After staying overnight in a Holiday Inn Express not far from the airport, we were up at 4.30am to get to Bristol for check in. We didn’t fancy getting up at 3am to make it to the airport for 5am, so decided a hotel closer by and more sleep was a better idea. After dropping the car off at the Meet and Greet in the Express car park, we made our way into the terminal. We checked in with no problems and made our way through security in record time, thanks to mama booking FastTrack.
We went into the Brunell Bar and had a good breakfast before our flight was called at 6.30am. The flight was quite a smooth one after takeoff at 7.20. As we headed south we left behind the cold and grey and replaced it with sunshine and blue skies. This was our first time visiting Portugal together as a family. I had gone last Easter with BattleKid on my own and BattleDad in January. He had gone as a scouting mission to check out options for us moving down there.
We arrived just before 10am and soon found the bus to take us to our car hire a few minutes from the airport. And this is when we got a nasty surprise. BattleDad had hired a car online and paid for the full excess waiver. However, the car hire company (not to be named) would not accept the other insurance policy and so we had to take out theirs, at an extra cost of €100. Not the start of our holiday we were expecting.
We arrived at my parents place just before mid-day. They had emigrated to Portugal just a week before and were in high spirits. Lunch and a relaxing catch up were in order after our flight.
At 3pm, we visited the park where we were planning to move to and I saw our static holiday home for the first time. BattleDad had viewed it in January during his trip. We met our site manager too, who is very nice and helpful. After seeing the home, which was waiting to be sited, we visited our plot and I was impressed by the size of it. I thought “Yes, we can do this for a few years”.
We headed back to my folks place and took a walk around their site. We passed by the pool and had a break at the playground before having a late dinner. We got BattleKid into bed by 8.30pm before another catch-up on the deck with my parents. The weather had been good to us on our first day and we went to bed just after 10pm, looking forward to the rest of our holiday. I even managed to finish a book I’d be reading. Go me!
Cath x