Getting there is half the fun...right? Right?? (Vacation blog part 1)

My wife and I recently went down to Florida for our honeymoon. We booked a flight out of Indy, which is a little less than a 3 hour drive for us, the flight left super early so we booked a hotel room for the night before. My wife's mother lives about 2 hours north of Indy, and she watched our daughter for the week we were gone, Indianapolis is the halfway point between us, that's why we flew from there.

After an uneventful two and a half to three hour drive my wife and I arrived in Indianapolis and parked downtown. During the course of the day we wandered into the US's oldest functioning shoe store, Stout's Footwear. And ate dinner at my favorite place to grab a burger and a beer, Scotty's Brewpub. I had an Anti-resolution Burger, a big burger with caramelized onions and a fried egg among other toppings along with a 3 Wise Men Snow Bunny Blonde Ale, man that's a mouthful. My wife had a Buffalo Chicken Wrap. It is such a good place to eat I can't recommend it enough. It's a must when we attend GenCon every year. After dinner we headed to our hotel, or so we thought. Normally when we're in Indy we stay at the Best Western in nearby Plainfield but after talking to the clerk, it turned out we had booked another BW, at the airport, because it was closer I suppose, so we headed for the correct destination. The hotel was not my favorite, but it worked for our purposes.

Our flight left at 6:20, and we were supposed to get there 2 hours early, so we got up at 2:30 in the morning, got ready, packed up, drove in, parked the car, grabbed the airport shuttle and arrived, only to find out that baggage check hadn't even opened up yet. We finally got our bags checked, found the departure gate and waited grabbing some breakfast from an airport vendor. Finally we boarded the plane, the smallest plane I've ever been on, for our nonstop connecting flight to Orlando. It's been a long time since my wife and I had flown anywhere, so this plane was probably not the best to reintroduce me. On top of being tiny there was, to me, a lot of rough air during the trip. But after 1 hour and 50 minutes we touched down in Orlando.

We successfully navigated the Orlando International Airport to baggage claim, where our bags where right on the carousel Then quickly off to the shuttle stop to bring us to an off site rental car place. The shuttle driver was a madman, he drove like The Knight Bus from Harry Potter, only there wasn't any magic involved. At least he put our bags in the back for us. While the mad driver was weaving in and out of traffic a fairly loud "business man" in black with a faux hawk, sunglasses, rolled up pants and a suit jacket was in front of us, talking to his much less jerky colleague about "sales". He was at best annoying, at worst an ass. Despite the drivers apparent death wish we made it safely to the rental car place (whew!). We opted to stay in Daytona and mess around on the beach for the first few days, a little over an hours drive from Orlando. And after a quick stop to pick up a few things we arrived at Daytona Beach!

(To Be Continued)

In Part 2