First Road trip!

We got back from our first road trip on Thursday!

I am embarrassed to admit that I have not traveled with Beanie and she is three! This year I feel she is at a good age to travel and we planned our first road trip for Spring Break.

I waffled a lot over where to go and how - visit family, drive/fly, etc and finally decided to drive down to the beach. Beanie has been talking about it for a  while since she has seen it on her fav show - Curious George.

The closest beach is a 4 hr drive and the Atlantic ocean, so not as pretty as the Gulf, but given it was Spring break I wanted to (a) avoid the rush (b) keep the drive not too long. Hotels were expensive given its Spring Break, but since I had the week off we decided to go for it. It was a family trip with my parents, Beanie and I. I made sure to book a hotel with  24 hr cancellation policy in case of sickness - which luckily did not happen - yay!

The trip was fun!

Well, as much fun as can be had with a 3 year old who sometimes does not quite listen. But she enjoyed the entire experience. My Mom maybe not so much (lol) - she sat in the back with Beanie who chattered non-stop almost all the way asking from the moment we left home - are we at the beach yet?

Beanie loved the hotel and quickly became a pro at finding the room and swiping the key. It was funny because she would walk into the room and just throw the key card on the floor. Of course the first thing she did when we got to the room was jump on the bed with utter glee.

The day we reached we met up with a Mom friend and her two girls (from Beanie's school) and drove down to the beach. It was a good 30 min away from where we were staying. It took a while to find parking etc and was almost 5:30pm by the time we got to the sand.

The beach was horribly windy and quite cool. I was expecting the cool weather, so Beanie was dressed in a long sleeve shirt and shorts. The kids had a blast despite the wind. I had carried some beach toys so they played a bit. Beanie was brave and stepped into the water with me and loved it.

Given how very windy it was we only stayed about 30 min. Then I got lost coming back - hate the GPS - it always takes me back a different route.  We got back to the hotel close to 7pm, got cleaned up and then we all met at a local pizza place. My parents, Beanie, myself and my friend and her girls. It was a nice evening. The two 3 year old entertained themselves. Later we went to a candy store!!

That night we all crashed by 10pm. It had been a very busy day with a long drive, and a bit rushed. 

Next day, we were up at 6am - sigh!  After breakfast, Mom, Beanie and I did a Trolley tour which Beanie was looking forward to since she knows about trolleys from Daniel.Tiger cartoon.

She enjoyed the ride. Of course she is too young to be interested in any of the buildings or history. My Mom and I had done the tour ourselves several years ago, as such, I was able to pay attention to Beanie and point out things of interest to her, rather than follow the commentary.

Then we came across a park that had a playground so we got off and she played on the swings for a  bit. Massive meltdown ensued when leaving the park, so I had to carry a crying toddler (sigh) all the way to the trolley stop. After our trolley tour ended we met up with my Dad and had lunch. Later,  we walked down to a famous ice cream place and stood in line for about 20 min for ice cream. We sat in a nice shady park and she had her treat.

We then came back to the hotel and napped!

In the evening we took the trolley back to a shopping center about 3 blocks away, looked around and then took a pedi-cab down to the river. Beanie enjoyed that ride.

We walked along the river and she had a good time there especially when she saw a wooden play boat, which she declared was "hers" and the proceed to play in it for a while. Some other kids came and went and she was pretty good playing with them.

We went for dinner, and later went to look at the hotel rooftop pool. It was too chilly to get in - in fact it was quite cool the entire trip, so we never got to do any water activities.

Beanie did quite well overall during the trip.

One challenge was getting her to sit and eat in restaurants. She was fidgety and wanted to keep changing her seat, or getting on/off, squirming etc. She did not disrupt other patrons, but it was hard for me to keep trying to get her to just sit and eat. The other challenge was holding my hand when walking. She is a lot improved from when she was younger, but she still has a habit of suddenly pulling away, which was freaking me out given we were in a city center.

The last day after breakfast, Beanie and I went for a walk. It was really fun just the two of us. She had got the whole hand-holding thing figured out by then, and we walked around looking at some shops and walking around in a garden park as I called it - not a swing park!

We left around 12pm and were home at 5pm, after stopping for a nice relaxed lunch on the way.

I am glad we did the trip. Beanie saw/did a lot of exciting things, and I enjoyed seeing her little face light up with joy and wonder.