The Bahamas: Part I

I think it's time I finally caught up blogging about our vacation, since it was almost a month ago already!

It was a scary time the week before. Although leaving the cold in January seemed like a good idea, the week before we flew out was spent on weather.com checking to see if it would blizzard when we were supposed to leave.

It ended up that a snowstorm was supposed to start at about 5 a.m. on the Sunday we were to fly out of Chicago, and our flight was scheduled for 5:45 a.m.

We left Nate's parents house extra early and arrived at O'Hare at about 1 a.m., thinking we would just chill in the terminal before our plane boarded. Well, neither of us had arrived at an airport at that time of night and found that the ticket counter was closed when we arrived.

We took a seat on the cold tile floor, grabbed a deck of cards and played two games of cribbage. We munched on snacks provided by his parents, took turns walking around to stretch our legs, laughed at a hipster who showed up in skinny jeans tucked into ankle boots with a T-shirt and rubber-looking suspenders. He looked ridiculous, and I snapped pictures of him with Nate's iPhone.

The ticket counter didn't open until 3 a.m., and then security didn't open until almost 4 a.m., so once we got our tickets we had to wait in a line at security. There wasn't a priority lane at that security gate, so the $30 we spent on being able to go through priority was well spent...not.

The snow had already started, and our plane was covered as it sat by the gate. We were plenty early, so once we scoped out the location of our gate, we went to Starbucks and got some coffee. By that time, I had been up since 11 a.m. and I was starting to get jittery after drinking the coffee.

We boarded, and once we were de-iced and took off, I leaned on Nate to try and get some sleep. My body wasn't having it and every five minutes I twitched and woke myself up.

Once we reached Charlotte, I was really jittery from lack of sleep. I ate the tuna that Nate's dad packed in our lunch as a joke, which I enjoyed, and then it was time to board.

Next stop...The Bahamas!

We got there, and it was sunny and beautiful. I swear the airport terminal actually smelled like a pool. It was like the tropics couldn't even stay out of the building.

It's obvious they have tourism down pat. It took 10 minutes to get through customs and then 5 more minutes until we checked in with Sandals. They put tags on our bags, loaded us onto a bus and 15 minutes later we arrived.

We were early for room check-in, so Nate went to drop off our bags by the front desk since they offered to give us a tour and bring us to lunch while we were waiting. The woman I talked to apologized that it was kind of chilly out.

It was 72 degrees. She was almost shivering.

I laughed and said when we left home it was 7, and it had been colder.

She just looked at me, shocked.

My hair was greasy. I had no make-up on. I was in jeans in the tropical heat.

It was going to be a good vacation.