So...travelling to Emma's was fun

We've started planning Soul Mates 2013 already. I mention it because Soul Mates 2012 was that long ago and that's when I flew to America for a wonderful couple of weeks with some of my favourite people in the world. I never blogged about it and I don't really know why. But here at Princess no trip is too long ago to be celebrated. In fact, I kind of feel like it's the elephant in the room, or the blog not  blogged about.

As I so often have, I flew through Newark. It's my traditional route and comes from it being a hub for Continental, or United as it's now known. Hence air miles, hence this trip. I didn't have long in the airport, once you go through customs and immigration. Well long enough in the airport, but not long enough for a scoot into NYC as I've done before. I did get to see it from the window though.

Wow. You can really see that Manhattan is on a hill in this photo. Or I didn't straighten the photo in post-production. (I put that in deliberately. Long-time visitors will know there is no post-production on here.)

And there was time to grab lunch. And dinner. What?! I missed meals in the air.

The 1950s diner does a fantastic milkshake should you ever find yourself there.

Of course no trip to Newark is complete without getting a slice of my favourite broccoli pizza. It really is Newark's best kept secret. That, or it impresses no one else but me.

Fantastic!

Actually I had a fight on my hands to get into the right terminal (and by that I mean the pizza terminal) because my plane to Nashville left from a different terminal. But I was smart enough to realise that there was a United bus that left from one gate in the Pizza Terminal to the actual terminal. Ha! You will not deprive me of broccoli pizza.

At the gate I was all set. I reviewed my directions to get to Emma's house. And I waited. And I waited some more. And some more. And then my flight was delayed. And then it was moved. And then it was delayed some more. It was a fun time at the gate.

I amused myself by telling myself this was a Rascal Flatt sitting opposite me. But then I realised Rascal Flatts probably don't wear Phillies visors. Let's just pretend though.

Once the flight was moved gates I got talking to a lovely lady from Des Moines who was on her way back there from Florida after taking a continuing education class for her job. She was a masseuse and funnily enough, although likes her job, said it was stressful at times because clients would come in and offload all their problems on to her. Ha! She owned her own business and wants to set up acupuncture as well (actually she might have already - it's June and I can't remember!) I learned lots of interesting things from her about Des Moines, continuing education credits and masseusing in general. And she was happy to talk to me because I was from Ireland and have an accent. She told me that she was able to afford her classes because she'd done a Groupon deal and so had money in the bank from that. So that's better than a lot of the small business experiences of Groupon you hear in the media.

On the flight I was able to move to two seats that were free and slept for a while. With the delay I didn't arrive into about 10pm, which was about 4am my time. And this was after Soul Mates, the busiest weekend of my year. I was shattered. Nashville Airport was pretty quiet when we landed and I was the only person at the car rental place. The guy was from the UK and we had the oddest conversation because we kept on correcting our Americanisms back to the British which we didn't need to do but did kind of out of embarrassment.

He offered me the chance to upgrade. I declined. He offered me the sat nav. I declined. He asked again about the upgrade. I declined. You see, I had my skis with me and he really was quite concerned about getting them fitted in the car. That was nice of him, to be be concerned about me. That or it could be that he was on commission.

Eventually he sent me on my way, not before I asked him where the restrooms, eh bathrooms, eh toilets were. It was a long walk out to the parking structure, eh parking lot, eh car park and by the time I got there I was delighted to see the car rental man because he carried my stuff on down the line of parking spots.

You see, there weren't many cars parked in the lot. And then it came. My new friend offered me a free upgrade to any car I chose in the parking lot. Bingo!

To help me decide he asked me what was important to me in cars. This was a good question and one that I had no hesitation in answering: cupholders. Oh come on?! Isn't that important to everyone?! The other thing that was important to me was how close the car with the best cupholders was to me when we stopped to assess the options. On that basis I was happy to choose the nearby 6 cupholdered Hyundai Sonata. He fitted my skis in and I was on my way to Emma's.

Like I said, it was late and I was tired but with the power of Google Maps and some revision in Newark I made it out to Emma's without much trouble. There was only one sticky point when I couldn't find her exact house on the road, but it turned out I was right outside it: Emma flashed the porch lights and I was there!

Chalk another win up to the Interstate Queen!