Day 1: Never goes as planned

Are you really going on vacation if the first day isn’t crazy and the complete opposite of what you thought it would be? My answer is no. Welcome to this year’s new place: New Orleans!

My day started out normal since I worked this morning for a few hours before heading home to grab my things. I finished packing, cleaned up around my house, took the trash out and brought my plants in, and made sure my nails were all set and ready for my trip! (See picture below for the nails and check out my Color Street girl, Karen, here! Highly recommend!!) I also needed to drop my car off to the auto shop, because I’ll be getting some work done while I’m on vacation. While I was home grabbing the last of my things, I get a notification that my flight was delayed from 5:12 to 5:30, no biggie.

I ordered a GoPro on Saturday to have for my trip, which had still not come in yet despite getting “two day shipping” so I figured it would come while I was grabbing my things at home and with the delay, I had a little more wiggle time. I waited inside my house for a good 20 minutes or so after getting everything ready before getting into my car to head out. My package is supposed to come through UPS but as I was getting into my car, USPS showed up and had put something inside my mailbox. In the pouring rain, I run out to check it real quick to find just some random other mail, but no GoPro. At this point, I’m pushing my time on how much longer I can wait but know the GoPro is on its’ way to be delivered today. I wait for about another 20 minutes or so while I try and figure out what to do. I’m LIVID at the fact that my two day shipping was really six days and the fact that the sole purpose for buying this camera (the new $400 one I might add) was for this trip, and I wouldn’t be able to get it in time to bring it with me (no worries, GoPro WILL be hearing from me). Before being irrational, I tried calling the UPS store to see if there was anyway they would know where the truck is and that I would even meet them if I needed to. The guy told me there isn’t any way of knowing and even if I were to somehow run into him, there’s still a chance he wouldn’t hand me the package because it’s contracted to be delivered to the address. I decided to wait a little longer since I had gotten another message saying my flight was delayed again, until I decided to head to the auto shop. On my way there, I can’t help but think about how mad I will be if I didn’t try to at least wait a little bit longer, so I turn around and head back home to check just one more time and make sure it hadn’t gotten there and there wasn’t a truck on my street. Surprise… there wasn’t. I leave again for the auto shop. Right as I’m turning onto the road for the shop, I SEE A UPS TRUCK. I know I cannot  pass this by incase it is the one coming to my house, so I turn around and follow him to see where he turns (does this qualify me as crazy?). With much disappointment, he turned towards the airport and not onto my street so I cut my losses and officially headed to the shop. I dropped my car off and they shuttled me to the airport where I headed towards security and tried to figure out what my plan was.

I was getting various emails, texts, and notifications saying many different things about my flight status and was starting to stress out a little while I was in security thinking I came too late and would miss my flight, but turns out we wouldn’t be leaving until 6pm now anyways. Since this first flight was getting pushed back so much, I knew I wouldn’t make my connecting flight in time. As I head up to my gate to figure out what is going on, I’m met with a long line of customers who were wondering the same exact thing. Little line movement and more delays as the boarding time eventually gets closer and closer, I made it up to the front of the line. LUCKILY, there was a later flight in Charlotte to New Orleans (my connection) leaving at 10:35pm that I was able to get a seat on. The customer service lady said she was happy for me because apparently most of the other people had no later flights going to their destinations. I guess luck was on my side here this time.

No time to eat and hoping I didn’t repeat my Vegas flight experience, I boarded the plane and made my way towards Charlotte. I landed around 9 or so and by the time I made it off the plane, it was about 9:20. I walked by my gate to make sure the departing time was still the same and quickly tried to find some actual food to eat. I ended up finding a Jose Cuervo Tequileria restaurant, $yum$. I ordered a Passion Fruit Margarita and a burrito and make perfect timing considering when I left the restaurant to head to my gate they were in final boarding (could you imagine if I would’ve missed it – gosh) so I jumped on, and we were off.

Finally landing in New Orleans where a bed would soon be calling my name, I grabbed my bags and called for the hotel shuttle. After 45 minutes of waiting, with a hotel only about 20 away, the shuttle finally came and dropped me off. I checked in, got my keys, and headed up to the room. One thing I do know about hotels is that when you check in, your door should not be open before you get there. So imagine my surprise when I’m walking up to my hotel room and my door is cracked open a little…..I push the door open with my feet (expecting some badass fighter to jump out at me or something like a movie) and find that the room was not taken care of after the previous guest. Linens were packaged on the bed, but the bed wasn’t made, the bathroom was still dirty with the previous persons’ things, and there was no air on. After a call down to the front desk, she asked me to come back down. She apologized for the inconvenience because the computer says it was cleaned and even offered me a king size bed for the night until I would be able to switch rooms tomorrow to get two beds (for when Sam and Kaitlyn come in!!). I excitedly accepted a king size bed and imagined how much room I was about to have to sprawl out and get award-winning sleep tonight. I get my new keys and head to my room. This time when I walk up to my room, it has a do not disturb sign on the handle. Awkward. Am I about to walk into someone else’s room? Only one way to find out. I open the door and there’s a paper on the ground of the previous guests room bill (how do you spend $500 in a hotel room??) and once again, my nice, king size bed, was not made. It’s now 1:30am, I’ve been awake since 6:15am, and yet another call down to the front desk. She sounds surprised and apologizes again while letting me know she’s definitely going to let the housekeeping people know. She tells me to wait there and that she’ll send someone up to give me new keys so I don’t have to go all the way down to the front desk again. After a few minutes, a guy comes to the room, hands me new keys, and lets me know where my new room is that is definitely clean and made up because he checked it before coming up to me (thank god). I head down to my new new room and while it was clean and nice, no king size bed 😦 (pretty sure it’s actually a full) I’m a little disappointed but am way too tired to even care at that point and call it a night. So here I am now writing my blog post at 2:30am and then will be knocking out for the night and hopefully waking up in time for Sam and Kaitlyn to get here!! YAY 🙂

Thanks for reading and stay tuned to see how the next few days plays out!!

What a first day.