National Lampoon Vacations Part 1

Another gorgeous day in the 80's today.  It makes me long for vacation.  We usually go to the beach for vacation.  I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but we always have National Lampoon moments on vacation.  Seriously.  I think I will make a two part post telling the stories of the two craziest vacations we ever had.  It makes for some fun reading.  LOL!  I am in no way complaining because we always make the most of whatever happens while on vacation, but the two vacations I'm going to talk about just had so many things go wrong or awkward that I can't resist sharing.  :)

Back in 2004 my parents won a trip to Cancun, Mexico and they didn't want to go because they didn't want to fly, so they gave the trip to Recie and I.  We arrived at the airport 2 hours before the flight was supposed to depart.  We were at the cafeteria watching the planes and listening for our flight to be announced like all the other flights were.  We were supposed to fly from Roanoke to Charlotte and then from Charlotte to Cancun.  We noticed that there was nothing announced in a long time and I started to get worried.  It was my first time flying and because it had been years since Recie flew, it was sort of like his first.  Neither of us knew that there were seats to wait at the gate, so we were waiting at the cafeteria.  Well, we finally heard our name announced saying it was our final boarding call!  We rushed through security and when we got to our gate, it was just in time to see our plane leaving.  We had missed our flight!!!  We went down to the counter and the lady was very rude with us saying that it was our responsibility to get on the plane and that we'd probably have to pay for another flight.  I told her that we were waiting to hear that our plane was ready for boarding and we never heard anything.  She made some phone calls and sure enough, the intercom system had went down and they were having problems with it.  She then (kindly) booked us another flight.  This time we were supposed to fly from Roanoke to Philadelphia and from Philly to Cancun.  We waited another 2 hours and then we found out that the Philly flight was delayed due to very bad storms.  So we had to have our flight re-booked again!  This time we'd fly from Roanoke to Charlotte, from Charlotte to Houston, and then from Houston to Cancun.  After waiting 2 more hours at the airport, we finally got out of there.  When we got to Houston, we almost missed that flight because our plane was late getting there due to flying around storms and then we couldn't find our gate.  Nobody at the airport wanted to help us.  We'd ask employees there and they would just point us in the direction we were supposed to go, but when we went the way they pointed, it led us to a parking garage.  Finally when we had about 10 minutes before our flight was supposed to leave, we found someone who took us to our gate. We actually had to go through the parking garage to get back into the terminal where our gate was.  We would have never found it by ourselves.  It was crazy!!!!  We were supposed to originally get to Cancun around 5pm but we didn't get there until around 12:30am!!!  LOL!  We were supposed to have an oceanfront room but instead we had a"supposed" side view room that faced a water treatment device and it made noise all the time so we couldn't leave our balcony door open without hearing a buzz.  If I looked hard to the left, I could see just a glimpse of the Caribbean from our balcony.  :( 

We were so tired when we arrived that all we did was go straight to our room and go to sleep.  The next day is when we started having a good time.  The Caribbean Sea is gorgeous and I even saw a sea turtle come out of the ocean one night to lay her eggs, which was the highlight of the trip for me.  The resort was nice and was an all inclusive resort so all of the food and drinks was included.  But I have no desire whatsoever to go back to Cancun.  The locals would come and try to sell you stuff on the beach and if you weren't interested or if you told them you didn't bring any money out there with you, they would try to bargain trades with you.  Also, on the trip from the airport to the resort, we thought we were going to die because the driver drove like a freaking maniac.  In fact, it seemed everyone was driving very fast and crazy!  It scared us so badly that we never left the resort for the entire trip.  (We were there for 5 days/4 nights but we only really had 3 good days due to the fact they count the day you arrived and the morning you departed as days.)  On the morning that we were supposed to come home, the shuttle service took us to the airport and a guy came and just took our bags from us (without asking) outside and wheeled them into the airport.  He then wanted a tip, but we only had enough money on us to buy a small snack or drink at the airport.  We didn't need to carry cash with us because the trip didn't cost us anything and if we wanted to buy a souvenir, we just used credit.  He was very upset that he didn't get tipped for carrying our bags in, but we never asked him to nor did he give us a chance to tell him no.  The flight from Cancun to Philadelphia went smoothly until it was time to land.  We hit an air pocket that made the plane drop what felt like 1,000 feet!  It scared me to death.  I will tell you this my friends, I have no desire whatsoever to fly anywhere ever again.  If I can't drive there or get there by boat, I don't need to go there.  LOL!

Here is a photo of Recie and I goofing off in front of the Caribbean Sea.  See how beautiful the water is and how white the sand is!  It was just gorgeous and I am glad we had the opportunity to see it.

And here is the highlight of my trip....the sea turtle that came out to lay her eggs.  I felt truly blessed to have witnessed this.

.