On the Road Again!

Up early. Only one bagel today. Cutting down... Packed and car loaded. Dishwasher on and we were checked out of the Vistana and on the way.  Last pic before leaving. Even though the Sonic is a small budget car the boot takes two large cases! The 192 to I95. Gas stop filled up with $15. This time the right side of the pump... Same shitty budget conscious pipe. Stopped at a Target and picked up some supplies. The idea to get to the sea and have lunch. Got to Deerfield Beach. A quarter per five minutes to park and I had only four on me. Machine "green" button effed so couldn't even spend my dollar. Back to I95 and I595 to Weston. Found check-in. No apartment allocated. Very unusual. Will definitely mention that to RCI. Receptionist did all the paperwork and asked us to wait for a room to be cleaned and added to the computer!! So here we are in Weston Town Center having a coffee. Back soon...

The flight left on time and we have successfully made it across to the US. With tailwind most of the way we arrived a little before we were scheduled to arrive but then sat off the edge of the taxi way for about thirty minutes as the stand we were due on was not free. Everyone began to get a bit restless. In the end the rumoured two hours to get through immigration was a bit off and it took an hour. It was just two hours after landing that we made our way down to car rentals and the National desk. We were the only people there. In the garage there were a few full-size cars and no Charger this year. So we have a Chevy Impala. Only after driving to the hotel did I notice it has Texas plates. And it's raining. Despite having avoid toll roads marked as "on" the TomTom took us on a toll road. We just went through the auto tolls as we will be billed by National. Maybe in daylight and less rain we will be better at avoiding the tolls. Checking I to the hotel was simple enough.  ...

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 ...

Google is a marvellous thing. So after much googling I ended up asking a friend that went a few weeks ago for tips. Her daughter is a travel agent or was, and she gave me some links to check out and then I saw the prices.  A two day Disney ticket came out at £189!! Each. Whilst I liked the idea of a visit to a park, paying that kind of money to stand in lines for hours to get on a ride and then repeat at the next one seems too ridiculous. Another link took me to a site to get entrance tickets to Kennedy.  The official site is $50 each for the day. The link was £29 or about $35 at the current exchange rate. Booked. I saw on Facebook that the Ace Cafe in London had some franchises opening up in Beijing, Barcelona and Orlando , so I guess that might be a drive out one day too. Plus the almost obligatory HD shop! I can't say that I have been a great fan of the Ace in London, but have been there a few times since it re-opened.  It's become a tourist haunt and not particularly...

"How can you go to Orlando and not go to Disney?"  A frequent question when I say that although we love Florida we haven't been to Orlando before and don't really enjoy theme parks.   That's not strictly true. I have been to Orlando before, back in 1991. Back then a friend and I drove up from Miami and stayed in a hotel on International Drive for a couple of nights in December.  We did Epcot and Universal Studios.  I have photos somewhere!   On the way back we called in at what was then called "Spaceport USA", at Kennedy Space Center .   We didn't have much time and had to be back in Miami so Carol could go to work the next day. I really enjoyed Epcot. Okay, you got to ride about but none of the high jinx of the other parks and none of the queues. Plus the fireworks at night are fantastic. So this year. On the top of my list are Epcot and Kennedy. I'll start the ticket hunt soon. Not wanting a 14-day family ticket seems to be a problem for the t...

The problem as I see it is the large area around the stadium that it closed.  There seems to be ample parking and apparently you can book in advance.  I have tried all the links and none of them seem to work. Then I saw a link for the Sunrail system. It looks like that would suit us alright.  There looks to be a lot of parking at one of the terminals and then it is two stops and a ten minute walk to  the stadium. The train journey is $2 each way and about 11 minutes.   As kick off is at 4pm we need to be there in good time and with so many food outlets there is plenty of opportunity to have lunch between the hotel and the parking.  The drive will be about half an hour if we avoid the toll roads. After the game it's back to the station car park and off to the resort we are staying in. At last a plan seems to be coming together. I contacted the resort as the game kicks off at the same time that resort check-in opens. They can check us in at any time and so w...

Entry to the stadium is with an e-ticket. Having read up on it I spent my lunch hour getting my Ticketmaster US login to sync with a new Orlando City login. Then I could view the tickets. These are by QR code on my phone. On the day they need to be shown and so the LionNation app needed to be downloaded. This uses a different login to the ones above and links to them. Now I can see the QR codes but they are greyed out until 72 hours before the game. It's early but my attention will next be turned to parking. ...

When away from home I always have a look to see if there are any football (soccer to colonials) clubs nearby where I can visit and add another stadium to my bucket list. I've been to games across Europe as a  neutral more times than I have been as an Arsenal supporter, in Scotland, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy and Spain.  So as we will be based in Orlando for a week, I had a look and saw that Orlando City are playing at home and tickets at a very reasonable price. They use Ticketmaster which should be no problem except that it doesn't recognise my Ticketmaster login and so I had to create a new one. On the other hand. Football of the NFL kind is played at Tampa Bay.  Logging onto their site was easy enough but tickets for the game on October 1st against the NY Giants started at $168 each.  What?   Isn't this the working man's game.    So I decided to do the Orlando City visit at $36 each. Currently they are top of their division of...

The second week is a little problem as it really is 5 nights only. I have been looking at hotels on the Gulf but the current prices are running at about $90 a night. When you total that we are looking at about $450. It's not a lot better on the Atlantic side either. I had thought about a trip up to Daytona and across to Cape Canaveral and that might still be on the cards. This year in Arizona we did the relax then tour system and it worked pretty well. Another week in the timeshare will be less than half of that. So. What to do? I have one overnight booked before the Orlando stay.  By the time we get there it will be time to eat and then go to bed as we will have had a long day.

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...

Back in 1991 on my first ever visit to Florida, one of the trips I made, with friend Carol Belcher from Burger King HQ, was made in her Ohio registered Toyota Corolla, and we went to Orlando, staying on International Drive and we did two theme parks, Universal Studios and Epcot. Not being a great scary ride fanatic, I thought Epcot was a really good day out.  So what better place to go and see what has changed. So accordingly, I have been onto my favourite booking.com and looked for reasonably priced hotel within east reach of Epcot that gets decent reviews.  Enter the Rodeway Inn Maingate. A chain motel looking place.  Booked for two nights to give us a whole day at Epcot or whatever else takes our fancy...... As usual it is "pay later, free cancellation" and meets my other requirements of being over 7/10 in the reviews and has free parking and wifi! Back of the net!