Day Zero ~ Travel Day

Yay! It's finally Travel Day for our 4th cruise. We booked this cruise while on the cruise last year. They had an amazing on board credit (OBC) deal, and we started with $250 OBC before we even walked off the ship last year. We have been counting down the days since. We weren't thrilled with the Western itinerary, but our goal for this trip was total relaxation after Isaac's wedding 2 weeks prior. And we achieved that! Now on with the fun part....the trip :)

We were up before 7 all excited to hit the road. Plus we went to bed at 9:30 the night before HaHa.

So I had coffee and did some last minute packing. I kept trying to consolidate. I always over pack. This year I determined to not take anything I didn't think I'd need. So I kept putting things back, which turned out to work against me and I'll never do that again!

So Doug packed up the car and we were on our way. First we stopped at Starbucks for more coffee for me, tea for Doug and breakfast. About 8:30 am we were Hagerstown bound! We are cruising out of Baltimore, but we are meeting friends that I'd not yet met IRL for dinner. I was super excited about that, too!

We had planned to stop for lunch at Cracker Barrel, but we were ahead of schedule and not hungry at 10:30. So we kept going with a couple pit stops along the way.

We arrived in Hagerstown about 1:00 and grabbed lunch at Arby's and headed to the hotel to see if they would let us check in early. And they did! We had a really nice room at Comfort Suites. Doug gets points since he stays at a Comfort Inn twice a week, which is why we chose this room (can we say free?). I'd pay money to stay there. It was clean, nice, and had an OK breakfast.

We had about 4 hours before we were meeting Diana and Ian for dinner, so we napped. And then I sent Doug to Dunkin Donuts for coffee (see a theme?)

We really enjoyed our dinner last year at La Tolteca, so that is where we met Diana and Ian. Actually, Diana commented on my review last year that she now had a new restaurant to try. And so I asked her a few months before our trip if they would like to have dinner with us when we were in town, and we could finally meet IRL!  Diana and I have been friends online for 8ish years. We met on a homeschool forum, but really got to know each other in a Weight Watcher thread. We've since moved to Facebook groups. And she's moved away from WW, but that and hs'ing were our common threads in meeting online. And tonight we'd meet for real!! Super exciting.

I just loved meeting Diana and Ian. We had such a great time at dinner. We met at 6 and closed the place down at 10. It was like we had always been friends. I love when my friends jump out of the computer and become real!

And then back to the hotel for sleep. When we wake up we'll be on our way to Baltimore and Grandeur of the Seas for 10 fabulous nights!!