Good afternoon, readers! This blog is being written many hours earlier than planned from my house. I'll tell you more about that a little later.
Yesterday was a stressful day! Our boat docked around 7:45 am and of course we were running late as usual. We scurried upstairs to scarf down breakfast. We were going to be first to disembark because we were carrying out our own luggage. We ate as quickly as humanly possible, but every time the announcements came on, I scrunched up because I knew I was going to have to throw away good food and run down to leave our vacation.
We actually finished breakfast and we were headed down the elevator when the announcement came. That gave me just enough time to check the room over and make sure we didn't leave anything behind. Once we were all packed up and ready to go, we began to wheel our suitcases away. Goodbye Carnival Glory! Goodbye vacation! Goodbye lack of responsibilities!
Only about a minute into our journey to disembark the ship, we stumbled across a lady who was having so much trouble pulling her wheeled suitcase. Seriously, she was basically just dragging the suitcase on the side of its wheels. Ricky offered to wheel it down and she gladly accepted. Once we reached customs, Ricky gave the lady back her bags and called our driver to come get us from the port.
"Who is this?? What? Why are you calling me so early?" The driver replied. Ricky answered back in a calm voice, "we are calling because we have transportation arranged! Come pick us up." Long story short, over an hour later, they finally came. Seriously. We sat on the curb, in July, in Miami for an hour. Y'all I was so upset. The driver did not get a tip on this ride, I will have you know!
In the van on the way back to our hotel, we met some really cool people. First there was a couple from Houston. Both of them were teachers and we believe they were on their honeymoon. We weren't sure but when we got back to our hotel and saw the Texas car with just married on it, we were pretty sure that our new friends had just gotten married. They were at the same port as us but they had gone to the Bahamas on another ship. The wife was in school to become a principal (and currently a PE teacher) and the husband taught high school. Wow!
Another family in the van with us was a family from Raleigh. How funny is it to be sitting on a van with someone who is practically your neighbor all the way in Miami? I do think it is odd that this happened to us twice on this trip. One of the daughters is going to NC State this year for the first time. Awesome! This family had traveled to the US Virgin Islands on their vacation.
After our ride back to the hotel, we got in our car and we drove and drove and drove and drove for what felt like forever! Last night, we arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. Last night when we arrived, we went downtown to look around for a little bit. The houses in Charleston are so beautiful! I absolutely love this city. You know I hold it special to my heart since we got married here. After walking around for a little while, we went to dinner at our favorite BBQ restaurant: Sticky Fingers! It was absolutely delicious, as usual. There was a group of men sitting at the table next to us. One of the guys was hardcore flirting with the waitress. He even told her that his name was John with a J. Come on people! That's just cheesy! She laughed it off and walked away with a smile on her face. I think she was trying not to tear him down. We left before we saw if it went any further, but I am sure he left with no phone number.
After dinner, we went back to our hotel. We stayed in that Charleston Plaza in North Charleston. Apparently, we didn't get the memo that this was a no sleep hotel! The hotel was beautiful and it was actually in a really good location. I did not realize, however, that there was a massive family reunion going on! African Americans really know how to throw down at a family shindig! We need to take some tips because the last family reunion that I had, only about eight people showed up and it was potluck. We had no T-shirts, no hotel, no DJ, and definitely no big shindig! All we had was fried chicken and mashed potatoes. This was a real party! But with the fact that there was a real party going on, meant that there were almost no parking spots, an extremely full pool, and loud music until 3:00 am. I should have just joined them! :-) It seemed like a great party. We white folks need to take some pointers!
This morning, we drove down to downtown Charleston early to be able to walk around for a little bit. We made it all the way to the market and began looking around for some great souvenirs to buy. If you've never been to Charleston, this needs to be one of your top priorities when you make it down. They have the most wonderful handmade crafts at the old market.
Shopping at the market was going great until the bottom fell out. I had no idea that it was going to rain the way that it did! Seriously, there was no rain and all of a sudden the entire city was flooded! I finally figured out why they call the Charleston area the Lowcountry. There was so much water from all of the rain that the market began to flood. There was about 8 inches of water standing in the street. I had my brand new tennis shoes on and I was not about to walk out into that river. What was I going to do? After waiting for about half an hour to see if it would stop, we realized that it was not going to stop any time soon. We decided that we either need to build an ark or get out of there. But again, I had my brand new tennis shoes on. That sweet husband of mine picked me up on his back and piggybacked me across the street! Be jealous ladies. :-) He got me all the way to the sidewalk of an area where I could walk without getting water on my shoes. Then, because it was still raining, he walked all the way to the car, which was parked about a 15 minute walk away, drove all the way back to where he left me, and picked me up so I wouldn't have to walk in the rain. I have an amazing husband! We were planning to stay until about 2:00 pm but after the rain began, we decided to leave early. Seriously, there was no reason for us to stay if we couldn't even walk around. We began to head home around 12:00 pm. Check out how high the water is on this lady -- and this was way before it started to flood the market and get really high. The second picture shows a "sink hole" at the sewage grate.
The ride went by fairly quickly because we are still listening to our book on CD. We've made it almost to the end of the book Allegiant and it definitely made the five hour trip pass a little faster. Then something ridiculous happened! Right before we made it to South of the Border, we saw a "low speed" chase go down. It was crazy! A police officer came off of the exit ramp with his lights flashing. There was a truck in front of him that seemed oblivious to the fact that there was a police officer behind him trying to pull him over. He would switch lanes and switch lanes again and switch lanes again, and all the while the police officer stayed right behind him. He just flat out refused to pull off of the side of the road. At first we thought but it must be an old person who didn't realize that there was a police officer behind him because he wasn't going very quickly. Then, we realized that he was so close to the South Carolina/North Carolina border that he must have thought he could cross and get away! The police officer stayed behind him for about 7 miles before we reached the North Carolina border. Once we crossed the border, the South Carolina police officer pulled off of the exit ramp and the truck continued to slowly drive down the highway. We were like, "what the heck? Is he really going to get away with this?" After a few minutes, we saw the passenger of the truck reach into a cooler through the back glass window of the truck. She reached in, picked something up, and tossed it out of the truck onto the highway. We assume that it must have been drugs. I still don't understand why this truck did not just pull off of the road. I mean, I guess the other police officer had their license plate number so they were caught anyway but still... About 10 minutes later, we began to slow down on the highway. We saw that this was due that to the fact that two police cars were sitting on the shoulder of the highway; one of them was parked sideways like it had cut the truck off and the other was behind the vehicle. One other person had pulled behind the truck and was getting out of his car when we drove by. They had both the driver and the passenger in handcuffs and they were leaning them both on the truck. The woman had mascara all over her face from tears of fear I suppose and the husband looked like he was just completely out of it. Ricky rolled down the window like he was going to scream that they had thrown the drugs out but I quickly rolled up the window and screamed "don't get us kilt!!!" Not even killed, kilt!! Besides, I'm pretty sure that the nosy person in the car behind him was already on top of that. Nonetheless, Ricky found another way to make sure that the information was passed along. This way did not involve screaming out the window in front of a criminal who could easily find us and come after us. Thank goodness!
The rest of the ride seemed pretty ordinary after the crazy chase we encountered. When we arrived home, we pulled up in the driveway and noticed that our sweet neighbors had mowed our grass during our two week adventure. We literally have the best neighbors in the world! We were very surprised and excited to see that that was one less chore Ricky had to do before we went to bed tonight. I will tell you who is happy to see us tonight, Mikata! I sure missed my sweet girl. Harley was a little bit happy to us but he didn't quite show the same enthusiasm that Mikata showed! Alley (our outdoor cat), was just ready to be set free from the basement for some sunshine. :-) I am glad to be home with these sweet pets of ours.
And that is that. Another wonderful vacation for the books. This one will definitely go down in history as one of my favorite vacations ever! We had a wonderful time and we are so thankful that you followed our adventure on our blog. You are the best! Thanks again for keeping up with us and we will be sure to write another blog when we plan our next adventure! We love you all!!
Love,
Amy & Ricky
No comments:
Post a Comment