Blog ≫ 2019 ≫ Holiday 2019 day one
To the big holiday then, that was more than a year in the planning! Early enough on the Monday morning of the half term holiday, a bank holiday Monday no less, off to Gatwick. There and parked with loads of time to spare, of course. I did meet and greet valet parking from work, so easy to drop off the car and into the terminal. The obligatory pint at Wetherspoons and plenty of time to drink it. A nine or so hour flight and we're in Orlando.
Picked up our MASSIVE hire car, a Dodge Grand Caravan and did not drive it too badly from the airport to the hotel. It would remain parked here for most of the week at $25 or so a day. We did not need a car for most of the week, but without it how would we get to Miami later in the week? And also we'd have to stick entirely to Universal parks and not go to Kennedy. OK we're probably going to stick entirely to Universal anyway as we have prebooked tickets but still... you could do this without a car.
We checked out the hotel, spied the bar and the pool. Dropped our things in our rooms (hmm Jim's room for one is exactly the same as our room for four...) and got the free water taxi from the hotel to the city walk area. This is the central part of the Universal area that joins up the various parks. Lots of bars and restaurants here. A long tiring day of travel made for a tetchy search for dinner. Nowhere here that suited all of us I think. We went for an Italian, it was quite nice. Our first meal of the trip, and it set the standard for how expensive meals were going to be here. Not sure how you'd do this trip cheaply, but all good. We had saved for it, we were generously gifted extra spending money, and Jim paid for this meal too. Chin chin!
Thing one lasted the duration, but thing two fell asleep at the table. We had to carry him back to the boat and the room. Time to sleep ready for day two.
A picture to end day one, a view from the free boat looking back towards our hotel. We'd see this view a lot, we got this boat every day. Pictures with the family in are in the usual place, just day one for now too.
