The car journey (day 2)

As usual, I woke up as insane o’clock in the morning, ready to get this holiday started. I have a screw loose in everyday life, but when I’m on vacation, I go into hyper cray-cray mode. Luckily for my family, I’m a considerate person, and I actually managed to keep quiet for over three hours, before I started to subtly (ahem) wake them.

Daan was the first to wake. We were joking around and laughing before Elora woke up. Daan tried to be romantic and said: “You know, we could book a second room.”

To which I responded: “Yup, and since Elora won’t want to sleep alone, you’ll get to share that bedroom with her.” This made us laugh so loud, that we woke up Elora. I swear, she was so surely, she should have said: “You kids get off my lawn.”

 

3 minutes later, Elora was in a great mood again. She suddenly realized we were in America. I did warn her we still had a looooong journey ahead of her, but she was so thankful that we made our flight last night, rather than having to spend another day at the airport, she just didn’t care.

We packed up our belongings, checked out of the hotel, and got in our nice car to go get some breakfast. This car was so big, it made me feel like a tiny person. I could actually stretch my legs… it was  heaven. 

Our nutritional breakfast started at McDonalds, where we –like any self respecting tourist—stood staring at the menu with wide eyed panic. I could almost hear John Pinette complain about the time we were taking to decide what to have for breakfast.  Somewhere a voice whispered: “get out of ther line”  (If you don’t know who John Pinette is, this joke will make no sense. Look him up, he was a very funny man)

Where we come from the breakfast menu consists of a croissant and an egg mcmuffin… so the US McDonalds is almost exotic to us.

We ate the very yummy, but very greasy food, and were on our way to Orlando.

The trip wasn’t that spectacular. It’s one big long road. Travelling with Elora is like travelling with Donkey from Shrek. It’s funny at first, but after many, many hours… it starts to wear you down. The random shit that kid comes out with is astonishing. I was exhausted by the end of it. It’s not like we don’t know that our child is hyper and completely random, it’s that dealing with it in a confined space for hours, really makes you do a few ‘willpower saves’. (Yes, I went nerdy for a moment, that was a D&D reference… I’m truly that sad *grin*)

But eventually, after a quick stop at Wendy’s (gaaaaah, the fries with cheese and bell peppers are insanely gorgeous) we made it to Orlando.

A quick stop at some souvenir shop, where we scored on t-shirts and other crap. Then the great quest to find the hotel began. Of course the navigation system didn’t recognize the address… because that would be easy. But with a bit of cleverness, we outwitted the damn thing, and found the hotel.

Words sort of fail me on this hotel. This isn’t so much ‘shabby chique’ as ‘shitty chique’. Everything about this place is craptastic. But… it’s only for two days, so who cares.

We went to go swimming for a little bit, to Elora’s delight, before we ran across the street to one of our favourite restaurants: Joe’s crab shack.

Elora claimed she didn’t like it as much as she remembered, but when we looked back on it, she singlehandedly ate half the freaking food. I’m not even kidding, she ate as much as Daan and I ate together. And she still had room for dessert… the freaking hobbit.

After dinner we ran to the Publix for some snacks and drinks for tomorrow. That’s when the real holiday starts. Now the travelling part is over, we start doing the fun things, like theme parks. Tomorrow Universal Studios is first on our list. I can’t wait.

There are two beds in this Walhalla of mysterious stains, and Elora claimed one of them. So Daan and I are sharing one bed, and this tiny human being has one for herself. I think it’s hilarious.