The Blonde Diaries

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Hampton Hotels. All opinions are 100% mine.

Do you ever have those days where you struggle with something at school or work and all the sudden your brain hurts? Metaphorically speaking that is. I think the higher temperature and my perfume is aiding the brain hurting right now as well. I just keep looking up at my dry erase calendar and am super excited about next month. I am heading first to Pittsburgh to visit my extended family and show Mike around and then I’m heading to NYC for a girls weekend with my best friend Mikki. It is a much needed mini-vacation.

I know with the stock market tanking this week and foreclosure reports up that vacations are not a luxury that everyone can afford. But a vacation doesn’t have to be super expensive. A vacation could be heading to your local downtown area and touring around or going to the next city over and staying the night over there. A vacation is what you want to make out of it with no price minimums or maximums. The Hampton Hotel chain has locations nationwide and offer cheaper room rental rates than other well known chains. Being able to stay at Hampton Hotels in the past allowed my family to make many vacations affordable so we could do other things like tour Churchill Downs in Louisville, or stop by Dollywood in Pigeon Forge.

Right now, Hampton Hotel is running a contest called the Hampton Chain of Friends Sweepstakes. Everyday, someone is winning a free weekend stay at any Hampton Hotel. All you have to do is sign up for the sweepstakes on the Hampton website. Then it could be you heading off and having a minivacation filled with fun and no stress. I know I am very much looking forward to my minivacations and hope other tired, stressed out people can do the same soon.

Today was one of those crappy days. My doctor recently put me on a new drug that is heavily advertised on tv (I didn’t request it) and let’s just say I haven’t gotten a good nights sleep yet! I’m going to give it until this weekend before I give up on it. So since I wasn’t sleeping very deeply I was up bright and early with Murphf and took him out around 6:30. I was having a burst of energy and Mike was still sleeping so I threw on workout clothes (shocker I know!) and went to the gym. I managed to get a good 45 minutes in on the treadmill before cleaning up to go to work.

That is when the day started to go downhill. Grr. I have been a happy AMEX customer since 2005. I mostly redeem my points for flights on Southwest Airlines. With an upcoming trip to Pittsburgh in my near future, I decided to go ahead and book my flights using points. And that is when I learned AMEX and Southwest are no longer point partners. Thanks for the heads up AMEX. So my options are to book travel through AMEX and use points to pay – a really high premium – or to try and figure out who has the best “rewards” program on their own webpage and transfer points. I finally settle on AirTran and transfer my points only to find out that for my travel dates it is double points. WTF?! Strike 2 AMEX, Strike 1 AirTran.

Whatever, I have enough points to cover myself for a round trip flight and one way for Mike. Luckily, Mike has enough AMEX points to cover the other one way flight. Or so we thought. He has AMEX Blue not AMEX Green Rewards. Both have rewards/points so no biggie right? Not so much. Blue points can’t be transferred to airline websites. They can only be used to book the premium travel on AMEX and there is no option on fare class. So on one set of flights I’ll be in business class and Mike will be in coach. So Strike 3 AMEX and Strike 2 AirTran. I’m not a happy camper.

I’ll be applying for the Southwest card tomorrow. It just doesn’t seem worth it to carry the AMEX card anymore.

For one month now I have been stalking the airlines. I haven’t been picky. I’m an equal opportunity flier looking for the best flight time and the best price.  Unfortunately, the prices just aren’t moving.  The constant checking on flights and prices is starting to make me feel stalkerish and very impatient. I am just so ready to book my flight so that my trip is one step closer to being “real”.  At the same time I really think it is ridiculous to pay $300+ for a flight between Houston and New York. I mean we are talking many large airports so why the prices are so high I just don’t know. So for now I’m holding out but I have a feeling come August 1, I’m going to want to book something.

The first port stop on our cruise last week was to Roatan, Honduras. Roatan is part of the Bay Islands and is the largest of the islands off the coast of mainland Honduras which is approximately 30 miles away. The island was originally settled by the Spanish and the Brits tried to settle but left due to difficulties with the Spaniards and also the Pirates (I guess there were real Pirates of the Caribbean at one point).

Had I known how gorgeous the beach and water in Roatan was, I might have reconsidered the shore excursion I booked for Mike and I.  I did learn to keep a bathing suit on me at all times when it comes to Caribbean cruises and shore excursions because our little excursion had a really nice beach at the end but since we didn’t know about it, we couldn’t enjoy it.

At the same time, if we had skipped the shore excursion we would have missed playing with the monkeys and parrots. Yup! Mike and I did a little hiking in the jungle (forest? wildlife preserve?) in Roatan and met up with some furry critters. It was a fun hike that required us crossing over a really long suspension bridge which was a little scary.

Once we crossed the really long bridge above, we were finally heading to see the animals that I was so hyped up over. Mike on the other hand could have done without the promise of holding anything that was not considered a domesticated animal.  First up were the parrots. One little tip if you are going near one of these beauties, do not wear buttons or anything that resembles a button. Mike’s had was attacked by his bird due to the air holes looking like buttons. I covered the  buttons on my shirt with the sunglasses so I was safe.

Up next were the white faced monkeys. This is where I was super excited. Monkeys are just too cute and the chance to see one up close doesn’t happen very often. These monkeys are very curious in nature. If it is unusual to them and on you, they are going to check it out. Case in point: Check out this lady’s sunglasses. Taken right off her head so he/she could look through them. He/she did return them when he/she was done playing with them.

Mike and I with the monkey:

Notice the poor man behind me. He could not hide from the monkeys. They just loved him because it was so hot we were all sweating and apparently human sweat and other scents we wear are aphrodisiacs for monkeys. So you can see where I am going with this. LOL

Overall we had a good trip. I unfortunately cannot recommend eating down on the island as I had a terrible bout of food poisoning from the lunch Mike and I had before heading back to the ship. Everything was cooked thoroughly from what we could see but there was something that wasn’t right and I almost had to miss our zip line excursion the next day in Costa Maya.

You know vacation is coming within the next 30-45 days when you see my big, pink DVF rolling city bag come out of the closet as well as my nice purple Atlantic suitcase.  I like to stand apart from the crowd so I made sure my luggage matched my style   Tonight was the night I decided to start packing for Mike and I’s upcoming vacation.  We still have a ways to go until we embark on our next cruise but I like to pack early.  I began with the easy things tonight: sunscreen, hats, first aid kit, general medication, band aids, acne treatment, bug spray, etc. Basically anything that is travel sized and is what you would call “vacation” specific.  By doing all this now, I can try to see what I need to pick up while running errands in the next few weeks.  I even tested out our nifty Rum Runner Flasks.  I have 2 filled with some rum and managed to determine that they will fit inside of my bra so no worries about having them found via the x-ray machines in the checked luggage. LOL