The final countdown

614

15th March 2010

I am going holiday. Nothing particularly remarkable about that I guess but then I don’t think that sentence really does my trip justice, because this is going to be way more than just a holiday, this is going to a journey of discovery.

I have not travelled much, a few family holiday’s in Europe, a couple of visits to my then in-laws in Vancouver, Canada and one trip to Hong Kong when I was 19 (a distant memory….LOL) Not too bad a list really, but nothing spectacular and nothing that ever really felt like an exploration, although the Hong Kong trip was close. In the main they were family holiday’s, stressful air travel with small children, some of which then ended with 2 week stays with my in-laws, enjoyable, but hardly the stuff that adventures are made of.

This trip is different, this trip is for me, in more ways than one I should add. It will be the first time I have left these shores on my own, the first time I have flown alone, and most exciting of all, my first (and I hope of many) trips to the USA. I am going to have 2 weeks of pleasing myself, no one to worry about, but me, no one being sick in a bag on the plane, no one asking me if we are nearly there yet, no one saying, this is boring Mummy, can we leave now, no one making me rush my breakfast, or waking me up to tell me they are scared. I know I will miss them, but they will be happy being spoilt by their Grandparents in Canada and I will happily be being spoilt in Philadelphia.

I have always wanted to go to America and in the last year or so it has become one of my goals to get there. Now it is one big old country choosing where to start is not the easiest of tasks. My curiosities about America and its history had left with me a short list of Boston, Washington and Philadelphia and then earlier this year it became obvious to me that the place I needed to be in was Philadelphia, and so I booked myself a flight and a few days in a hotel and waited……….

The weeks have slowly ticked by, 11, 10, 9……… but we are both ready now, all the ground work has been laid and the bulk of the waiting endured, we have planned and planned and planned and she is ready too and today we have stopped counting in weeks and started counting in days. Today feels like the beginning of the end of the waiting, today we have started the final countdown……………

Mollyxxx