Aidan's First Vacation

We've been pretty good about taking at least one decent trip a year since we've been together (St John last year, Cancun in '05, Spain in '04, a Carribean cruise and California in '03, Punta Cana in '02), so we were really trying not to break that just because we have a baby now. Of course, overseas would be a bit tough, so we decided to do a beach trip to Florida. We found a pretty decent deal on a condo in Destin, FL, which I knew almost nothing about, except that it's on the gulf coast not too far from the Alabama border. So, we booked the hotel, cashed in the 2-for-1 delta voucher we have, and headed out for Aidan's first plane ride. He did really well, with no ear problems or anything. We had a comically large amount of luggage for a 5 day trip, but somehow managed to lug it all to the place.

He was a pretty good traveler. As usual, he only got mad when he was hungry, which was an easy problem to solve. To their credit, all the Delta personnel were very helpful with regards to him. We flew into Fort Walton Beach airport, which was actually on Eglin Air Force base (you use their runway, then taxi off to a small commercial terminal). It was a tiny little airport, only 3 years old or so, and was very easy to deal with especially with Aidan in tow.

We weren't really thinking, but we didn't take any good pictures of the condo, but it was really nice. It was at a place called the Palms of Destin, which is condos but they're currently renting them out like a hotel would on account of the place being new and most aren't sold yet. I'm not sure how long that will go on for. It was great for having a baby, as they had a full kitchen (very nice, granite countertops even), two full baths, and a nice bedroom and another bedroom which had a set of twin trundle beds. It had a pull out couch too, so you could have gotten 6 people in there easily. Being new it also had nice flat panel tvs (one in each bedroom and one in the main room) and a dvd player, not that we used it. We had a 10th floor room so we could see the ocean from a nice little balcony. The nightly rate was only $109, so definitely a good deal (found on travelzoo.com).

The only drawback was it wasn't actually on the beach, more like across the street. But, the place had probably the nicest pool around.

The pool on the left end of the picture has a gentle slope to it, sort of like imitation beach. Aidan enjoyed standing in the shallow water there.

We spent a couple of days at that pool, being as nice as it was and very convenient with Aidan. But, we did get a good beach day in. The beach across the street is actually a state park, and it had the nice white and and turquoise waters. A very nice beach.

To keep Aidan and Andrew from burning to a cinder in the Florida heat (about 90, not bad actually, but being on bright white sand made it feel pretty warm), we bought a rockin blue Walmart sun shelter, which you can see in the next picture. One nice thing about the gulf coast is the water is pretty warm, and the water has very little wave action. Good for a baby, but terrible if you like to boogie board or anything.

So, it was definitely a good trip and nice to get away for a few days. I'd recommend going there as an easy and reasonably cheap beach trip with kids. The Palms had a number of bigger condos and villas to rent for larger groups. And it's nice for us to know Aidan is such a good traveller.