Category Archives: Travel

Posts related to travel, USA Travel, UK Travel, Holidays and Vacations

Our Christmas Trip Is Finally Coming Together

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If you are a subscriber to our blog or a regular reader, you will know that whan I moved back to the UK from Florida at the end of July, I had to leave my two daughters behind (with their Mom), and since I am missing them terribly, like all Dads do, we decided to try and spend Christmas in Florida to I can at least see them for a week.

The problem with going to Florida over Christmas though is that this is high season, the time when flights and accommodation are at their highest prices, and also at their scarcest.

In the wintertime, South Florida is full of people from the East Coast of the USA and Canada, the “snowbirds” as they are known.   Some snowbirds spend a good three months in Florida to escape the bitterly cold winters up north, while others just visit for one or two weeks.  If you go to the beaches in South Florida over the Christmas period and look at the licence plates of the cars, at least 2/3rds of them if not more are from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and in the Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale area too from Quebec and Toronto.   Just listen to the conversations on the people on the beach too, and the all too familiar Hispanic voices are replaced by New York twangs and even more so by Canadian French.

Last week after much searching for a decent route at a decent price, we bit the bullet and purchased our flights.  The price was high, but not as much as we could have ended up paying.  It was actually cheaper than it cost to get Debbie over to Florida for Christmas two years ago, but we also don’t have direct flights, which I hope is not going to be a problem.   When taking a multi-leg flight, you need to allow for delays in schedule, and inbound to the USA as well for delays in immigration, where Debbie has already had issues, her last trip to Miami resulting in her being stuck in immigration for 15 hours!   But hopefully we will be ok this time, since we have a 3 hour layover in Raleigh/Durham before catching our flight down to Miami, and I also now have my USA Passport, which ought to help.

Last night we also bit the bullet and booked a place to stay.  It’s not a luxurious hotel or resort, it’s a typical family owned motel on Hollywood Beach, and although it cost a lot it will hopefully work out best for us.   The few reviews that we managed to find for the motel sounded more good than bad.  There is no pool or hot tub, it’s above several restaurants so it could be noisy at night, but it is right on the boardwalk and we will be able to eat and walk along the beach at night, instead of being stuck in a hotel away from the beach in the evenings.

There really were not many choices for hotels unfortunately, since prices are sky high, and most places are already fully booked.  Left are the hotels close to the airport in Fort Lauderdale, those on the interstate, and some high and low end places that are either too expensive or in a bad neighborhood.  Of the three places on the beach, one was $250 a night, way out of our price range, a second was $100 a night but in the middle of being renovated and with some horrible reviews.  The place we picked was about the only choice.

My biggest fear is that because we don’t land in Miami until 9:30pm on Christmas Eve, is that everything will be closed, and it will be 11pm at the earliest before we get to where we are staying.  Since few places open in Florida on Christmas Day, we could end up without any essentials like bread, milk, juice etc for a day.  However staying right on the beach, there ought to be some shops and restaurants open at least.  It’s going to be a different Christmas with no turkey and trimmings I am sure, but hopefully a good one.   Getting up on Christmas Day is going to be tough, since by the time we get to bed it will already be 5am UK time or later!  Probably a good day to just spend relaxing on the beach or the terrace.

Now we need to find a good deal on a rental car, which I hope is easier to sort out.  There appear to be plenty of choices at least from all the car rental companies, but even that is expensive.  I must remember to use my AAA (equivalent of AA/RAC in the UK) discount to save some money, but since we will be taking the girls out we need to have transport.  

I doubt that we will be spending many days on the beach, but at least we will be right there in the evenings, plenty of opportunities for walking, either on the boardwalk (promenade) or along the waters edge.

So wish us luck!  Hopefully the flights, immigration process, accommodation and weather all work in our favour.  Will post updates and photos later, also a video or two maybe…

The Great British Commute

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traffic_jamWinter is fast approaching here in England, the clocks have now gone back, it’s darker at night, and at the end of a long day at work so many of us are now faced with a dark and damp commute home, which can sometimes turn into a nightmare experience.

My drive home from work is only 8 1/2 miles, yet last night it took close to 1 1/2 hours to get home.   It was even worse for several people I know in the office who didn’t get home until 8pm and 8:30pm, and that was only a drive of 14 miles.

The problem last night was on the motorway close to work, where a woman fell from a bridge onto the road, plus about 5 or 6 miles further up the road where two trucks collided.   The whole motorway system therefore came to a grinding halt for 10 or more miles around.   

Unfortunately, the city of Southampton is sandwiched between the South Coast of England and the River Itchen, and the motorways run from the southeast, north around the city and off to the west.   So, if the motorways all get snarled up, people come off looking for an alternative route, and that leads them onto the regular roads that are already heavy with traffic for most of the day.   The regular “A” roads around here are more often than not only 1 lane in each direction as well, so it doesn’t take much to cause major holdups where the roads cross others, or where they cross the river.

Since I work to a fixed timetable (the buzzer sounds at 5pm and everyone rushes out at the same time to head home), there isn’t much I can do to avoid the rush hour, and given the location of the office, I don’t have many alternatives as to the route I take to get home.   So, like thousands of others last night, I just sat in traffic and listened to the radio.

Hopefully tonight will be better, but as soon as it gets dark and wet here in England, everything slows right down.  The one big consolation is that I drive an automatic, so I didn’t have to spend 90 minutes with my foot on and off the clutch at least.

A New Forest Walk

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On Monday as the weather looked to be nice, we wandered over to Debbie’s Mum and Dad’s for a brief visit, as I hadn’t seen them since I was last in the UK, and then took a trip out to our favourite spot in The New Forest to take a walk.   Our plan was to re-trace the walk that we did back in April, when we saw several white deer, but it involved trecking way off the main paths and heading off into parts of the forest that only rangers usually go into.  However, we really enjoyed our walk last time, and wanted to try and find the same places again.

Our walk started from a car park on the Ornamental Drive, which leads up to Rhinefield House, a 5 star hotel that used to be owned by Richard Branson (and maybe still is).  The Ornamental Drive is lined with Rhododendron bushes on both sides, and for a short time in the spring it’s lovely, however this is early August and not a flower in sight.

We headed out and had no problem re-tracing our previous journey, except that three months more into the summertime the ferns had fully grown, so it was not always so easy to determine where we went before, however we managed ok.

At one point where we came close to a fence line, we stood deciding which way we needed to go through an area where the grass was longer.   Suddenly, out of a grassy mound not 20 feet from where we were standing, a pheasant flew up into the air, giving us both a start.   We looked at each other, and started to talk about it, when all of a sudden there was a second, then a third, and a fourth, all not 20 feet from where we were, but we hadn’t seen them at all in the grass as they were so well camouflaged.

From here the grass got a bit longer, and it was hard to always find a way to go where we could avoid it.  Since Debbie is mortally afraid of snakes, and the forest is known to have a lot of adders, the most poisonous snake in the UK, she was rather concerned.  However we didn’t see a single one, nothing scary, and found our way quite easily up several little used paths, across a fence, over an old wooden bridge, and we came to a clearing where the previous time we had seen several horses and all of our deer.

Approaching the clearing through some trees we saw a few deer, but they saw us first, and headed away before we could take any decent photographs.   So we carried on to the clearing, seeing no wildlife, and decided to wander into the woods at the far end of the clearing, where we sat on a fallen tree to wait for some deer to hopefully arrive.

Well, we waited and waited, waited some more, trying not to move too much, trying to keep quiet, and eventually after what mist have been close to 30 minutes, our patience was rewarded by about a dozen deer coming close, led by one of the white deer.

They didn’t come as close as we would have liked, so eventually we made a move and started walking towards them, which caused them to move away, however we did get close enough for me to take some video, while surprisingly because of the amount of zoom that was needed, Debbie also got some nice photographs.   We tried to follow the deer for about 1/4 mile, but it was obvious that they wouldn’t be coming closer, so we decided to head on to the next leg of our journey.

We hadn’t gone very far when a family of ponies came along, and as we approached, one of the two foals walked right up to me, within a few feet, before turning around and going back to feeding.   The whole experience was so nice, because there were no sounds of other people around, in fact no sounds of human life at all, which was really nice.

The last leg of the journey took us a different way back, since we had to cross a stream using a fallen log, and then had to find our way back to the car park, which was about a mile away,  through an area of woodland that had huge clumps of ferns, boggy patches, and the only pathways were those that had been made by animals not people.  But we succeeded, and ended up back close to the ornamental drive, the car park and then home.

Below you will find some of the photos that Debbie took, and I hope you also enjoyed my video clips.   Clicking on any of the photos in the gallery will display the full size image.

I’m Back In The UK

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Finally I am back in the UK and with my Debbie after more than 3 months apart, way too long for both of us.

After many evenings of packing that frequently went beyond midnight, I finished packing about 1am on Wednesday, with the alarm set for 3:45am to give me enough time to get out and catch my flight in Miami at 8:30am.   I had a quick webcam chat with Debbie, showered and packed the last of my things, said goodbye to Tim my landlord with whom I have become very good friends, and drove down the highway to the train station in Hollywood where I had arranged to leave my car to be picked up.

I lugged my bags (2 to be checked in, my laptop bag and a backpack) up in the elevator, across the bridge, down the other side, and then realized the ticket machines were over the other side.  Fortunately the platform was almost empty, and the only person close to me asked if I was English – turns out he came over to Florida from Birmingham 10 years ago.  So I took a chance and left my 2 big bags where they were and legged it up the stairs, across the bridge, down across the other side, where I purchased my ticket.  Then it was back up across and down, by which time I was completely soaked in sweat.   Despite the fact that it was only 5:30am, the temperature was in the mid 80′s and it was extremely humid.  It took me most of the way to Miami before I cooled off.

The shuttle from the train station dropped me about 1/3 of the way along the terminals in the airport, but of course as luck would have it, United are in the new terminal at the far end, so I had to lug my bags well over 1/4 mile to check them in.  It was rather cool in the airport, and by this time I was desperate to go to the  bathroom, plus I was nervous in case my bags were overweight and I would have to repack or dump some things out.  However, I got checked in pretty quick, was within the weight limit, and got through the security without any problems either.

I had plenty of time to wait for the plane, managed to call Debbie to let her know I had checked in, called Tim as I had remembered I left a drawer of dirty laundry (the result of packing too late at night), and called my daughters before they went off to their swimming lessons.

Under normal circumstances I would have caught an evening flight direct to London, however direct flights at the end of July were about $1,000 and multiple legs weren’t much cheaper.  Debbie fortunately found a flight for $406 through Vayama, a company like Priceline, that offers discounted travel but you don’t find out the route until you purchase.  Fortunately with Vayama having purchased you have an hour to cancel, which swayed me over to trying this out.  I knew the flight left Miami at 8:30am and I didn’t get into London until 6:30am the following morning, but other than knowing it was 2 planes, I had no idea where my connection point would be.  The last thing I wanted was to fly to some place out west and have a short connection time, which might mean spending a day in some god-forsaken spot that I didn’t want to be.   I was lucky however, in that the flight from Miami went direct to Dulles (Washington DC) where I had a 7 hour layover before my flight to London.

The first flight went very smoothly, and there was plenty of legroom too.   In Washington I wandered around the terminals to try and find somewhere reasonable to eat, since by this time (midday) I was feeling a bit peckish.  The terminals are connected by shuttle buses, that look like lounges on wheels and drive all over the airport.    Having covered the rest of the terminals, I found out that the majority of the restaurants are in the terminal that I hadn’t covered.  Of course, the shuttle dropped me at gate 3, and the restaurant I wanted to eat at, Max & Erma’s was at gate 72, a good 1/4 mile hike at least!   I was hungry, but I also had a throbbing headache, which could be stress, tiredness and also the humidity.  I thought a good warm meal might help that.     I opted for a starter of Tortilla Soup, which wasn’t bad, then a Bacon Cheeseburger and Fries.  Not the healthiest item on the menu, but I really wanted something warming and filling, and it hit the spot.  That and 4 glasses of iced tea, which helped replenish the water I had sweat out so far.

I still had 5 more hours to kill in the airport before my next flight, and saw on one of the shuttles that I could take a bus to the Smithsonian Museum for 50cents, and there was free admission too.  On another day I would have jumped at this opportunity, but right then all I needed was to sit and try to relax before the next flight.    I found a seat close to the gate where my plane was due to depart from,  powered on the laptop, and settled down to watch a movie.  I selected “Miracle At Santa Ana” which turned out to be a WWII movie set in Italy with a company of Buffalo Soldiers.  Not a bad movie, but it helped kill 2 1/2 hours.   I had forgotten to copy any movies onto my flash drive before I packed my external hard drive away, so other than the movie all I had was a 1972 Genesis concert.  This got some strange looks from people sitting close, since back then the costumes and stage act from Peter Gabriel were rather odd to say the least.

I did get a lot of amusement from the fact that there was a small glass sided area set aside in the lounge for smokers with about 15 seats.  Not only were most of the seats taken most of the time, but often it was standing room only, with the occupants puffing and dragging away on their cigarettes like their life depended on it.  Really quite funny, but at the same time sad.

My 6pm flight to London Heathrow boarded on time, and I was very pleased to find that I had an Economy Plus seat with extra legroom.  All that for a bargain price, woo-hoo!   However, instead of landing 30 minutes early as we were supposed to, we ended up delayed an hour and a half due to bad weather in the Philadelphia area, which caused air traffic control to stop the take-off of any flights in the area for a while.   But eventually we got under way, and had a smooth flight.   Food wasn’t bad, with curried chicken to eat, and a quick snack for breakfast, and in between a few hours sleep while I listened to some of my favorite songs on my new MP3 player.  I also ended up sitting next to a lady from Fort Lauderdale who was originally from Devon and on her way back there for a visit, so we chatted for quite a while before we headed off to sleep.

Since I was supposed to arrive 30 minutes early and ended up landing over an hour late, Debbie was there to greet me, and I got the most wonderful hugs and kisses, two things that she excels at.  A little more than an hour later and we were home, where I had a much needed shower and cleaned up, then some yummy bacon rolls and off to bed.  We were both really tired, since I had hardly slept for two nights, and Debbie had to get up as well by 4am.

Well two days and lots of sleep later and I was feeling more human and also adjusting to the time difference in the UK.   I will update more on my adventures back in the UK in my future posts.  If you would like to be receive posts automatically, why not Register with us, we promise no spam and will keep your email addresses private.

The End Of A Short Era

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Deer Creek Country Club Deerfield Beach FloridaTomorrow I head back to work, starting a new contract after three months of being unemployed, and so apart from weekends, today marked the last time I expect to be able to take my morning walk around Deer Creek.

I have really enjoyed getting out of bed in the morning, and heading out around the lakes and golf course at Deer Creek to stretch my legs, listen to the birds chirping, and to watch the wildlife and trees.  There is always something different to see every time I take a walk, and I will really miss it.  At least I should have one weekend day when I can take my walk (the other I see my daughters and take them for breakfast, so no time).

I also still hope to go walking most evenings, which I also enjoy, and it’s different, especially in the dark.  Of course now with Summer here it doesn’t get dark until late.  Going out for a walk at 8pm even a few weeks ago would provide you with an awesome clear sky full of stars.  Now the sun still hasn’t set by that time.

Well it looks as if my Squidoo Lens about my walks around Deer Creek has started a trend.  Today Clouda9 published a lens about a Walk On Our Country Road, a lovely tour of the rural area where she lives, and it’s so different to Deer Creek, being out in the countryside.

I hope many more people will think about doing this.  It’s so nice to see the places where people live, so inviting to stroll along with them on a virtual tour of their favorite places to go walking, and nice to see the photographs of these special places.   So if you think you might like to do this, let me know.  Just stroll out, camera in hand, create a lens or a blog post, and I will write about it.   Maybe we can acquire a nice collection of these as time goes on.   If nothing else, these will make great memories in years to come, something to hand down to the children and grandchildren.

Patricia Sanders (aka Jewelsofawe) also has a great lens about being out on her sister-in-laws farm.  Take a look at Out On The Farm and see if you feel envious of the beautiful scenery.  She also created a lens that gives a wonderful virtual tour of her Garden Of Veggies – the Apple Pie looks delicious.

Bishops Waltham

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Bishops Waltham is a small town in Hampshire, at the head of the River Hamble and close to the South Coast of England that dates back to Saxon times.   Much of the town is unchanged, retaining the historic buildings and shops and narrow streets.   Debbie and I stopped to take a walk through the town in April.  We hope you enjoy the photos that we took, which are in the gallery below.

The town is one of the few in England that has managed to retain it’s character, and as well as many of the Georgian buildings remaining, Bishops Waltham has managed to suppress the influx of larger supermarket chains and almost all of the shops in the town are family run businesses.   The local butcher had a number of protest signs outside because one of the supermarkets is planning to open in the town, which will sound the death knell for many of the local shops.

The ruins of Bishops Waltham Palace on the edge of the town are open to the public in the summer months and are run by the English Heritage Trust.  The palace was used by the Bishops and senior clergy of Winchester as they travelled through their diocese. Winchester was the richest diocese in England at the time, and as such its properties were grand.   The palace was destroyed on the orders of Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil war. Much of the old Palace is still in the town. Apart from the ruins, which are open to the public and well worth a visit, material from the Palace was used as building materials in town buildings still standing to this day.

Click Here for Books and other items about Bishops Waltham from Amazon.