Not another holiday! A relaxing trip to Barbados - Getting there

So, after 4 trips to Disneyworld in the last 12 months (Sept 13, Dec 13, Feb 14 and Jun 14) plus a trip to Barcelona swiftly followed by a Greek wedding you’d think we had enough holidays for one year right?

Wrong....!

We decided that we needed a slightly more relaxing break as all of the others had been quite busy holidays. So, almost immediately after returning from Disney in June we started looking for another holiday. Virgin were having some form of ‘sale’ and we picked up flights to Barbados (out economy, back premium economy) for £1251 for the 2 of us.

I then started looking at hotels....we booked the Hilton (bed and breakfast) on a fully cancellable rate ($1880 ish for 8 nights) and kept looking at other options.

About 2 weeks before we left there was a new rate at the Hilton that included wifi as well and was down to around $1600 so I swapped to that one. The following day they had a flash sale and I managed to grab the same room rate (breakfast and wifi included) for $1338! Bargain :)

We had also booked a hire car for a few days of the trip but I’ll leave that until it arrives!

So, on with the trip!

Mon 1^st Sept

We dropped the dog off at kennels and did our crazy house tidy. We took the car to get cleaned and had lunch while we waited before returning to the house to pack. We headed off towards the airport around 4pm.

Stopped at fleet services for some McDonalds for our evening meal and then continued along to the M25. We hit some minor traffic but not too bad for the M25. We arrived at the long stay car park and found a nice space for the car.

We walked to the bus stop and just after we got under shelter a massive rain storm arrived. We had just missed a bus and got to see 3 ‘drop off only’ buses pass before another arrived to pick up passengers. A rather annoying couple got on with their small person in a pushchair which they insisted on parking in the aisle making it impossible for anyone to get past them so 90% of people had to stand with luggage due to their annoyingness....!

We arrived at the terminal and saw the massive queue for the bus back to the car park....shades of Disney! We headed in to do twilight check-in and there was literally no one waiting. We were back on our way out a couple of minutes later....

We arrived at the Hilton and checked in, we got upgraded to the executive floor again and so after we dropped our bags in the room we popped to the lounge to get some drinks and snacks before bed.

Tues 2^nd Sept

This morning we got up at around 7.15 for showers before we walked across to the terminal. We were quickly through security without having to play around with any of our electronic devices. Shockingly Rob was not pulled for additional checks today!

We went to Frankie and Benny’s for breakfast which was ok, I had French toast and fruit and Rob had some variety of a full English but without the toast as for some confusing reason it is an added extra!

The flight was delayed about 15 minutes so we took a quick wander around the shops. Shortly after our gate was announced so we headed down. We had selected seats near the front of economy so were one of the last to board. Once we were all on we sat for a while – not exactly sure why. We ended up taking off about an hour late I think.

The flight itself was fine, but there were some really snotty people on board who were just unnecessarily rude to the crew. There was a problem with the in flight entertainment about 2 hours from landing and the woman in front of us stopped one of the crew who acknowledged the issue and said that they were aware (and were obviously working on it) and the snotty woman was just plain rude again!

Annoying people aside; we landed slightly late and were off the plane fairly quickly. Sooo warm when we walked across to the terminal! We had completed our immigration forms (which were extremely similar to the old USA forms) and were processed very quickly and in a friendlier manner than we are used to when travelling to Orlando.

Customs took a little bit longer but then we were out and looking for a taxi. The Hilton actually sends someone from the hotel to ensure that guests use official taxis and soon we were on our way. The cost was $22 US or $42 BDS and as we only had US we gave a generous tip.

We arrived at the Hilton and were quickly checked in and given access to the executive lounge again. We were taken to our room by one of the bell men and he showed us around the resort on the way.

 

 

 

 

We quickly unpacked and then headed to the lounge for a quick drink. We were also offered snacks whilst we were there (chicken samosas) which were in addition to the cheese and biscuits which would be on offer each evening.

We forced ourselves to go to dinner in the restaurant downstairs but once we were done we were super tired and so we headed off to bed at around 8pm.