Wow! What a day! We drove to Warwick, RI last night after dinner to stay at a park and fly hotel. We had intended to get up at 3:15 and take the 4 o'clock shuttle to the airport. Instead, we woke up at 2:20 and were at the airport a little after 3 AM. It was bitter cold!! -8 (feels like -41 with the wind chill). Unfortunately, TSA checkpoints don't open until 4 so we had a bit of a wait. We each had a Kind bar for breakfast and shared a bottle of water. The great news of the day is that were were giving a complimentary upgrade to first class! Yay! The flight to Miami was only 3 1/2 hours, but a bit bumpy in spots. When we arrived at the airport, it was raining, but probably in the 60's so we weren't complaining . . .yet. The horror show came at the off-site car rental place that we had booked through Expedia. The first problem was that I had made the booking using the name Sandie, which matches my credit card, but not my driver's license. I have rented cars in many places and have never run into that problem before. They would not honor the reservation because of the name difference so I had to call Expedia to cancel the reservation and then tried to book using Dave's license and credit card which do match. They were having a computer issue where the screen would freeze so were unable to process any reservations. After 2 hours of that nonsense - the long line, the mix-up with the reservation, the computer issues etc., we hopped back on the shuttle and returned to the airport. We found a gem of an agent at Avis who took wonderful care of us - upgraded to a small SUV and threw in a GPS for free. We couldn't thank her enough and . . . it was cheaper than the original reservation! The next problem came when we turned the GPS on and everything was in Spanish! I tried to guess how to change it, but was unable to do so. I finally found a young girl who was able to change the language for me and we were on our way. (Always ask a young person for any computer or gadget help!). We finally got to the hotel in Florida City at 3PM and as soon as we got our suitcases to the room, we walked across the parking lot to Cracker Barrel - not usually my first choice, but we were quite famished by this point. We had a very late lunch or early dinner and felt so much better. Dave went back to the hotel for a nap while I found a Publix grocery store a few miles away and got some supplies. I will wake him up in a few minutes so he won't wake up in the middle of the night thinking it is morning. Hopefully the weather will have cleared up by morning and we can make our way to Everglades National Park. I will sleep like a rock tonight!
Saturday, February 4, 2023
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