I took a lovely vacation to Alabama this past week and had an amazing time! Read all about it below :)
Tuesday, February 19th: Day of Departure....aka my first time flying ever. So we get to the airport about two hours early and go through security and see that our plane is on time. We are thinking to ourselves, awesome this is great. The only glitch is that instead of stopping in Atlanta and letting people off the plane, we now have to switch planes. Doesn't seem like too big of a deal and the gate attendant said he would explain it. We get on the plane, we are on time. I am all buckled, Jake and Emily have calmed me down with minimal tears from me. The flight attendant comes over to ask our names and we tell her and she goes oh you are on the plane. Okay...she leaves and comes back and tells us that there are no seats for us on the next plane and we should get off this plane so that we aren't stuck in Atlanta....okay all the people on the plane and she makes us get off. Then she asks us how old we are in this voice that makes us feel like we are like 10 years old, so we told her and she goes oh. Maybe I should have pretended to be younger? So we get off and this other girl comes running down telling us to get on the plane and there is a better chance of getting us a flight from Atlanta. So we get back on, put our carry-ons back up and buckle up. Then we get booted AGAIN, and like literally they slammed the doors behind us and took off. I think they left skid marks on the roadway. So now we are stuck in Buffalo's airport without knowing when we can get to Alabama. We are on standby for a later flight, it's too full. We are on stand-by again for another flight and they put us on first class, woohoo :) So the rest of the flight was pretty uneventful and we made it to Mobile around 8:00 or so, relieved to be in Alabama. So we missed about half a day in the Alabama sun :(
Wednesday, February 20th: We started out the morning walking along the ocean looking for shells. Then we went swimming and hot tubbing and worked on my (non-existent) tan. Then we went up for lunch and I read on the balcony. Then we drove to Fort Morgan, it was amazing to see all the damage that is still down south from the hurricane. We went to the local library to get a movie (The Chronicles of Narnia) For dinner we went to Sea n' Suds which was a short walk away from our condo. I felt rushed so I just had the cheeseburger...boring I know!
Thursday, February 21st: RAIN!!!! It downpoured...I think the weather channel said there was like 5 inches of rain or something. We had a pretty lazy morning. We did a little souvenir shopping and then drove over to the outlets where I got a cute tote bag :) Then we went to Lambert's Cafe (aka Throwed Rolls) They come around and throw rolls to you (fresh from the oven) and they bring over all sorts of side dishes. I had the fried chicken with a baked potato and green beans (yum) they brought over some fried okra and fried potatoes as well. It was all really good, but there was so much food! We ended the night with a dip in the hot tub in the rain. Em, Jake and I went upstairs to have a party in the Jacuzzi tub (in our bathing suits freaks!) and then watched our movie and drank some cran-apple deliciousness. It was very relaxing.
Friday, February 22nd: Fog and some rain. We drove out to the library and post office to send out our postcards. We went to Bahama Bob's for dinner. It was a cute little bar/restaurant that was bumping at 7:30! My goodness. I had the fish po' boy which was mighty yummy! And then I listened to the women next to us talk for a good 10 minutes about why they hate Hilary Clinton. It was a strange feeling being in a red state, that's for sure!
Saturday, February 23rd: We took the ferry to Dauphin Island and went to the Estuarium. It was a cute little aquarium and we had a lot of fun looking at the different animals.
Then we drove over the bridge where that man
threw his kids off. I don't really like bridges or ferries so this wasn't the best part for me. We had planned to go to LuLu's for dinner but the wait was crazy long so we went to the Gulf Island Grill instead. I got a family sampler which had chicken fingers, buffalo mango shrimp and fried pickles. Huge amounts of food but it was all sooooo good, even the fried pickles. I ended up having so many leftovers and now I can say that I tried fried pickles :) The day ended with swimming and hot tub :)
Sunday, February 24th: Zoo day! We decided to go the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo which is a little zoo. We didn't know it but the Animal Planet actually did a documentary about this zoo. It was the cutest zoo ever and very exciting. The animals were cute....especially this guy.
He saw the food in our cups and he wanted us to feed him, and he was all over us. He kept getting so close that I thought he was going to kiss us. Good thing he was friendly. The goats were funny too. They biggest goat tried to steal Emily's cup of food....we have the bite marks to prove it ;) The highlight of the zoo trip would have to be the alligator's daring escape.
I made that sound really scary! In the picture above there are three alligators where there should be four. Earlier in the week I guess there was a flood and the gate under the gift shop received a nice hole where 3 of the 4 gators escaped into a different pond. When we were there they were trying to wrangle up the final alligator (which was kind of cool) and it took a lot of people! Jake even got to touch it....ew. After the zoo we went to
LuLu's for lunch. This is Jimmy Buffet's sisters' restaurant. It was so cool there. I just had a greek salad but it was very filling because we were all picking off each other's plates. Emily got a side of mac and cheese to share with me and it was so good! Real southern cooking! It was really fun there and I recommend it for anyone who goes down to Gulf Shores! After lunch it was time for some mini-golf! We went to
Pirates Island Golf which is just Pirate themed mini-golf. I do have to say that I had a hole in one (total fluke); I should also say that I lost by 17 points :( I tried though and I thought I rocked it! That was a really full day, so we ended it at the pool (of course).
Monday, February 25th: Our last day :( Today was our day to kind of veg out...Emily, Nani and I went outlet shopping woohoo! I got a cute scarf from Old Navy and a wallet from Coach for only $32. I save $117.10 according to the saleswoman...go me! After that, Emily, Jake and
I went to the ocean. I read my book while Emily and Jake went searching in the ocean for shells. I only went up to my ankles though :) That night, Em and I made our memory bottles by collecting sand and putting some of our shells in them. For dinner we went to Sonic! Emily had wanted to go for awhile so we thought we would try it. It was a pretty cool drive-in restaurant and the perfect end to our vacation :)
Tuesday, February 26th: Travel again :( We had to wake up at 6:00 to get ready because the airport was about 2 hours away. We get to the airport and it is small (only 7 gates). We then go through security where they proceed to ransack our bags, I mean empty the suckers out after our careful packing arrangement. Of course, they didn't put anything back in the right place! Buffalo's airport didn't do this! So this is the beginning of our crankiness. We then have about a 40 minute layover, which is okay. We were just worried about getting to Atlanta with enough time to get our other plane. So our plane arrives and it is a small little piece of equipment and I hated it. The ride was so bumpy and traumatizing. So we get to ATL where we are all cranky apparently. We start heading to Gate D36 and Jake and I tried telling Emily we were going the wrong way but she was cranky and snappy and finally realized we were right. So we get to D36 where we find out that our gate has been moved to E35 (aka far away) so we get to E35 where the board says that our flight is at D36, so we ask and luckily it was only at E33. Ugh! Our flight is delayed about 1 1/2 hours. So about an hour later there is an ambulance right outside our gate! Well some women fell off the stairs (where the stairs and the gate connect) flat on her face. I mean that is a good 10 foot drop onto cement! So we got moved again, but that was awful. When we go to board this plane, we get ticket errors. So we get new boarding passes, still an error! Of course it is our tickets! So the gate attendant goes and fixes it somehow and tells us we can get on. We were literally the last people on the plane (small again) and we had to like walk outside and up the stairs. We were greeted in Buffalo by a lot of snow, but we were grateful to be on the ground! I cried tears of relief to be alive!
In summary: the vacation was awesome, the flying was not! It seemed like everything that could go wrong did!
Labels: Alabama, travel, vacation
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