Yes, this trip actually starts on the day of the trip. This is new these days for us too.
My alarm went off somewhere in the 4:00 hour. I got dressed, threw the cell phone charger in the carry on and woke up Nick as I headed outside to clean snow off the car.
We got on the road about 5:15, very ready for vacation and to bust out of this new snowglobe situation we had recently found ourselves in, preferably before it started snowing again, especially since we had loaded up the car on fresh snowfall…in sneakers.
The trip to MHT was uneventful, albeit a little bit slower than anticipated before it started snowing every day, because the roads weren’t entirely clear from the previous night’s snow. But we made it there right about 6 am, and eventually found a parking spot on the 4th floor of the very full parking garage. I fired off pictures to mom of the car’s location and the back of my car for her to be able to recognize it while Nick pulled luggage out of the car, and we were off!
Check in was easy. Security was…much slower than I’ve seen in Manchester for awhile. Manchester has always had VERY tight security, much tighter than Boston (something that blows my mind as family of a 9/11 flight from Boston victim), but this was…almost like 2002, minus the military presence. MHT has had new carry on scanners installed since I flew in August, that were clearly slowing things down. Those things were INTENSE. It also seemed like about half the people were either having luggage pulled for extra screening or themselves getting extra screening. Nick being one of them, I think because his watch set off the metal detector in the pre-check lane (cue the “don’t we pay extra to avoid the touchy feely” grumbling). As I was gathering my stuff up, I remembered a post from NH DHS on Friday about nondescript threats of racism and terrorism in NH for the weekend, and I strongly suspect that played a part in that morning’s adventures.
Despite it all, we were gateside by 6:30 am. Our plane was there and ready, and things were looking very tundra-y.
Boarding began on time, and was fairly quick. Most of the plane boarded with family boarding, and I hoped Nick was having success saving me a seat. Eventually I got to board, and made eye contact with him. Things were looking good, even though he was sitting in an emergency exit seat, which I had definitely forgotten to tell him to NOT go for. And then, the guy just barely ahead of me started arguing with Nick about seat saving, because he wanted the aisle seat for himself and that middle seat for his daughter, who he claimed was 16. Fun fact, I was the first B on the plane because there were so many family boards. They had boarded with family boards.
I’m not one for confrontation, and there was an empty window seat right next to where I was standing. I happily snagged that, making eye contact with Nick and avoiding eye contact with the dude Nick dubbed the “gym bro”. I’m not going to lie, I was kind of excited about the arrangement. Nick got his emergency exit row seat, I got a window, which I don’t get when traveling with him (we put him in the window seat for the curved wall extra space), so it was all good. And I vowed to have the “only try to save seats in a non-exit row” talk with Nick once we were fully relaxed on vacation!
I had a front row seat for de-icing operations. The plane had been in Manchester overnight and it had snowed. As an added bonus, while it wasn’t snowing right then, it was going to snow soon. So they slimed us up with both de-icer and anti-freeze. It was a lovely color combo.
Once we were well slimed, they got the plane really going (Manchester has a lot of regs, complete with planes now being pushed back into a special de-icing zone, rather than de-iced at the gate). Once the plane was fully powered up we were (duh) first in line for takeoff, and after taxiing into the next zip code we were airborne. And after a few minutes of climbing, we saw the sun for the first time in forever.
The flight was relatively uneventful. The slime blew off, I read a little and listened to music. Nick apparently had to smell “gym bro’s” BO anytime he shifted positions, which was apparently frequently. And thanks to a padded schedule, we arrived at MCO early, despite the de-icing process back in NH getting us in the air a bit behind schedule. Hello sunshine!! And hello texts from mom and security camera alerts from home that it started snowing heavily shortly after we took off, hours ahead of the forecast.
Deboarding took forever, but eventually I was off the plane and Nick emerged a few minutes later. His grumbling about “gym bro” was short lived, and we were on vacation!! We just missed one tram to the main terminal, which meant I had a perfect palm tree view on our tram a couple minutes later!
Bag check was a bit of a cluster because there had been some storms the previous few days around the country, but, it really didn’t take THAT long for our bags to emerge, and then we headed downstairs, down the long rental car hallway, and across the way to the garage. We found the Dollar Express desk, I found that I had to speak to the clerk, which was no surprise, because NH has changed my driver’s license number since the last time I rented a car, and after a few minutes we were being directed to pick any full size car behind a set of cones. I’d rented a standard car (for a whopping $310, go me!), so this was an “upgrade”. Quotes, because we all know rental car classifications don’t match real world classifications. Nick picked a bright blue Honda Accord, and after a bit of a process of loading luggage, getting cell phone chargers, Sunpass, and sunglasses out of luggage, and finding I didn’t have cell service in the garage to update Sunpass OR to set Google Maps to Universal, we were sort of on our way.
The goal? Pull into the cell phone lot to do all of that. But the signage wasn’t great, so, we cruised right by there, me clueless about next best options. Thankfully, we miraculously ended up out on South Semoran Boulevard, and there are plenty of restaurant and hotel parking lots there to pull into to set up Sunpass and Google Maps.
Once the internet based stuff was established, we were truly on our way. Traffic wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated, so less than half an hour later, we pulled up to the Portofino Bay Resort. WOW. What a beautiful spot! Even the drive in to the resort is beautiful! We found a parking spot down on the lower level of the garage, and after a bit of an elevator snafu, found our way to the front desk. Check in was easy enough, and the girl at the desk attempted to find us a ready room without us asking her to. She was unsuccessful, but we appreciated the effort. I headed off to find the seriously upscale bathrooms to change into shorts and then we stored our luggage, where they had us take a picture of the claim tag instead of giving us a claim tag (????!), and headed off to find some lunch!
Sal’s deli was easy enough to find. We ordered a large cheese pizza, found out that you can’t charge to the room before the room is ready (folks, we are not in Disney, and this doesn’t support my maximum points earning strategy!), and grabbed seats. The pizza was ready about 10 minutes later. Nick grabbed slices from the box before I woke up enough to take a picture of the full pizza, so enjoy this picture of my first two slices. It was actually good pizza, and, as theme park resort food goes, a relatively affordable way to do lunch for the two of us.
Pizza inhaled, because it was like 1pm, and we hadn’t exactly eaten much yet today, despite being up for a lot of hours, we headed off to explore the resort. This is a beautiful, peaceful resort.
Resort explored, and park tickets obtained from a very unenthusiastic team member, we parked ourselves on a bench in the shade for a bit to people watch. Maybe 15 minutes after sitting down, I got the text that our room was ready and we needed to return to the front desk to have our keys reprogrammed. So I did that while Nick retrieved the luggage. The girls at the front desk were super pleasant, and pretty soon we were setting off to find our room, 1359 in the East Wing, with an entirely new set of keys.
This was a very nice room. The bathroom was massive, the room was clean, the bed was SO comfortable, and it was very quiet. We liked it! Although can we discuss the fact that all of the toiletries were “anti-aging”?! I’m not 40 yet!
We settled in and then it was off to the Hillside Pool, which is at the very end of the East Wing. The girl at the front desk had said no one goes to this pool. That may be the case most of the time, but was not the case today. There was a whole family there, plus a couple of drunk couples, so while it was not as chaotic as the Beach Pool, which has music and a pool slide, it wasn’t as quiet as anticipated either. But the water felt great, and the sunshine was amazing.
Vacation mode really engaged, and sufficiently cooled down, we went back to the room to get ready for the evening. Once ready, we headed for the boat dock, where we didn’t have to wait very long before we were on a boat for a really beautiful ride over to CityWalk.
When we got to CityWalk, we headed for Bubba Gumps for dinner. We had originally planned to eat at Pat O’Brien’s, but the day after we made that reservation, our reservation was canceled because they were closed for a private event. Lame! So Bubba Gump’s it is. I’d joined the Landry’s Select thing because Google said Bubba Gump’s has a long wait all the time, and I’d cashed out rewards points from Fetch for a gift card for here, so I wanted that to not go to waste because of a long wait. As it turns out, there was basically no wait to get in, so my efforts were unnecessary, but oh well. The cost of the membership is a wash thanks to the welcome reward, so no big deal.
Dinner was good. Our server was excellent, even if he did steer me away from fish and chips (but it sounds like that was a good thing). I don’t eat shrimp, so the menu here is already a bit limited for me. Nick got some variety plate of shrimp. I know there was coconut shrimp and tempura shrimp. Not sure what the other one was. I had salmon and sides that were WAY too healthy for the first night of vacation, because that’s what it comes with. Tasted really good though, especially once I drizzled some sauce on the rice. We each had fruity drinks and those were good too.
Full from dinner, we took our receipt to the gift shop for a clean set of souvenir cups, because the collection was starting early on this trip, and then we wandered a bit. Poked around some stores, took some pictures, enjoyed the weather. It was a really pleasant evening in terms of temperature.
Once dinner had settled slightly, we headed for Toothsome’s takeout counter. Nick got a key lime milkshake and I got the “cookie jar”. Mine was the winner. The key lime was made with sour cream ice cream and…it was definitely sour cream flavored ice cream in that milkshake. It wasn’t bad, but mine was better.
Neither one of us could actually finish our milkshake, but we had fun trying. We headed back outside where we placed a mobile order for doughnuts and made our way over to a deck near the Voodoo mobile order pickup booth, to do some picture taking and some waiting.
After a bit too long waiting for a message that my order was ready, I went over to the booth to check the status. Turns out my order WAS ready, despite the lack of message. So, pretty pink box obtained, we headed for the boat dock, where we were let right onto a boat that had boarded and the boat departed soon after we got on. Perfect timing!
It was a quick boat ride back to the resort, where we quickly showered and crashed on that comfy bed, with me still strategizing for the next morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment