chrischarly

And another day of relaxing... just what holidays are for

chrischarly — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Went to the beach early morning, then went to the other pools across the road enjoying the lovely Destin Sunshine, before return back to the lazy River, had a light lunch, went to the mall and wandered around for a while, then went and had lunch at Fokkers Pub and watched some American Football.

Then once we returned, took the kids for a late night swim which they absolutely loved!!

A lot of shopping!

chrischarly — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Got up, had brekkie before going to the pool and then went shopping at the discount mall.

We then had a lovely seafood lunch at Mitchells Seafood Market and then went home and went in the pool again before chilling and having a light dinner.

And to the lazy river!!

chrischarly — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

We drove down to the coast and checked in to our lovely apartment, and very quickly went to explore the pool, including the lazy River, where you get in a big ring and float around, very nice and relaxing... We pretty much did this for the rest of the day and had yummy pizzas for dinner.

A nice chill day

chrischarly — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I got up had brekkie to discover that all but Chris’ Mum (and myself, of course), had gotten up early and ventured down to the beach for an early morning dip, so had a quiet hour chilling.

Then, once they’d returned we went to the outlet malls, which sells designer clothing at discount rates.

We went back via the Shrimp market and Chris bought 6 pounds of Golf Coast shrimps- huge prawns, which he cooked up and we had a yummy dinner, after lounging around in the pool.

Long car journey

chrischarly — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Had a long long day in the car today. All the way from Destin to Orlando, so about 7 hours, so pretty boring, so not a great deal to write about as there’s not much to say. But we were so pleased to have finally arrived very near Disney Land and lucky enough to be staying in our own private Villa with a swimming pool, games room with all of us able to have our own en-suite room. So after un packing we all went for a swim before showering and going out for some dinner, unfortunately getting a little confused as to the location of the restaurant so drove for 30 minutes in the wrong direction. Oops. So we changed plan and drove back stopping at somewhere a little nearer before having an early night in preparation for Sea World tomorrow!!

Last day of relaxation

chrischarly — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It’s our last day in Destin today so we woke up early and went to the beach to play some Frisbee, attempted and failed to teach the kids how to snorkel, (something we later achieved easier in the swimming pool) and built sand castles before walking to a resort near ours for a swim. Then after some lunch back at our apartment we cruised around the lazy River for a while and then did a little shopping, went for some drinks, had dinner at the infamous Pandora’s and rolled back to the apartment and relaxed for the evening.

Sea World

chrischarly — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Had a great day at Sea World today! Woke up at about 8am, but Chris was so excited and beat the kids out of bed this morning getting up before 6am. So who knows who is the biggest child. As soon as we arrived just after 9, we walked straight to see the dolphin show which was very impressive, and quoting Lucy, ‘This is the best thing I have ever seen’…

We then wandered around a bit and went in to see some manatees, turtles and a 3D show which was also quite impressive. Then we missioned it right to the other side of the park to see the orca (killer whale) show, which was the thing I was most looking forward to and it was not disappointing.

We then went for a bite to eat before walking to see the otter, sea lion and walrus show.

We then went on a few rides, saw a couple more animals and brought a few souvenirs before heading back to the car.

Well, we had no idea between the 8 of us where we had parked the car exactly, so it was took a while in the boiling hot sun. As soon as we returned to the Villa we all had a splash in the pool to cool down a bit before ordering some pizza.

Meeting up with the family

chrischarly — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

After packing we went downstairs for some tasty brekkie for checking out and leaving Hotel Monaco Alexandria for our 20 minute walk down King Street to catch the metro. We arrived just in time to catch the delayed rush-hour train all the way to Green Belt, the last of the day which was perfect for us as this meant no changes.

Then, just a short walk to the bus stop which would take us straight to the airport. Easy and in fact faster and a lot cheaper than our shuttle to Alexandria. No queues at security so time for a quick coffee stop before boarding the plane bound for Atlanta.

We sat right at the back of the small aircraft and I was surprised at just how polite Americans were letting all the other passengers off the plane in order with no pushing in. Quite a pain as we were in a rush though. Then we ran through the airport, caught two shuttle trains to the hire car companies running the whole way as we knew Chris’ family would’ve been waiting for us; exhausted having flown from London. We then collected our two cars and took the two hour drive to Auburn with two very tired yet excited children. Once we’d arrived in our hotel, time for a quick change and shower before a tasty dinner down in the restaurant before we all collapsed in bed.

To the White House

chrischarly — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

After breakfast Chris and I took a walk to the waterfront a few blocks up King Street and spent an hour walking around

enjoying the lovely Sunshine before taking the free trolley to the other end of King Street right outside the metro station.

After a short ride we arrived on 17th Street a bustling square with lots of locals and tourists hanging out in the park also enjoying the nice weather. We took a walk to the Whitehouse,

firstly taking photos of the back of the building before walking around and taking photos of the back. Although we thought we could get a tour of the inside,

this wasn't the case, so admiring the grounds was the only option. We then walked around for a little while longer taking the obligatory tourist photos before walking back to the square,

eating some yummy street food and relaxing in the park, before catching the metro back to King Street.

Once back at hotel we went for a swim on the 3rd floor of our hotel before showering and dressing up for our free wine hour downstairs.

After having a look at Trip Advisor we decided to take their advice and go to their Number 2 restaurant choice, 'Vaso's Kitchen' , just over a mile's walk from our place. Food was ok, but nowhere near as tasty as the previous night, leaving us a bit disappointed and surprised by the generous reviews it's received online. Either way though, we left full and wandered back to the hotel, put on the T.V. and had an early night excited about tomorrow!!

Doing the touristy thing

chrischarly — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Happily surprised that we had breakfast included in our room rate we went to Jackson 20 next door after being awake for a few hours struggling with jet-lag.

As we only have 2 full days here in Washington we decided to make the most of our day by going to see as many tourist sights as possible, heading to the Smithsonian on the metro, which is a cluster of museums in one area.

Our museums of choice were the Air and Space Museum and the Natural History Museums, which we thought to be the most interesting. Unfortunately the weather was miserable and we did get caught in a few downpours so we tried to spend most of our time inside before we had had enough and took the metro back home again.

One thing we were amazed at is that so many things here in America are free.

Such as all the museums and a free bus service (trolley) that runs all the way down King Street between 11:30am and 10pm, which is nice and unexpected.

Once we got back to our hotel we got ready to go downstairs as our hotel offers complimentary wine between 5 and 6 which we made the most of before taking a walk to 'Brabo Tasting Room', highly rated and recommended to us as a cheaper version of the main restaurant next door.

It was well worth the money and we had a great evening sampling the food and supping on wine before taking the trolley back to the hotel.

4 airports in a day

chrischarly — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Woke up at 4:40am, quickly got dressed ad ready before Chris' parents gave us a lift to Stansted airport for our first flight to Frankfurt. Got there in plenty of time before queuing to take our Ryanair flight.

After speaking nicely to the stewardess she gave us Emergency Exit seats once on the plane so although the flight was merely an hour long, it was a comfy one.

Then, once we'd landed in Germany we got the bus from Frankfurt Hahn to Frankfurt International, a nice bus ride of 1.5 hours. It was packed so we couldn't sit together, but Chris managed to make friends with a bloke

who was a aircraft spotter, and was coming to see the new Dreamliner depart (glad Chris got that one!). We then went and checked in using the self service and Chris managed to get us extra legroom seats (bonus) for our Condor flight and with plenty of time to kill we went for some lunch.

We boarded and got chatting to our neighbour Margaret who was lovely and had a nice flight, making sure Chris went for regular walks. After arriving at Baltimore Washington we went and found our super shuttle service and were soon on our way to DC. The (not-so-super) shuttle seemed to take forever, about 1.5 hours actually and he managed to drop off the other two passengers first before finally dropping us at our hotel. The hotel room was lovely and we chilled for a few hours before falling asleep.

All packed and ready (ish)

chrischarly — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

So excited about going to America!! But how come when we have finally finished packing at 10pm tonight that we have more stuff packed for a 3-day trip to Washington (as the folks are bringing the rest of the stuff out with them) than we did for 2 years travel?? Makes no sense to me. Maybe it could be the hair straighteners I have smuggled out with me or all of Chris' cosmetics? :) Anyway, early start in the morning!

Woke up and it's a Wednesday... again...

chrischarly — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Woke up this morning bright and early and went for a nice walk into town to find somewhere cheap with breakfast preferably with Wi-Fi.

American Samoa is pretty pricey actually much to our dismay so breakfast wasn’t cheap and we had to pay for the internet as well.

But we will have to get used to it for the next 8 days. On the internet we managed to get in touch with Carl and arranged

to go and stay with him from tomorrow onwards which will be very exciting, definitely beats staying in a motel for the rest of our stay. We then had a wander around town; Chris got his hair-cut and due to the usual miscommunication ended having it all shaved off really short. We then wandered back for a little while before having some sushi at a little Korean place down the road.

P.S, This blog entry is actually newer than 'The Time Travel' entry, but annoying this blog doesn't understand that!

Time travel

chrischarly — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Got up at 6:30am and got ready to head to the ferry after waking Poy up to drive us there. We were told to be there by 7:30am at the very latest so we had chance to clear immigration before boarding the ferry due to depart at 9am, so we arrived at 7:15am thinking we were running late already but when we arrived everyone was also sat waiting for immigration to open. By 8:30am everything was still closed and this is when most of the locals started showing up clearly more aware obviously than us dumb ‘palangis’ that we are on island time and there is no way the ferry will leave on time. So of course we just sat and waited.

At around 9am immigration finally opened and some security officer started to announce things in Samoan which we kind of understood meant that just some V.I.P.s could start boarding now, not exactly sure who they were but they looked important anyway. So Chris and I, as well as 2 American friends we got talking to, Carl and C.J, decided to use our ‘palangi’ ignorance to our advantage for once and proceeded to board as well, even though no one else was moving forward. So with big friendly smiles, we cleared straight through without any fuss and managed to grab the best seats on the ferry before the masses came onto the ferry.

Haha. The reason as to why the ferry was so busy, as it was packed, is because it is the first ferry operating since the independence and many people from American Samoa came over to celebrate as well, so we were lucky to skip the queues. The ferry finally left at 10:30am bound for American Samoa and OMG it was such a horrible journey! The sea was so rough many Samoans were green within the first hour and it wasn’t long before the whole ferry smelt of vomit and even Chris and I felt really rough, which is not something we are familiar with when on boats,

so Carl kindly gave us some of his sickness tablets which helped a lot but didn’t cure us unfortunately. At one point in the journey maybe just under ½ way the boat hit a big wave and then thumped back down with a bang which sent off one of the emergency flares emitting continuous fluorescent orange smoke, which we thought was pretty awesome and we were half expecting some emergency helicopters to come to our rescue, even though we weren’t in any danger, but thought it might be cool to see. But we soon got sent inside until the flare stopped by some deck hands as the smoke is apparently dangerous to inhale so our excitement soon ended.

Mum told us that Venus was due to cross the sun at 2:30-3pm this afternoon and although it would’ve been interesting to see, it was really cloudy outside and walking was a right mission on this ferry as was trying to stand still, so after a weak attempt I soon gave up and sat back down. Suppose I’ll have to wait another 100 or so years until I get to see it again. Finally after 8 hours of hell on the ferry we arrived in Pago Pago- the capitol of American Samoa and we were all delighted; cleared immigration as quickly as possible and stood chatting once again to Carl and his son.

We met their family briefly and Carl’s Mum shared some oranges and papaya cup cakes with us, which were a nice change to cheese sandwiches as that was all we brought with us on the ferry and the shop was closed on-board. By the way, we crossed the dateline on the ferry so it is now a Tuesday but still the same time, so we are officially time-travellers! We then took a walk to the cheapest motel we could find in town at $60 a night, what a rip-off especially as we had to go searching for someone to let us in as it was empty. But the room itself is ok, pretty rubbish for the price, but never mind, it’s a comfy bed and then we took a walk to the Mexican downstairs. Food was tasty but even though it was just the two of us in there they had the music blasted up so loud and it was lit up with just disco lights you would think you were in a club and not a restaurant so we ate as quickly as we could and left for bed.

A stupid mistake

chrischarly — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Woke up this morning before 7am to our Mobile ringing. Uh oh… it was Chris’ dad informing us that we had stupidly booked our Hawaii-Alaska flight in July instead of June. So Chris’ dad thankfully managed to search online back home whilst on the phone for us and book an alternate route to get to Alaska in time before we missed our connections; so now instead of flying directly to Alaska from Hawaii we have to go Hawaii-Seattle then Seattle-Alaska, so yet another flight on our mammoth trip back home making it 5 flights in a row!

Wow, we are gonna be exhausted! But on the plus side, as there were on a couple of rubbish seats left on our new flights and not together, for just $100 more we get to fly 1st class! Now that is exciting! I have never flown 1st class before and it will be a nice treat to break up the journey! But on the downside we lost quite a bit of money as the original far was non-refundable so now our bank balance is really suffering! Never mind. So once the internet had opened for the morning we headed down into town for a couple of hours, ate in a crappy Italian, confirmed our Ferry tickets for tomorrow and hung out and watched some more boat racing. It was pretty cool as all the Samoans were cheering and enjoying themselves and then we finally headed back and had yet another relaxed evening.

A great big dent in the bank balance

chrischarly — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Took a walk into town today and wandered aimlessly around for a while, went online and booked our flights back home! OMG we fly home in 10 days! That is scary. So our USA, Central America and South America trip is going to be put on hold for a little while whilst we go back and visit family and friends for a bit! So all change out here, but change is good. We had just 2 hours in the internet before it closed as it is still holidays here and managed to book the cheapest options we could find…

American Samoa-Hawaii
then Hawaii-Alaska
then Alaska-Germany
then, finally Germany-Home

So after 3 days of travel which every night will be spent on planes with horrific lay-overs! But then again at short notice this was cheap. So pleased with ourselves but sorry about our new bank balance, we went back and chilled out for a while away from the blaring sun before heading back out for a yummy Indian in the evening.

Another Sunday spent in The Pacific

chrischarly — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Once again it is a Sunday so nothing to do again, so that’s what we did, nothing. Apart from make a tasty pasta bake and watch some movies.

Not a lot to do

chrischarly — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Stacks of coconuts

The celebrations were still going on today and will be for the rest of the week so we headed into town today and surprisingly it was a lot quieter than we envisioned. Many places were closed or closed early so we soon got bored and headed out for an Indian before heading back.

UB40

chrischarly — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

We woke up after an awful night in our smelly hotel room after a group of drunkards were outside our room screaming and throwing things at our hotel and checked out straight away.

We headed to a nice café for some breakfast then in to town to look at what was going on for the Independence Day celebrations.

It was really busy and everyone was in a buoyant mood, there were stalls setup all along the front and even the police had on shiny white uniforms (Sunday Best!).

It was very hot, so we had to keep stopping for refreshments, before heading back to our NICE hotel and getting a well needed shower and some rest before the big night.

We headed to Apia Park around 6pm, to get in early for the UB40 concert. We were glad we did as it was very busy.

There were a number of local bands on first, and one from NZ, but at around 8.30, when the place was really packed UB40 came on. They were without their lead singer, but still did a very impressive set lasting nearly 2 hours. The old stuff was the best, and the locals liked this a lot more than the newer. All in all a great night but both Chris and I were both aching from standing around in a small area for so long.

The party animals we are, we went back and to bed for a nice sleep; pity we didn’t have any Cocoa!

Smelly disgusting motel

chrischarly — Thu, 31 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Checked out of Livingstone Apartments this morning as they are full for tonight, then back down to the doctors for another check-up on Chris before having some breakfast at a café and logging on for a couple of hours. After the internet, we took a walk around the waterfront and watched a heat of the massive canoe racing before making our way to our new hotel for the night.

Only after we had checked in and paid did we realise how lucky we have been with our previous hotel in Apia. This place ranks in our top 5 worse hotels to have stayed in during our trip. It was very small, hot and incredibly smelly, actually incredible smelly is an understatement. We didn’t waste too much time there, and headed out for an Indian to make us feel better, at least it’s only for 1 night!