrives with her family and its like we have known each other for years! Its good to be able to chat in person after so many months of cyber talk!!! After a brief chat, Karen and her posse are seated and we return to our nosh. We can all manage to squeeze in dessert ice creams for the kids and apple pie for the grown ups!
I take Jessie up to say our goodbyes to Karen (who has two daughters similar in age to Jess) and Jessie is thrilled that she will now have friends on the plane tomorrow!!
We pay the bill, collect our belongings (not all of them make it though .) and decide its time to find the hotel. We are staying at Le Meridien tonight and have to get on the little train to the North Terminal. Its all very painless and we are at the hotel in less than 5 minutes!
First impressions are good. Its a lovely place and the staff are friendly and polite. I had requested 2 interconnecting rooms and this was honoured. We are on the 2nd floor facing the airport so the kids can see the planes result!
The cot I had ordered for Daniel was in our room and I decided to get the kids to bed ASAP. Quick wash and into their Jammies ready to sleep no chance! It was 10pm before either of them gave in!
Neil and I were going to go down to the bar, but in the end we fell asleep before the kids I think!
Tomorrow: The Flight, The Arrival.
Main Players
Allie
Neil
Jessamy (4)
Daniel Noah (2)
Nanny Sylvie
Guest Appearances In Todays Report
Grandad Mick
Karen & Family
Wednesday December 8th 2004.
Well, today is the day we have waited 8 months or more for! As usual, because I am a nervous flier, the build up to the flight is never a happy time for me, so Im more stressed than excited!
Today is also Jessies very last day at Nursery where she has spent the last 18 months and has been very happy so this is an emotional day! Even though the school she will be attending is attached to the Nursery (she will be just going to the room next door!!) I cant help but feel quite sad at this end of an era.
Neil scarpered off to work at 7am, leaving muggins here to do all the final running about. His last words as he walks out of the door were Oh, I need a repeat prescription .grrrrr. Have to spend the hour between 9am and 10 am waiting for the Doctor to come back from curing the sick to sign Neils prescription. Still, there was an interesting article on weaving in the Good Housekeeping May 1975 copy in the surgery. If I ever get abandoned on a desert island, rest assured I will be able to weave the most amazing creations from leaves and reeds
. Pop into town to pick up last minute essentials Choklit (American choklit is NASTY), sucky sweets for take off (not relying on stingy Virgin Atlantic to provide a Foxes Glacier Fruit this year), sun cream (oh, how optimistic I was!) and a cheapo fleece from Primark (I have a tendency to lose fleeces so £5 was the maximum I was prepared to spend).
Back to give kids and mum lunch decided to cook something healthy as they would probably spend the next 3 weeks eating nothing but chicken and chips. Try to ward off scurvy by serving a fish pie with veggies with fruit for dessert. This was the last green vegetable to pass the lips of my son for 3 weeks I might add.
Drop Jessie off at Nursery at 12.30pm as usual. All the Mums wish me Happy Holidays as ask if they can fit in my case! I feel lucky that I will be out of all the Christmas hassle this year I have to say! Give the teachers some presents and leave with a tear in my eye!
Come home and put little Daniel down for a nap. Take the chance to have a long soak in the bath and calm myself down a bit. The flying nerves are really kicking in now and we dont even get on the plane until tomorrow! Realise that after I have picked Jessie up I wont be driving again and can have a medicinal Southern Comfort before we leave! Hoorah!
Whizz back up to Nursery to pick Jessie up at 3.10pm. She is not happy that her wicked family are forcing her to go to Disney World when all the other kids are going to have a Christmas Party, a Nativity and worst of all, she will miss Santa who has promised to visit Nursery next week. Manage to avoid too many tears by telling her that she will be going to MICKEYS Christmas party and that Santa is flying straight to Florida via VirginSleighlantic the very second after he has visited Nursery. Yippee, she is happy again and we arrive home all smiles! Mum has got Daniel up and dressed and we are almost all packed!
Neil rings from the station at 3.30pm and I generously offer to pick him up today, though he usually walks. We grin stupidly at each other in the car and cant help shouting in unison WERE GOING TO FLORIDA TOMORROW very loudly indeed. I think the people on the number 8 bus next to us thought we were certifiable, but we didnt care!
Finish the final bit of packing and run through the check list for the final time. Neils Dad, Mick is coming to collect us at 5pm. Kids are over excited so to calm them I offer quavers and choccie buttons. This serves as an adequate bribe till Grandad Mick arrives promptly at 5pm.
Cases are loaded onto the car note that we go out with 4 cases. We return with a slightly higher number. I may offer a prize if anyone guesses correctly how many we came back with
. Kids are strapped into their seats and we are off at 5:15. Traffic not too bad, though a bit sticky over the QE2 Bridge. Quite surprised to arrive at Gatwick just after 6pm. Not bad for rush hour! Squash cases onto a trolley, load Daniel into buggy and off we go to find the Twilight Check In.
There are about 6 families ahead of us in the queue, so not too bad, though Mum begins with her first whinge of the holiday and insists that I told her there would be No one here and we wouldnt have to queue. No Mother, I said it would be a SHORTER queue than it would be if we did it in the morning. She is heard to be grumbling for sometime afterwards though!
After a few minutes a young lady approaches and asks for our passports. Goodness, this was my first panic of the trip she scrutinises each one for about 5 minutes. At first Im not bothered, but after she did it once, she did it again then she keeps going back to Jessies. Now, I know hers is due to expire next year, but not till December .did I get it wrong, was it December 2004?????. Anyway, after the Spanish Inquisition, she FINALLY stuck her very important sticker on the back and that was that! Dont know what was so fascinating about our passports no one elses where checked for that long. Maybe she thought Mum might be one of those Black Widow terrorists possibly? She had a face as long a wet weekend, and looked like she would blow up a plane full of tourists given half a chance. I encourage Mum to look a little more cheerful when dealing with US immigration
.Hooray, we reach the desk at last! Our Check In lady was having a surreptitious drinky behind the desk so I joked that if it was a Gin and Tonic would she mind sharing? Now, in the past, this little pleasantry to a Virgin Check In Person would likely have resulted in 5 seats on the wing (outside) with the beef stew as the only meal option, however today, we were rewarded with a beaming smile!
Just a little background info here before I go on. I had rang Virgins Special Assistance department last week as I was worried about my son on the flight. I wont go into too many details here (more comes to light over the holiday anyway) but he suffers from a behavioural disorder and can be difficult in strange situations. I rang to ask if he could be seated on my lap with an extender belt for take off, but this wasnt allowed as he was over 2. However, I was told they would provide a 3 point harness car seat insert for his seat. This was a great relief as I had visions of him escaping from the lap belt. The special assistance lady also told me, that she would try to allocate bulkhead seats for us as well.
I wasnt holding out any expectations on our seating I had booked 5 seats together online, but I didnt really mind where we sat as long as Daniel had his seat insert and would be safe. Nice check in lady did all our bags (only 4, remember??!!) and gave us a big Virgin clear sack for our car seats. Neil had bought a luggage elastic to tie them together and make them more secure. I asked if we could do a bag drop in the morning for our overnight things and she showed us where to go with that for the next day.
I tentatively mentioned that Special Assistance were going to request Bulkhead seats for my son and I was happy to be told that yes, we had them. I did misunderstand her though as she said we ALL had bulkhead seats and it turned out we didnt, we had 2 bulkheads and then 3 across the aisle (we were all sat together, so that was just fine!).
Great! We are all checked in, so now its time for dinner! We had already decided on Frankie & Bennys upstairs, so off we trotted. We were seated straight away and it felt good knowing we were HERE and the bags were checked in, we had our boarding cards, we could CHILL at last! Even I wasnt feeling too bad, which seeing as I had to board a scary flying machine in less than 14 hours wasnt bad going!
In celebration, we order a bottle of our fave tipple, White Zinfandel (discovered by us in Florida circa 1996 and held a street party the day it went on sale in the UK a few years later
). The kids had OJ and Mum a coffee. We ordered onion rings and garlic bread to start, chicken and chips for the kids (this will become a very boring recurring theme). Mum and I had sausage and mash and Neil had fish n chips
all good, hearty English fare to celebrate we were leaving behind this cold little island for sunnier shores (oh, how God must have chuckled at us toasting the departure of rain and cold for 3 weeks
.). Just after our starters arrived, my phone bleeped with a text from Karen. Karen is a lovely lady who I met through the DIS several months back and co-incidentally we found out we were due to fly out from Gatwick on the same day on the same flight! Over the last months we have planned and plotted together all the aspects of our holidays and it has been tremendous fun! We have arranged a few things together, including meeting up tonight, a Wishes Cruise later on in the holiday and also a meet up with Anz and Andy, (another couple of DISers, who strangely enough are on our flight back!!!) at the Rose & Crown on Dec 19th.
Karen says they have arrived and are on their way up to F&Bs now! Its not long before she arrives with her family and its like we have known each other for years! Its good to be able to chat in person after so many months of cyber talk!!! After a brief chat, Karen and her posse are seated and we return to our nosh. We can all manage to squeeze in dessert ice creams for the kids and apple pie for the grown ups!
I take Jessie up to say our goodbyes to Karen (who has two daughters similar in age to Jess) and Jessie is thrilled that she will now have friends on the plane tomorrow!!
We pay the bill, collect our belongings (not all of them make it though .) and decide its time to find the hotel. We are staying at Le Meridien tonight and have to get on the little train to the North Terminal. Its all very painless and we are at the hotel in less than 5 minutes!
First impressions are good. Its a lovely place and the staff are friendly and polite. I had requested 2 interconnecting rooms and this was honoured. We are on the 2nd floor facing the airport so the kids can see the planes result!
The cot I had ordered for Daniel was in our room and I decided to get the kids to bed ASAP. Quick wash and into their Jammies ready to sleep no chance! It was 10pm before either of them gave in!
Neil and I were going to go down to the bar, but in the end we fell asleep before the kids I think!
Tomorrow: The Flight, The Arrival.
