Southampton - Ft Lauderdale - Fort Myers

I usually spend a while editing my posts, but this one will be quick due to the fact that we're paying by the minute for this post, so I'll be brief and (hopefully) concise.

Spent a lovely week on the QM2 relaxing, eating, sleeping and not much else ;-) Although we did accidentally manage to attend some lectures.

Got to Florida and have so far today seen wild aligators, vultures and manatees (finally)! We've also eaten Cheezits, ice-cream sandwiches, donuts, pancakes and such. If you can't beat them...

Aberdeen - Edinburgh - Southampton

We hired a car from Aberdeen airport and left Aberdeen for the last time for a while. Dad took a couple of pictures - which may appear here if I get a copy...

Anyway, we headed down to Edinburgh and dropped the last of our stuff at the storage place before dropping the car in at Edinburgh airport.

The next morning we got ourselves up at 7:15 (eek) and got the train to Southampton. I ended up feeling quite travel sick which frankly doesn't bode well for the 3 day train trip to Seattle, but I'll try to get some powerful sedatives or something.

So now here we are in Southampton. We were woken at midnight last night by a powerful explosion - or at least it sounded like one, but turned out to be thunder & lighning. The ensuing heavy rain still hasn't stopped, so if it continues we'll have to get the boat to come and pick us up from our hotel.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Now heading back to the hotel for a wee sleepie.

Aberdeen

So we've been in Aberdeen for a few days now - almost ready to head down to Southampton and then to America - but before then we have had various things to do.

We've spent the last week or so going into town and buying important things like compression sacks to save space, some travel clothes, a glasses case etc... We've been trying to stuff all of our things into the backpack and I think it will all just about fit without making me look like a pack mule.



Tracy has spent most of the last week finalising financial stuff and looking into travel. I've been mainly reading books and looking into Central American destinations. Tracy has arranged a bus tour of Mexico for us - and managed to save about £250 by spending £16 - that's the sort of deal even I can understand!

It's been a while since I put up any photos, so I'll put some in here and add some into previous posts to liven them up a bit.

So the plan for the next few weeks is as follows:
Aberdeen
(car)
Edinburgh
(train)
Southampton
(boat)
Fort Lauderdale
(car, bus, ?)
Orlando
(bus)
Houston
(train, bus)
Seattle [for Xmas]
(car?)
Vancouver
(car?)
Seattle
(bus?)
LA [via?]
(bus)
Mexico [various]

Edinburgh - Aviemore - Aberdeen

So Tracy saw all of her graduates off successfully before their RCSEd ceremony and watched them graduate before we rushed off and got the train to Aviemore. We'd previously spent most of the week with Craig and Kerry (thanks again guys) in Edinburgh saying a final goodbye to Edinburgh and Edinburghers.

We spent the weekend in Aviemore mountain biking and looking for outdoorsey stuff in the outlet shops out there. We spent the weekend with an old friend of Da's - Annie Leith - who was at our wedding.

We got back to Aberdeen on Sunday evening with only two more stops before we leave.