I had a very, very busy day @ work Friday. Way too many things to complete before my vacation. I was hoping to be able to leave by noon, maybe 2-3 at the worst… Nope. 5:19!

Well…
We did not want to leave Belle (our dog) at a kennel, and we didn’t want to have a pet sitter looking after her all week… We did get someone to come over and take care of the cats while we were away, but we both wanted Belle to have more exercise and things to do… so….

We decided to leave Belle with Michelle’s family in Bayou Vista, LA. This is about 1.5 hours away from New Orleans, so we decided to fly out of New Orleans. Our flight was scheduled for 6:30 am. When I got off work, I ran home and we got the last of the things packed for our trip. We ended up leaving houston at 7:05 pm.
After being on the road for over 5 hours we finally made it to Michelle’s parents around 1 am. We got back on the road and made our way to New Orleans. Michelle’s aunt was gracious enough to let us take a quick nap and park our car at thier house in Metarie (about 10 mins from the airport). We got there at 2:30… 

We didn’t know what the lines would be like in the airport, so we wanted to get there before 5 am. Michelle took a shower then we took a quick nap and called a taxi. $25 later we are standing in front of the airport @ 4:30am and I can already tell that we got there WAY too early. There were no lines to get our bags checked, and security took all of 5 minutes. Since I was so tired, I was hoping that there would be breakfast places opening at 5 to wake me up… no luck! I think things finally started opening around 6… anyway, eventually we got on the plane and were on our way! We had a 2.5 hour layover in Philly. I mention this because I really wanted to have an “authentic” philly cheese steak… well, guess what? At the Philidelphia airport, they will gladly serve you a cheesesteak in the food court… I really wish I would have had time to leave the airport for a “real” philly cheese steak!

So, off to Washington! (via a Baltimore airport)

The flight to Baltimore… well… lets start wth the plane.
OMG!
I didn’t expect to be getting on a propeller plane that only held 37 ppl!

I have been told by Michelle that it was a very bumpy ride, but I honestly have no idea… I was so tired I slept thru it!
We got a bit of a scare when we got off the plane… The infamous baggage claim… Well, we found three of our bags… then… we waited… and… we waited… There were other ppl from the plane who were also waiting… then we waited some more… nothing.

We checked with the lost luggage office for our airline and SURPRISE! they had our bag in the office! Somehow it arrived 2 hours before us.

We weren’t done yet! We still had to get to our hotel in downtown Washington… we took an airport shuttle… yea… that was the worst driver I have ever seen! and the trip seemed like it was longer than the actual plane rides!

But…
Eventually, we arrived (in 1 piece) at our hotel; the Holiday Inn on the Hill (Capital Hill) at 5pm. We were exausted!