Like I said, getting there was a bit of a whirlwind. The whole group (it was a President's Trip for all the sales members who make plan so there were 30 of us total) was scheduled to leave on Sunday, February 17 and leave on Thursday, February 21. For 10.5 hours of flying with a 3 hour layover and 2 hours of driving on both ends totaling 15.5 hours of travel (not to mention the 5 hour time difference), 4 days just didn't quiet seem long enough.
The company gave us the option of going earlier or staying later. Since we had just been to Cabo and then California, Phil decided we wouldn't go any extra days. Then on Wednesday the 13th Phil calls and says, "Hey there are two extra plane tickets (a couple had to back out last minute) that leave on Friday, want to go early?"
EEEK!!! I was SO excited! That sounds wonderful, except for two HUGE issues:
1) We had no one to watch our kids (my in-laws were going to watch them but they were out of town until Sunday when we were originally scheduled to leave)
2) We had no hotel room
The biggest hurdle (or so I thought) was going to be finding someone to watch our girls for the extra two days. I called around like crazy and made arrangements for the girls. Our wonderful neighbor watched them Friday (she came to our house at 5:00 am, bless her heart!) and then one of our college aged babysitters came Friday night after work and nannied for the girls Friday night and Saturday night. She then passed the girls off to my in-laws! Crazy busy, but it worked!
Then, much to our absolute shock (and horror) we started looking for a hotel room and could find ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!! I am not exaggerating or lying when I say there was not a single room on the entire island for rent that weekend.
We called around for 2 hours and once we had exhausted every option for hotels we moved to bed and breakfasts (which were also completely booked). I started looking up campsites...COMPLETELY FULL! I was so desperate I started looking at renting a VAN to sleep in...TOTALLY SOLD OUT!!! There was not a single place on the entire island where we could stay.
After THREE hours of looking, Phil found a bed and breakfast that said it had one room available even though it was about 1.5 hours from where we would be staying the rest of the trip. It didn't matter at that point, we booked it!
Thursday morning I woke up a woman on a mission. I now had 24 hours to get everything done that I had planned to do over the next three days. I was feeling pretty confident that everything was going to get done before we left at 5:00 am the next morning...then I got another call from Phil!
At 1:00 pm Phil called to say that the bed and breakfast e-mailed him that they could not accommodate us! WHAT!?!
We are leaving in less than 16 hours to get on a plane headed 5,000 miles away and have no place to stay for 2 nights.
I did the only thing I could think of, I got on the computer opened every browser I could think of (Expedia, Orbitz, Book-it, etc.) and started searching all over again. I was praying that someone would have a cancellation and I would find it before someone else.
God must have known how badly I wanted to go on this vacation, because I kept hitting the refresh button on all the sites and suddenly Orbitz had a room at the Marriot listed for Friday and Saturday night. It was a little more than I wanted to pay, but still in our budget and it was only 7 miles from where we would eventually be staying when the group arrived...I SNAGGED IT UP!!!
As I packed later that night, I think I finally breathed a sigh of relief. This was really going to work, we were really going to get a few extra days of vacation and I couldn't wait!!!
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MAUI, HERE WE COME!!!
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