Amelia Island Vacation 2024 - Day 1/The Ritz Carlton

 

I am finally blogging about our trip to Amelia Island! Woo Hoo! Yes, the one we took in August and now it is freaking October. Life is crazy...as you know.

 

Anyway...

Doug and I decided to choose a luxurious and beautiful place to take Briana for an 18th birthday/going away to college vacation - one that we could drive to since my heel pain made it difficult for me to navigate airports. We wanted a vacation with very few plans and just a lot of rest and relaxation!

D and I had visited Amelia Island back in 2001 (see my previous post) and I thought it would be the perfect place to take Briana before her new adventure began. Honestly, it had been so long since I had visited, I had forgotten a lot about our last visit and about the resort itself. It was a very nice memory refresher!

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We headed out early on a Wednesday morning and the drive went really smoothly. We did encounter all different types of weather while heading down there...

And at one point, we were passed by a number of police cars heading somewhere very important. Lights on, sirens blaring. They were seriously passing us at probably 100 miles per hour. It was quite scary...

One of our pit stops was in Golden Isles, Georgia...

We had been watching Hurricane Debby for days before heading to Amelia because we weren't sure if the storm would affect the island badly. Luckily Amelia was spared, but other places did get hit hard with flooding and Golden Isles was one of them. This particular spot was ok.

Finally, we made it to Florida...

 

I could tell we were getting close to our destination because of the moss covered trees...

Almost there...

We finally arrived and it was beautiful...

The lobby and checking in...

Heading to our room...

 

 Our room was HUGE and so lovely. We splurged for the club level of the hotel and for a large room (Bri slept on the pull out couch). Used a lot of Marriott points, but it was worth it!

Our balcony and view...

 We decided to go and eat at the club lounge for dinner since we had driven most of the day and were quite tired. You can eat and drink all day in the lounge for a daily set price. Breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner and dessert are served buffet style. I will actually devote a post to that separately. 

Once we got settled, we explored the grounds a little and went to eat...

We were eating dinner and it started to rain...

 

Rain...

 

We got back to the room and it was still raining (it rained every single evening and/or night that we were in Amelia). Luckily, it never affected any or our plans...

And then the rain finally dissipated and it was so pretty...

 

Doug and Bri did head back to the club lounge for a late night dessert (I was too tired!)...
 

So that was our day one. Smooth drive, quiet dinner and then sleep. I will post about the club lounge next and then move on to day 2. Day 2 was all about lounging by the pool!