...and away we go!

It's time for our annual "escape from winter" trip.  This has been a tough winter in Minnesota.  Lots of snow; lots of cold.  Thank you, polar vortex.  Andrew hates winter and is teetering on the edge of some place bad.  Last night we had a honest-to-goodness blizzard with at least 10 inches of snow and high winds.  We spent the first part of our travel day digging a hole in the mega drift in our driveway so the car could pick us up for the airport.   

Andrew slogging through the waist-high drifts. 

Our driveway.  It was drifting back in as fast as we could snow-blower it out.  Excuse my finger in the corner.  I'm not great with my phone camera.  

Oh, well.  That's behind us now.  We had a car service pick us up and drive us (very slowly - roads were terrible) to the airport.  We breezed through check in, thanks to our Trusted Traveler status, and headed to the Sky Lounge to wait for our flight.   

Our itinerary is this:  we fly to Atlanta today, and spend the night.  Tomorrow morning, we fly from ATL to Roatan.  

We had about an hour flight delay out of MSP - residual lags from yesterday's storm.  There must have been a lot of flight cancelations last night, judging from the terse mood of many of the passengers & staff we observed.  We, on the other hand, were happy, happy, happy.  We had first-class tickets and were on our way to sunny skies and sandy beaches! 

Runways were a little dicey!  

Goodbye, frozen abyss.  

The flight was my favorite kind - uneventful.  We each had a couple of cocktails and reveled in the luxury of first class.  

My lunch - grilled chicken salad & squash soup.  Actually not bad, for airplane food!

Andrew's lunch - hot pastrami on a pretzel bun & squash soup.  I didn't tell him it was squash until after he ate it.  

Despite a late start, we made up time in the air and were only a few minutes past our initial arrival time in to ATL.  We collected bags and hopped the shuttle to our nearby hotel - The Holiday Inn Express.   I guess we can be anything we want tomorrow!  Andrew was thrilled to learn that there was a Five Guys burger place within walking distance.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat, and then called it a day.