Day One

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Geo: 53.4807, -2.23451

Bird song. The dawn chorus. I glimpse at the chink in the curtains to see any sign that morning had broken thinking it must be imminent given the full throttled chirping I was hearing. I check my watch. 3.15 am. Damned insomniac bird. Little avian upstart, I spend the next hour trying to return to sleep, not by counting sheep but thinking of as many bird related insults I can come up with. Peter's accompanying snore means I am unsuccessful.

At 5.30 we are both awake and so we brew coffee for our first caffeine hit. Our flight to Atlanta is not till 10.20 and so we don't need to rush off. We enjoy a leisurely breakfast at the hotel before showering and loading the car with our bags. A short trip to meet and greet before checking in for flight VS109. We upgraded to premium for those extra few inches of legroom, vital on a long transatlantic flights.

Security is a breeze and we are airside in no time. No duty free for us. We are transiting in Atlanta to West Palm Beach and so have to collect our luggage their and check in again for the second shorter flight. All we can do now is enjoy coffee in Caffe Nero and wait for our flight to be called.

We board promptly after Peter changes our seats to a better location by the window. Flight crew are really good. Food and service as well. The wine flowed freely. I watched a couple of movies. The Martian which I thought was really good. Then Fantastic 4. Not sure where all the hate for this film came from. I found it very entertaining.

We land (bumpily) ahead of schedule. Immigration was a bitch. We got split up and I was in the line that was not moving. Took an age. A worried Peter was waiting in baggage reclaim with both our bags, yippee.

And so we head to Terminal B to catch our next flight from Atlanta to West Palm Beach with Delta Airlines. Flight is called. We take our time before lining up. The lady takes my boarding pass but instead of the nice beep and green light I get a red light. Uh oh. Same with Peters. The lady radios for a supervisor as she can't fix it. It's 16.10 and the flight leaves at 16.32. Supervisor arrives and she can't solve it. She says Virgin haven't released the 2nd part of the journey whatever that means. She calls the 'back office' to sort but they can't. It's 16.25 and they are letting standby passengers on now. I am trying to zen things out and remain calm which is difficult when Peter is having a mini break down next to me. Supervisor then says she will call the ticket counter, she gets a wrong number. 16.30. I pick Peter up off the floor. She connects, mumbles some words. Swipes boarding pass....green light. Evil looks from the last 2 standby passengers as we fly down the air bridge. Phew.

Flight is packed but uneventful. We touch down in Palm Beach just as the sun is setting. Anxious few minutes waiting for our bags but they turn up. We hop on the shuttle to Hertz and pick up our car and drive to our hotel, the Best Western Palm Beach Lakes.

It's round 7.30pm local so that's 12.30 at home and we were up at 5am and it's starting to tell. Not wanting to travel far to eat we spy a Gourmet Burger Bar over the road and decide that will suffice. The burgers were very good although they got Peters order wrong and he had to wait for it to be cooked again. After that we head straight back to our room and more or less flake out after a long day of travelling.

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