Atlanta and homeward bound

My mother and I went down for breakfast this morning while my wife stayed in our room with a slight hangover. While we were at the buffet selection a waitress approached and asked if we wanted tea of coffee. I said coffee and was trying to explain to her where we were sitting but she smiled and said she knew where we were seated and sure enough, by the time we returned with our breakfast, a pot of coffee was waiting for us. I guess it's not a hard thing to do, but that attentive and observant waitress impressed me a lot.

I was also very impressed with Johnathan at the concierge desk. He tried his best to get us on golf buggy tour of Atlanta but as it was fully booked up we walked to nearby Art Museum instead. I'd have really liked to try the buggy tour, but trying to book it fifteen minutes before it left wasn't really a viable option. 

The Art Museum wasn't really of much interest to us so we walked back to the Federal Reserve Bank Museum near our hotel. We had to go through strict airport style security to get in, which I thought was odd for a museum, but I then realised that it was actually a working federal reserve bank handling millions of dollars each day. There was an interesting exhibition on money through the ages, from simple bartering up to today's modern methods or payment and we were amused to see an 1800's Manx three legged coin displayed in the "unusual forms of currency" section. Like us, it was a long way from home.

When we went back to hotel Johnathon greeted us with a very welcome and refreshing cold drink and we retrieved our cases from the bell boy and the valet parking brought our car around to the main doors and helped us load the car. After tips all around we eased out into the heavy traffic to make our way to the airport. 

It was a horrible drive to airport in the heavy traffic and there was a lot of edging from one lane to another in order not to miss our various turns in the slow, densely packed traffic. We eventually made it to the Alamo returns drop off where we were checked and told we had driven a total of 1681 miles. From there it was a trip on the airport rail system back to the south terminal were our plane seemed to be leaving from. 

Check-in was a farce. We managed to "self" check in with help from an assistant and then had a separate line to check our hold luggage. This took ages as everyone in front of us seemed to have huge cases or too many cases. I couldn't help notice they were all the same ethnicity and wondered why they seems to think baggage allowances didn't apply to them. Some seemed to be trying to check two or three times the cases actually allowed. We also watched on with amusement and amazement as one huge and heavy case was laboriously loaded on to the scales by two passengers and they then had to unloaded a huge amount of clothes on to the floor to get the case down to the required weight. I didn't see what happened to all ow the clothes left on the floor as it was eventually our turn to check in out luggage, which took about one minute as we knew the rules and allowances. 

We went to the gate T7 where I had a burger, fries and a beer while we waited for out flight home. The flight itself was terrible, I was far too hot and couldn't get any sleep. On a previous British Airways home from the USA it was quite cold and a bottle of water at my feet had actually frozen during the flight but it seemed that Delta had the heat turned up full and I was wishing I was waring shorts and a t-shirt.

I was very glad  to land in a cool and breezy Manchester Airport where we had a couple of hours wait before our Flybe flight back home to the Isle of Man.

Rough Crossing Home

We did a lot more walking around Liverpool today, taking in the little gem that is the Western Approaches Museum, the faded glory of the Adelphi Hotel, and the general melee of the Red Hot World Buffet at lunch time before watching "Pirates Of The Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides 3D" at the Odeon.

In the evening we endured a terrible crossing back to the Isle of Man on the Steam Packet's Manannan fast craft. We spent a couple of hours in the Mersey, waiting for the storm to abate, before heading off up the coast for a long time before eventually turning and heading over the Irish Sea to the Isle of Man. What should have been two and a half hour journey anded up being nearly seven hours and we were very glad to eventually get off and head home to bed

Moffat to Isle of Man

Ugh!

Woke up feeling a bit rough and had to pay a few visits to the toilet. I blamed it on the raw meat in the carpaccio I had last night, but my wife suggested it may be several pints of local Best bitter I consumed last night, along with a few whiskeys in our hotel room. Whatever the cause, I manfully struggled through another full Scottish breakfast before we finished packing and checked out of the hotel.

As we had plenty of time in hand to get to Heysham for the Steam Packet ferry I mainly kept to the speed limit on the way back, particularly as the outside air temperature was frequently below zero. We had the usual obligatory stop at the Asda in Lancaster, mainly because it's the most interesting thing to do in Lancaster or Heysham once you've been there a few times before.

The sailing back to the Isle of Man was very calm and I took the time to catch up on a few podcasts and even had a nap. I was almost sorry to back home and having to go to work tomorrow.

Isle of Man to Lancaster

I took our Porsche Boxster to work after lunch so we could be ready to get to the boat for our evening sailing to Heysham on time. The sailing was very calm and I watched the film showing in the Blue Riband members' lounge. We drove the short distance to Lancaster where we were booked in to the Holiday Inn for the night. The room was at the back of the hotel and was quite noisy due to plant machinery below our window.

London to the Isle of Man

Happy New Year!

We had a bit of a lie in and a leisurely breakfast before we finished packing to go home.

We checked out of the hotel and tried to get a taxi, but there was a New Year's Day parade passing near by our hotel and surrounding roads were cordoned off to vehicles. Instead of taking a taxi to Victoria Station we had to walk to Green Park subway with our cases and then travel the one stop to Victoria Station on the underground. I could have donw without humping the cases up and down stairs and on and off the underground that morning but it had to be done. Luckily we'd allowed plenty of time to get to the airport.

Once at Victoria Station we took the Gatwick Express to the airport and had a while to wait for our flight back to the Isle of Man. Flybe was on time, which is always a pleasant surprise with them and we we soon back home.