Well this was a bonus, and fairly last minute trip, having been lucky enough to have already been to Florida in May this year.
After initially deciding that we would not stay overnight in Manchester because we were on the 13.30 flight, at the last minute we changed our minds and had difficulty getting booked, we ended up getting in at the Thistle. My plans to leave work early were dashed and I had a mega stressful day and actually ended up staying late [msnmad]
The drive to Manchester wasn’t pleasant as it rained heavily all the way and was made worse by being stuck in a traffic jam on the M60 for over an hour [msnsad] Tired and hungry we arrived at the hotel – where I couldn’t get the barrier to lift to let me into the car park [msnembarrased], when I finally cracked it there were no parking spaces left. After driving round several times and having to go right out of the place and back in again, no doubt giving anyone happening to be watching the security cameras a good laugh I eventually squeezed in to a space with my tyres just about off a “keep clear” area. Could my day get worse, this wasn’t the relaxing start to the holiday that I’d hoped for. The fact that we were now too late for anything to eat didn’t help and we had to make do with the crisps and biscuits we’d taken to have on the plane. Despite being hungry I did finally begin to relax…….. not long now before we’d be there
Didn’t need to be up too early on Thursday, but we still got the car to the car park in good time and it was raining again!
No queue at check in so we were soon rid of our cases and off in search of breakfast. Greedy me had two lots of brekkie from Burger King AND extra hash browns [msntongue] [msnembarrased]. Went to check the gate number and found that the flight was delayed until 14.30, so off to console ourselves in duty free. Got my eye on a nice DKNY handbag which I regret not buying. Next time we checked the board the flight time was showing as 14.00
By now I was hungry again so ate the sandwiches we’d bought for the flight and then went to buy more, these did actually get taken on board with us!
Took off around 14.30 – yeah at last we were really on our way… [clap]
We landed about an hour late at around 18.30.
Fairly quickly got through immigration and collected our cases. After settling the oldies in a seat I headed for the Dollar queue. It wasn’t a long wait and we were soon wheeling our cases over to the parking garage. I knew there was going to be a problem as soon as I handed the paperwork over and the lady didn’t go and pick keys off the hooks behind her, she immediately started tapping away on her computer keyboard. About 10 minutes passed before she spoke to me to say that the car I had been allocated wasn’t in the garage and she had nothing available to give me. I was pretty fed up by this point and concerned that Mum and Dad were about to collapse with sheer exhaustion.
I must admit to losing my temper slightly [msnembarrased] as I found it difficult to accept that they had nothing I could drive away in. After a further phone call I was eventually handed some keys and told if I wasn’t happy with the vehicle I could exchange it the next day at any Dollar location. We had been given a Chrysler 300 – with only 40 miles on the clock, I loved it [msnsmile2]. It may have been due to tiredness but we couldn’t manage to get all our luggage in the trunk so with bags etc piled up on the back seat we set off in the dark to our villa.
After a quick explore of the villa we felt revived enough to go to Perkins for something to eat, I had the potato pancakes, one of the few things I hadn’t tried before , they were wonderful and I was to have them a couple more times over the holiday for breakfast.
We were really too tired to be bothered with shopping but managed to push a cart around Publix for a few essentials before going home and collapsing into bed… [zzz] [zzz] [zzz]
I will post the rest of my report as soon as I can, don’t think we did enough to justify a day by day account
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