East Point

An early start to the day, we departed the Oxford Belfry Hotel in Thame at 7am where we had been celebrating Bruce & Poppy’s wedding yesterday. Felt very groggy as we had not got to bed until 1am! We arrived back home with time to spare and a chance to relax before Mark Twyman, Berko Black Cab took us to Heathrow T5 for our flight to Atlanta. First time we have used Mark and we were very impressed. He arrived at our house 15 minutes early and was very pleasant company. Once we were airside we checked in to the lounge and settled down to enjoy the food and beverages in comfort. It wasn’t the best lounge, rather cramped and sort of stuck in the corner with a strange layout, but hey, it was comfortable and a refuge from the hoi poloi and noise. The flight was uneventful, arriving on time, but being the USA, it took ages to clear customs in Atlanta, as everyone has to have their hand print and their thumb print taken then their photo, so you can imagine the queues at customs, added to which there were not very many booths open. The next challenge was to find our hire car which transpired to require us to catch a shuttle to the Avis car hire place a couple of miles away. They tried to fob us off with a Beetle convertible but we stuck to our guns and finally after much searching and telling us “hey ma’m were on the case, we haven’t forgotten you” turned up what we had booked – a Mustang convertible, and its red! Result!! It had an in car sat nav but we had also brought our TomTom. The in car sat nav kept telling us to take roads that didn’t exist – bit worrying and then told us “you have reached your destination” outside our hotel, but on the highway with no obvious entrance in sight. Our TomTom got its knickers in a real twist and was trying to make us use its route without recognising we had taken a short cut. Solved that by clearing the route and starting it again. Finally checked into the Hilton Garden Hotel by 23:00, ready for bed! Late note – woken by the alarm monitoring station for work at 02:51am local time! Luckily I recognised the number and did not answer it. They tried once more, I’ve now blocked their number for the duration of the holiday, so that won’t happen again.Lue lisää