On the Road Again!

The World in Pictures - Day 10 I have been challenged by Neill Devall to post a picture, every day, for the next 10 days. The picture can be of anything you like but each picture must have been taken in a different country. You can tell us about the photo or not, as you wish but must at least specify the country. I'm not going to challenge anyone, but if friends want to take part so well and good! USA! USA! Montauk Lighthouse - Long Island NY

It is one I have had for a number of years. To take the bike and tour in the US. Either Spring and early summer. April/May or May/June. I retire in December 2021. The projected income looks okay. Without my fares getting to work now I'd be quite well off.  The lump sum though is good enough for a few decent holidays but not to live the life of Riley. My work and State pensions (projected) is less than my current gross salary but not paying national insurance and the accursed fortune to travel to work and pay to park means I might have more disposable income! Plus we will only have one car.  Mine will be worth nothing by then, but I'll save the £175 a year road tax and £200 insurance plus running costs. So I dipped my toe in the water so to speak. I completed a form on James Cargo website. I was a bit vague as I have no idea of dates.  So I put May 1st 2022 to June 30th 2022. I am aware that Claire needs to be onboard and that she wants a cruise to the Northern Lights as w...

When booking apartments with RCI there is a gamble.  Or it is a gamble.  When you login there might be plenty of choices or there might be few.... either way you have to decide whether to take one that is there, or wait a bit to see if any come online. When I booked Weston a few weeks ago for week 2,  I of course looked at week 1 as well. There were a few resorts in the Orlando/Kissimmee area that were in the yes column, and quite a few in the maybe and a few in the no column. With 23 points left to spend there was plenty of scope but today I logged in and there is a sale on rci.com .  By sale they mean that some resorts are down a few points in price. Although the total number of available resorts hadn't gone up, it had brought some places that were above our points level into play. For it to have evened up a bit, I guess there were resorts we could afford that had been booked and no longer had vacancies. Where we stayed before at Silver Lake has a few points knocke...

With the second week of the trip ending with the Easter holiday; our flight home is Good Friday, everything ramps up price wise and with RCI, points wise also. What might be 13 to 15 RCI points the week before becomes 23 to 25 or more with exchanges starting 13th April. So I have booked the apartment in Weston near Fort Lauderdale for the second week. We have stayed in a different resort there before. Weston isn't on the beach or the Gulf and I find it difficult to see why it was built at all. The centre is laid out in the usual block system but has curved/circular roads..... like a spider web in places.  There's not a lot there but it should be plenty relaxing. Plus of course this is a "short week" for us as we have to leave on the Friday to get to the airport rather than the Saturday. It also means we aren't licke dput at 10am and have 8 hours to find something to do to fill the time. That leaves 23 RCI points to spend on another week elsewhere. It looks like a ...

This is a right bloody palaver. A troll through the internet and National has resulted in a reservation for a full size at MIA. It's damned expensive.  I had a look on TripAdvisor to look for recommendations and have a few other ideas to follow up on. I have had a look at a few of the comparison sites and there are cheaper offers. With National, they include most of the the insurances and I have never paid for anything on top so need to check the cheaper companies to see what level of cover there is. On one of the TA pages someone was saying they have third-party insurance that covers any excess that they would have to pay on the rental in the event of an accident.  I will look at that as well.   As for the Timeshare. Looking at Orlando area for week 1 and week 2 nearer Miami. It's still seven months away so hopefully a few more resorts will pop up.

Now that flights have been booked and we are committed it's time to look for somewhere to stay on the first night. As usual I went to booking.com for answers and found a Motel 6 with free cancellation and no advanced payment. The reviews give it 7.4/10. It looks from blurb that many hotels like to take a deposit or even the full amount immediately on reserving a room, even if there's free cancellation. We had this before at the Blue Marlin in Key West where we stayed two nights and were about $300 out of pocket five months before going. It wasn't so bad as we still went. I know a lot of hoteliers don't like the free cancellations part of the system but to me it gives flexibility to the customer. If you're honest and give good service, then people will still stay with you. Car hire seems to have hiked a bit since October 2017 when we last busied ourselves over. Currently checking the booking sites to see what deal there are. With the chances of the timeshare being...

At the moment it looks as though the destination for our 2019 main holiday will be the US and probably/possibly Florida. Now we are stuck with having school holidays along with the hordes and their kids to get two weeks together can only be Easter or Summer. On top of that there is the airfare to consider. Whilst I still have the timeshare I need to make the most use of it and the US gives the best value for money. It's a balancing act, on the one hand the higher airfare but far better resorts, or lower airfare (or drive) and lower standard but expensive resorts. What the Americans consider low in value at home would be much higher priced in Spain! Last year we stayed in Pompano Beach, disrupted due to the hurricanes,. but the studio was far better appointed and situated than most we have tried in Spain and that cost considerably more. Currently I am looking at airfares to see what deals there are. So many airlines are rogering us with added payments. Basically all you get for your...

By sheer fluke I went onto the Sunrail site to show someone at work how convenient it would be and that's when I noticed the "not weekends" banner.  I'd not seen it before! With all the talk of pollution in the world having a light rail system that doesn't work at weekends and holidays seems like a very bad idea.  As I said that I pursed my lips and paused for effect.  :) So it was back to the drawing board. Parking! In the end I got onto the City of Orlando local government site and found the parking they control. I had emailed a while back as to book online it needed a US address and phone number, or at at least one that would wedge into the pre-formatted boxes on the web page. They suggested using the resort address and phone.  So I have. MasterCard seems to have accepted my new temporary Kissimmee address. In the end it was $11 and I have a pdf with a ticket to print out and put in the car window. The route from the hotel and then back to the resort is in the ...

In those far off days before they invented the digital camera,  you may recall we had something called "film". It came in a variety of sizes. 35mm and an assortment of cassette type systems made for the amateur  - 110 and 126 being the most popular. Usually the films were taken to your local chemist (drug store for my North American cousins) or posted to Kodak or another company, such as Truprint or Bonusprint. It also came back from the processor in an envelope containing the film itself,  the negative for prints,  and the prints themselves. A week later the excitement built and unless you were the kind of guy that could get your pictures on the front of Time, then disappointment soon followed. Another format was called "slides". These were positive images at 35mm in a card or plastic surround.  A whole industry built up around equipment to enable the photographer to bore the arse off their visitors with a "slide show" of their holiday pictures.... or ...

So after a pretty exhaustive search for hotels in Florida for the second week of our stay, five nights in total, I decided to use up another timeshare week. It seems a waste but when you consider the exchange fee for that week is £169 and hotels are looking  more like £400 for the period, then it is worth it.  Plus we get to stay somewhere a little different. I looked at Lauderdale by the Sea, and then slightly further north at Pompano Beach.   In the end choosing the  Wyndham Sea Gardens resort. It is right on the beach off A1A between the Atlantic  and the Intracoastal Waterway . Looking  at the Weatherspark site to see what the average temperatures are, they look pretty good for us British . So another plus point for Florida.  And another thing sorted.

Of all the comparison sites I have found that the best, for me at any rate, is Skyscanner. Today I had a quick look, always remembering to change my internet cache before searching and was amazed to see that Virgin had a direct flight from London Gatwick (LGW) on my dates, and cheaper (not much!) that my earlier searches. The times were good and so I thought "I'll have some of that". I clicked on the "offers" page and was taken to TravelUp. An agents we have used before. I filled in all my details, Claire's details and got to "pay now", and a box popped up, "flight details changed". Clicking on it took me back to Skyscanner and it began another search.  This time Virgin was cheapest still BUT the outward aitport was LGW but we'd arrive back at London Heathrow (LHR), some 50 miles away. Not much use with my car in the parking at LGW and an expensive transfer to negotiate.   Instead for £4 more I can fly direct from LGW and come back to...

Checking on RCI ( rci.com ) shows that there are quite a few options for the Orlando area. I have finally booked one that gets good ratings from visitors and also is allegedly "quiet". At all the other places we have stayed over the years, US and Europe, we have never had to pay for the amenities;  pool etc.   There is always a swipe of the credit card to cover "security" and deposits for keys, usually apartment and parking garages, but never to use the pool or a lounger. However, this seems the "norm" for Orlando. I'm sure most of the people going there are headed for Disney and the other parks and spend less time at the resort than they might at other places in other parts of the country and even the state.  So I don't think that $10 a day per apartment is appropriate to use the pool at all. So that ruled a few out.  I found one that was charging $1 a day?  It must cost more to collect it in receptionists time than they bring in. In the end I boo...

So for 2017 we are looking at using the timeshare again for a week and after this year in Arizona we started looking at Florida. One change will be that instead of going in May we are planning to go at the end of September.   Fingers crossed that hurricanes stay away. But where? The quality of resorts in the US are much better than in Europe. In our bracket they are far better and so the only downside is the length of the flight. And possibly the cost but that's to be expected. So far the plan is to fly to Orlando or Tampa. Depending on flight times and which UK airport! Last year our return flight arrived at London Heathrow and six hours later we were finally home.  So I'd prefer Gatwick.  Nearer home and doesn't involve driving through the packed traffic in West London. What I have done so far is a bit of surfing to look at places and flights and booked a car. So...

A lot of pictures taken on Route 66 this summer. I have saved them to Flickr where they can be seen by eveyone. Click here.

Desert Botanical Garden - Phoenix Butterfly Wonderland Goldfield Ghost Town