Written by Kim
We traveled for 30 days without a hitch until our last day. We started with a few days at Alex’s mom’s in Tennessee, drove to Miami, took a Virgin cruise, took a RCCL cruise (yes Alex still owes you a comparison of our 2 cruises – it’s coming), spent a few days at Singer Island with my son and his family, enjoyed the Formy Open, played at Hard Rock Hollywood, flew to AC, had a few days in Borgata and enjoyed Brady’s 2nd birthday without any difficulties. We knew Sunday morning when we got up that it would be a difficult travel day getting back to Ft Lauderdale from AC due to tornadoes in FL but we’re hoping since our flight was late at night things would settle down by then. Oh well it wasn’t easy.
Our 10 pm flight was delayed till midnight planned to arrive at 2:45 am so we sat and waited. Alex called the hotel so they didn’t give away our room since our car was parked there. Our flight wasn’t very full so we were able to spread out. I don’t get the Spirit seat assigning algorithm that fills rows and leaves others empty. Why would you do that? Anyhow, we got into FLL a few minutes early but there was no gate for us to pull into. What? Didn’t they know we were coming it was nearly 3 am! We disembark and call for the hotel shuttle. No answer despite calling the same number a few hours earlier with immediate response. Since it was so late we just grabbed a taxi. What a mistake. The taxi driver leaves the airport going in the wrong direction on Route 1 clearly to drive up the fare. We call him on it and he makes some excuse and turns around – our fare for a 5 minute ride was $40! We were fuming but just wanted some sleep. We approached the checkin clerk and asked why he didn’t answer the phone – he didn’t really care but after Alex told him of our taxi experience offered us complimentary breakfast. Now after 3 am we got some rest. About 9 am we were ready to get going for our drive home.
We headed downstairs to checkout and get some free breakfast. When checking out we asked them to add our Hilton honors number but they informed us because we booked through Park and Sleep we needed to book hotel direct and parking separate to get points. Ugh! We went over to get breakfast and there were no available tables and the people waiting in front of us said service is very slow so we skipped our free breakfast and went to Mc Donald’s. We figured the worst was over but nope! We get breakfast and they give Alex sweet tea (that he adds Splenda to thinking it’s unsweet). Back we go for new tea. Finally we’re on the road at 9:30 for our 10+ hour drive. I know these aren’t world problems but just frustrating when we had basically 29 days of issue free travel.
Our drive got better when Alex won $500 on a lottery scratch off. Wahoo a little payback for the losses we took at Borgata. After a few stops we got home about 10 pm. It was a long day of travel but we’ve unpacked the car and are both comfortable in our chairs under our throws. It’s great to be home. Many have remarked that we shouldn’t have bought a house because we travel so often so this year we plan t9 track nights slept in our bed vs away from home. You know I will have graphs to show you our stats as well as calculations of our mortgage dollars per night later this year. We’re home for February now (we think). Heather, Lux and my mom are coming for a visit to Myrtle in a few weeks that we are looking forward to. Next trips will be the March birthdays of Lux and Luke. In April we have a Celebrity cruise planned with friends. Until then……
