We Travel World

Day 21

New Orleans to Pensacola – 35c

With a 9am departure this morning, I managed to get in a really good night’s sleep for the first time in a while, enabling me to catch up on some of the lost slumber hours that have mounted up over the past 2 weeks of the Contiki tour.

Once packed up, ready and our cases loaded onto the bus, we all went round and said our goodbyes to those we were leaving behind in New Orleans, including Scott, Naman and Andre. Kirsty and Sam had left the day before, as had some of the others. It was so sad to be saying goodbye to the 3 guys and gave us all a glimpse into what it will be like in 2 weeks time when we’re saying our final goodbyes to everybody. – Not nice and not something any of us are looking forward to.

I said my goodbyes to Naman and Andre, and then wished Scott all the very best for the future and thanked him for being such a fantastic roommate. Having never been away before where I’ve had to share a room with someone I haven’t known, it’s been so great to share a room with Scott and we got on extremely well and definitely had the same sense of humour when it came to being down right silly and giggling for hours on end!

We got on our way, leaving New Orleans behind and heading towards Pensacola. It was a good few hour’s drive over to Pensacola, during which time I fell asleep yet again (so obviously still not quite caught up on missing sleep then?!). Passing the Florida state line was quite exciting and I thought how great it was to be back in my favourite state again (albeit a long way from my favourite city of Orlando and all the magic it beholds).

We got to Pensacola around lunchtime and saw the sea for the first time, and a large group of around 13 of us headed to Hooters along the boardwalk of the beach for lunch whilst there was a bit of a storm happening over the sea and the lifeguards cleared the beach for safety reasons. Maybe it was because there was 13 of us and I’ve always been told never to sit down at a table of 13 guests since it’s unlucky, but our meal wasn’t without it’s hitches and several of us got the wrong food and had a big wait for replacements. When it came to paying the bill and tipping, the waitress didn’t seem very happy that she didn’t get much of a tip from us all, and was apparently rather rude to the next group of people from the Contiki tour as they came in.

Marnee, Steve, Tim, Nathan, James, Caddie, Joey and myself headed down onto the beach since the storm had passed, and whilst the guys kicked a football around, I laid down and chatted to Marnee, whilst Joey waded out into the ocean as far as she could without being entirely submerged!
We chilled out for around an hour and a half before we had to be back at the coach at 4:30pm. Unfortunately there was still a lot of cloud cover, so it wasn’t particularly hot or sunny, and so the opportunity to top up our tans never arose.

Once back on the coach, we had about a 30-minute ride before we reached our hotel. As Kristina called out the names to collect room keys, as she called out “Carl…” everybody sighed and “Awww”-ed in unison, which was very funny since “…and Scott” didn’t follow. It was quite surreal getting back to ‘my’ hotel room and being alone and away from everyone for the first time in a long while (and possibly the first time since the tour began) and I missed having Scott to chat to.

I managed to get an hour’s sleep in before the Contiki-included dinner, which was oddly enough an Indian curry. We all agreed it was rather an odd cuisine to serve up in Florida – perhaps the most hot and humid of all states! It was nothing particularly special, but was OK and ‘free’. After dinner a lot of us headed down to the lobby of the hotel where we managed to get connected to the Internet, since the wi-fi didn’t seem to be working in anybody’s rooms. With Scott’s departure along with his new laptop, it came down to (Aussie) Michelle and I to share out our laptops so everyone could check their emails, update their Facebook statuses and check out the options and prices for our free day Orlando. With so much to see and do and so very little time to do it, there were big debates and friendly arguments over what would be best and what would suit everyone’s tastes.

Whilst my laptop was being shared around, I walked over the road to the petrol station with Lauren who wanted a new phone card. On the way back we called in at Dairy Queen and both got one of their famous ice creams, mine being of the mint choc-chip variety and being SO good!

Once back and after both mine and Michelle’s laptop batteries died, we called it a night around 10:45pm and headed back to our rooms for an early(ish) night and to once again try to catch up on some much craved sleep.