This morning we set an alarm for 7am as we actually had a set time to be ready! We started off doing the washing so that a nice clean bed would be ready for us when we got home. Next we started cleaning the house again so that we return to a tidy house!
We took the dog to kennels just before 12 and then met Rob’s parents for lunch at the garden centre. We headed back to the house to finish off the cleaning (I don’t vacuum until after the dog has gone) do the ironing and then finally start packing!
We did also manage to get the grass cut before our taxi arrived which was good as it had been raining the previous weekend.
All our bags loaded into the car next stop our friends to collect the 5 of them. Car seats for the kids popped in and we were off, the drive to Gatwick was ok we did hit some traffic at Stonehenge and a little bit on the M25 (what else is new?) With a brief stop at Fleet services to allow the children to use the facilities the journey took us just over 3 hours.
We had 2 rooms booked at the Hampton @ North Terminal using our Hilton points, the rooms were nice and clean and both sofa beds were made up on our arrival. We gave the room with the best view to our friends so the children could watch aircraft.
It was now past 7pm so we headed to the Nicholas Culpepper to get dinner.
We had a good meal and didn’t have room for dessert. After we had eaten we popped across to South Terminal on the monorail to get some travel sickness pills.
Back at the Hampton Lucy got the kids ready for bed whilst Rob, Matt and I got a quick drink in the bar before bed.
11th August
This morning we got up around 7 again I think, we had agreed to go down to breakfast at 8 – this was included and given that we didn’t pay for our rooms was a reasonable quality. Rob would have preferred a cooked to order breakfast but there was plenty of choice for the children.
We gathered all our bags together and checked out before taking the monorail across to South Terminal. We had been unable to check in online as Lucy had been selected for extra security, this meant we had to get in the very long line for check in assistance I would have preferred to do twilight check in but Lucy didn’t want to complicate her packing for the children. In fairness the line moved relatively quickly and we had plenty of time but I will definitely be going back to twilight next time!
Bags all dropped off and boarding passes collected we went through the family security which was fairly simple, although I seem to remember that only 2 of us got through without extra screening so we were trying to grab all the hand luggage!
We found seats near the kids area in the departure lounge and then took turns to look around the shops and get drinks etc. We were slightly delayed – I think between 30 minutes and an hour, once we boarded we were off quickly.
We had come prepared for a flight with children, we had several rounds of snacks (crisps, mini cheddars, chocolate bars). We had also downloaded some movies to our iPad in case the entertainment didn’t appeal to the kids. The flight wasn’t too bad, Amy watched Frozen and Beauty and the Beast on the iPad and the boys watched a couple of movies plus they all did some activity books.
We arrived in Tampa and having selected seats near the front of economy were off the aircraft quickly, immigration was much quieter than at MCO which was great. We all skipped the machines (as it was our friends first trip) and once Rob and I were through we collected the bags and were ready once the rest were through.
We declared the remainder of our snacks to the customs man and he seemed amused by this as he sent us on our way. Next stop was the avis garage where we declined all upgrades etc and just opted for the prepaid fuel before collecting our Chevrolet Suburban.
We carefully packed all the bags in – which did just about fit – and took the short drive to the Tampa Doubletree. We checked in and got the warm cookies which pleased the kids, before dropping our bags in the rooms and quickly freshening up before going to find some food.
We originally tried Bahama Breeze which had a 30 minute wait and so we decided to go to the Cheesecake Factory, by the time we got our food the kids were starting to get quite tired so we skipped dessert and went back to the hotel to bed.
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