Eliza and I spent yet another vacation on Saba. I know you are shocked to hear that was our vacation destination.
I have to say Eliza is one great little traveler. We were lucky to be able to travel using JetBlue Buddy Passes thanks to my friend Maria. Although there is a risk of not getting on a flight (they are glorified standby tickets) spending $150 instead of $1500 was worth the risk.
Eliza has been traveling since she was an infant, and aside from a couple of unpleasant flights (okay, so really unpleasant flights) when she was two-ish, she has been a delight to travel with. As she has gotten older she is quite keen on deciding what she is going to carry onboard for entertainment, how long the battery life of the iPad, iPod and DS are and, if we have a layover, she makes sure to bring non-electronic toys to play with so she can save her battery life for when we are aloft.
And she knows the rule is that if she wants to carry it on the plane she has to carry it. That may sound a bit harsh, but between a mini-knapsack and a very small bag with wheels, she can still fit enough toys to keep herself entertained for a week.
Much to my mother's delight Eliza once again likes her My Little Ponies (which you cannot refer to as "the ponies" or the "little ponies" else you will be corrected as to their proper name). Thanks to the inventor of the Ziplock bag you can pack a lot of MLP's into one bag.
And if you think that's a lot of MLP's you should have seen the gallon Ziplock with the Zoobles.
Eliza also enjoys Chess, Checkers and memory games. I came across these little travel size games:
At about $5 each they will probably not last a lifetime, but they weigh nothing since, although the pieces are magnetic, they are made from rubber so very, very light weight (and no I'm not one of those bloggers who gets paid to promote products).
But the most important thing about traveling with standby tickets is to have a kid who really knows how to suck up to these people:
On our way down we not only made both JetBlue flights but because Eliza was really, really nice to the JetBlue gate agents (shared her KitKat bars and asked if they each wanted a souvenir Zooble from her enormous travel collection) not only were put on both flights but got the lovely extra legroom seats.
While we were on Saba we celebrated Easter with an Easter Egg Hunt with her cousins and friends. The weather was pretty dreary and Eliza did not have much luck collecting eggs. Her buddy Ruben though shared his stash with her and everyone went home happy. The gelato helped ease the pain of not finding a basket full of eggs.
Of course no vacation on Saba would be complete without the requisite cemetery photos. As we all know, this is Eliza's playground (well part of it). Since Eliza isn't too familiar with the religious version of Easter, instead of your traditional Easter Pageant, Eliza and her friends put on an non-Easter Puppet Play in the cemetery.
I must say our graves made for excellent stadium style seating.
But the best part of traveling standby is when they don't have available seats! This forces you to spend a day or two on a lovely tropical island and enjoy the pool and beach (obviously we were not stuck on Saba, since there was a beach).
Eliza was delighted to have to stay a night on St. Maarten (I wasn't exactly distraught over the idea of not heading back to freezing weather in NYC).
We are so very thankful to our friend Maria for giving us the Buddy Passes and even more thankful that she has offered them again to us!
