On Holiday with The Bretts!

September 10th, 2008 | by Paula Brett |

Well, I’m fresh back from my Florida whirlwind holiday! Did ya miss me? Did ya, did ya?

I actually got back a couple of days ago but the jet-lag has hit me much harder than I expected, and I’ve got some dreaded lurgy from breathing in everyone’s recycled germs for 9 hours on the plane, so this post has been added to a bit at a time, in between dropping off to sleep and whinging about how bad I feel.

I did take my laptop away with me with all these good intentions of being a roving reporter from Florida… you know the kind of thing -  a postcard from America every day on my blog… but unfortunately, I was so knackered schlepping around those blimmin’ parks every day that it was all I could do to turn my laptop on in the evenings!

Our holiday didn’t get off to the most auspicious start.  As we filed through the departure lounge to get on the plane with the other masses, who should get picked out for a quick strip search? Yes, you guessed it, the Adams Family a.k.a. The Bretts!! And this was before we even left the UK!

We all had to take our shoes off, including the boys, who thought it was all great fun. They were most disappointed that they didn’t get patted down like my husband and I did.

I was lucky enough to have a rather eager, mature lady allocated to me who seemed to take her job very seriously — I’m sure she thought she was onto something, as she spent rather a long time feeling around under my belt and my bum area.  Sadly for her, instead of discovering a kilo of Semtex buried in my knickers it was just the result of a few too many cream cakes bulking me out.

Goodness knows what they expected to find hidden in the leaves of my sons’ colouring books that they’d packed in their bags to keep them occupied on the plane, but they had a good old leaf through those too. Maybe they were art lovers, who knows!

Once at the other end, in Orlando airport, we dutifully queued for an hour or so to get our fingerprints taken.

Again, the boys were gutted as they were too young to have their dabs taken - kids have to be 13.  My husband and I were visibly relieved partly because we didn’t want our little babies to have their prints on  some database somewhere at their age… but mostly because we’d used them both to do the dirty work in the international bank heist we’d masterminded a couple of months before. Phew! A close call!

Next it was `hunt the car rental outlet’.  So off we trotted in the direction the signs pointed to for `car rentals’… and we trotted, and trotted and trotted and trotted - down this seemingly infinite corridor with about 10 million different rental companies - but could we find our one? Nooooooooo, of course not, that would be too easy!! So we trotted back again, to double check, and then my husband decided to do a bit of trotting on his own, without the baggage (i.e. me and the kids).

So he disappeared off for about 20 minutes and came back bearing news, which was exactly the same news that I had gleaned by picking up a courtesy telephone that I happened to be standing next to with our car rental firm’s name on it, much to his aggravation!!

We had to catch a coach outside which would take us to the car rental office somewhere in the backlot of the airport.  By the time we lugged everything outside and waited 15 minutes for a coach we were sweating like pigs! Well, actually, that’s a bit crude - horses sweat, men perspire and women glow…. so I was glowing like a pig!

It didn’t help that I’d bought the boys two cute bags to keep their colouring books, pencils and Nintendo DSs in, so I wouldn’t be lumbered carrying all their gear as well as my own… the only problem was, I’d asked my sister-in-law to nip into the Pound shop and buy them a nice little colouring book each and she’d bought them two each. But they weren’t the slim volumes I’d been expecting, they were… well, one can only describe them as being the exact same dimensions and weight as the London Phonebook!!

So we arrived at Swifty Nifty car rentals, the boys skipped lightly off the bus and my husband and I not so lightly as we were suffering from heat exhaustion and chronic lumbago after carrying their phone directories for them!

Iffy Shifty car rentals were very nice people and were mortified when they had to ask us if we objected to being upgraded to a 7-seater people-carrier-van-type-thang. “Oh, no”, we said, “that’s just fine, we’re just happy to be here”.

So off we zoomed in our articulated people transporter, huge carbon footprint stomping behind us, sat nav plugged in ready for that calm and sexy sounding woman to direct us straight to the house we had rented in Kissimmee. The only problem was, she was far too efficient and it took us a couple of days to get used to the fact that she would say “right turn ahead” about 10 minutes before the right turn, then she would say “after 800 yards turn right” and then when you were right on top of it “TURN RIGHT”.

So for the journey home, not being used to her wiley ways, as soon as she said “Right turn ahead” we would screech on the brakes and immediately turn right… not knowing that she would give us several warnings before the actual right turn. As you can imagine, this sort of behaviour caused several screaming rows, particularly when we drove in a circle around a Wal-mart car-park, oh, at least 5 times!

And because I was laughing at the total ridiculousness of it, my husband accused me of tampering with the sat nav (because I am computer-minded, he said) and doing it all deliberately. Wish I had been clever enough to think of it, but I really just wanted to get to complete our 35 minute journey in less than 4 hours.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth and cursing and swearing at the still calm and sexy but by now rather irritating sat nav woman who insited on repeating “MAKE A U TURN, MAKE A U TURN”, we eventually made it to our holiday home, just as it was getting dark.

And there I must leave it for today… I need a little nap again… how long DOES it take to get over jet-lag and cabin fever? Jeeez, it’s floored me.

I’ll add another embarrassing “The Bretts on Holiday” installment tomorrow, if you can take it. Does anyone else have ridiculous things happen to them on holiday, or is it just us?

If you would like to be notified the next time I make a post, sign up for Email Alerts or subscribe to the RSS feed. Many thanks for reading