It’s a bright and early morning, or I should say dark and early!  We are up at 5am and on the road by 6:30 in our rental jeep (which thank God fit into the garage!) for the quick 2 hour drive to Charlotte.  We got a way better deal (using points, but also if we wanted to pay) from Charlotte rather than Asheville, and plus, it’s a direct flight!  Bonus – when was the last time we took a direct flight?  I can’t remember!

The drive is easy, the sunrise beautiful, the traffic light (considering the time of day) and the rental drop off seamless. We’re at the airport with tons of time to spare.  Breakfast bagel, coffee, lots of time hanging out in the cafe, finally heading to the gate to get into the boarding number scrum.  It wasn’t actually that bad – we had “plus” seats, paid extra for exit row (awesome room!!! only 2 seats together – perfect), but that didn’t get us true priority boarding. Sigh.  So we lined up to board and did manage to get overhead space (after the gate agents kept calling for rollerboards to be checked all the way through) and even though we were exit row, we still had under the seat space – albeit way away from us.  But it worked, no complaints.

The flight was great – a little bit of turbulence, but not bad. We had pre-ordered meals, so that was easy. The “plus” seats got us beer and wine for no charge, so, we spent a nice 5 hours reading  (me – this great book on the Panama canal to get us ready for our passage), watching movies (Ed watched The Great Escape) eating and drinking our way across the country.

Early arrival, the luggage takes a while, but we’ve got nothing to do this afternoon so we don’t care. Rental car ends up being an SUV, ugh, they’ve literally got nothing else.  The agent tries to upgrade us to a BMW for $20 extra a day, no thanks!  We go out and find our huge Kia Sorrento and head out into Millbrae, driving through the back streets of the neighborhood to the hotel in less than 10 minutes.  We’re in our room in no time, get settled, then hit the streets for the liquor store for beer and wine, check out the potential restaurant for tonight, hit Trader Joe’s for snacks and another bottle of wine, then spend the rest of the afternoon watching Law and Order and ER.

We decide on an early dinner at Zorba’s, with huge portions of Gyros – both platter and sandwich.  Topped off with a nice glass of wine and a HUMONGOUS beer – we’re happy and quite full on the short walk back.  We finish the evening with more Law and Order, managing to stay awake until after 10 which is pretty good for our jet lag!