The Journey.
Well the day has finally arrived, Jayne the wife has been counting down the days on the blackboard in our kitchen. The last two weeks have flown past.
We are lucky enough to own a condominium in Davenport. An investment that we made three years ago, when, I would say the property market was near its bottom.
The Condo. is in a gated community and we share a pool with the other apartments. This is quite nice as you get to speak to a lot of locals who live in the community and also the British, Canadian and European tourists.
We live on the Isle of Wight and so getting to the airports can itself be quite a journey. We always fly by the cheapest method, which is researched by Jayne. On this occasion US Airways, was the choice. It meant a change at Charlotte, North Carolina but we don’t mind the break. We can clear immigration there and just walk off when we arrive at Orlando airport.
Some weeks before the departure date, we received an email from US Airways to inform us that they were merging with someone else and would no longer be flying from Gatwick (which is the easier of the airports for us to get to by train), and now operated out of Heathrow.
It was decided that we would travel up from the Island the day before so as not to tempt the gods and be delayed by the ferry, train or any other number of possibilities. The journey up was uneventful and we made use of the oyster cards for the underground ride to Heathrow.
I hate being ripped off and on our arrival at Heathrow we found our first one. At the arrival terminal of Terminal 1 there is a small shop/counter marked “Taxis”. Jayne went up to enquire how much it would cost for a taxi to the Ibis hotel (which is not to far away), to be told £25. What a rip off. We went outside the doors and about 10 feet away asked a black cab driver (who was in a long line of cabs) the cost. He informed us it would be approximately £11, guess who we went with!
Having had a refreshing nights sleep (aided by a couple of pints and a bottle of wine), we left the hotel at 6.40am and took the Hoppa bus to the terminal. I don’t know if others find it the same, but the bag drop is so much quicker these days. We had checked in on line the day before and there were only four people in front of us at the US Airways desk.
Boarding passes in hand, off we went to the departure lounge. After a bit of duty free shopping (daughter wanted some perfume) we went to the gate and boarded our flight.
What a surprise we had, the seats were leather and huge. Stacks of leg space and a small TV on the headrest of the seat in front and this was economy! I found it a lot roomier than the previous Virgin flight I took, which was very plastic, if you know what I mean. The flight was smooth and one of the best I have had.
We arrived at Charlotte on time and proceeded through immigration at a great rate of knots, another bonus with flying on an American airline. Most of the passengers were Americans and went through their channel leaving the few Brits on board to pass through quite quickly. A little different to the Virgin flight when there was a few hundred Brits queuing up. We collected the luggage, walked through the customs gate and then handed the bags back to the baggage staff. We went out of the arrival lounge and back through security.
I had booked the hire car through this website and would always recommend it to others, there is nothing to worry about State side as you are covered for everything with the package. As there were only two of us on this occasion, we had booked a compact four-door car. We have had a Chevy Cruz under this classification of car before which was very nice. We had chosen to go with Alamo.
I must tell you that previously in the early days I had crumbled to the ‘high pressure’ selling of the ‘hire car reps’ and agreed to an upgrade, which cost me an arm and a leg (nice car though!). With US Car hire everything is included and you don’t need any additional cover.
When at home I had entered all the driving licence details on the Alamo website in order to avoid the check- in desk and the queues. I printed out the page in order to produce it at the drive out gate. Yes I did say the drive out gate.
I had completed the form on a previous trip and confusingly it says on the form take this to the machine downstairs in the car hire lobby which would allow you to fast track. I tried this and after entering virtually all the details again the machine told me to go to the desk! After 20 minutes of queuing up the guy behind the desk informed me that I should have just gone over to the garage, picked a car of the classification I had chosen and handed the printed Alamo form over to the person at the gate, together with any relevant driving licences and the charge card the car was booked on. I now always take the option of taking the car back with an empty tank. This was again through experience of trying to find a garage near the airport.
Off we went to the multi storey car park, to the Alamo section and just to check I, asked a staff member if I could just take a car with the Alamo reference I had got. He said yes and directed me to the ‘Compact’ car line. Parked on the huge line was just two cars…….a Yaris …..and a Fiat 500. YES A FIAT 500. How many times have I read on this web site that they don’t have any Fiat 500’s. Let me tell you all now THEY DO HAVE FIAT 500’s. A 2 door job the same size as in the UK. I actually saw two parked up but only one on the compact line.
To say I was disappointed was an understatement. The last time I had a Chevy Cruz with satellite radio! Jayne and I stood there for a few moments and saw two young girls come towards us; they were Americans and thought the Fiat was great and drove it away. That’s bad I thought to myself, if they had taken the Yaris (4 door) and left the Fiat (2 door) I may have been able to get some sort of upgrade. We decided that as it was such a busy airport there was surely a Chevy Cruz in the pipeline being returned. After 10 minutes a Ford car pulled and an Alamo staff member got out. He was very cheerful and asked if he could help. I explained that I would prefer to wait for a Chevy Cruz than take the Yaris. He just said, “Take a Chevy Impala” (Full size car), “In fact take this one here” pointing to a Chevy Malibu. “I’m the Manager and will tell the staff member on the gate”. I didn’t need telling twice, the car was in fact on the National car hire line but it seems they are all jointly pooled/same Company..
We loaded it up and off we went. I looked at the mileage, 3 miles were shown, a brand new car with all mod cons. fantastic! I drove to the exit handed over the driving licences, debit card and Alamo reference number to be checked and off we went. Just for info all toll costs are added to the credit/debit card these days to save any messing about with change etc. It’s a great system.
After a 30 minute drive we arrived at the condo. dropped the luggage and went off to the local Publix supermarket at Reunion to stock up on the essentials. Dinner consisted of some chicken tenders, salad and a glass of cold beer. We got to bed at about 10pm local time, which was 3am home time. We were a bit tired but looking forward to the coming days.
Terry
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Lyn
Bookmarks