We started out day 1 by getting up at 5:00am, leaving the house at 6am and driving to the Peoria airport.
We are flying Allegiant Airlines for the first time and it flies
out of Peoria and we are going to St. Petersburg/Clearwater Airport to visit
friends.
The airport was easy to get to and check-in was just fine.
The plane took off right on time and 2 ½ hours later we
touched down in St. Petersburg. A great
start and of course what could possibly go wrong?
Well, it did at the Budget rental car counter. We had used Budget because they re-opened a
return location just outside the cruise port and then have a shuttle to go to
the cruise ship. With everyone else, you
have to take your rental to the airport.
The problem was even though we had a reservation, they did
not have any cars. The agent said they
were out at 8am when he came to work!! Of
course, they didn’t tell us in advance.
The agent suggested we take an Uber to Ft. Lauderdale. When Ed asked him if he knew even where Ft.
Lauderdale was, he said he didn’t know and that was all he knew to do was to
take an Uber to get somewhere!! So much for Budget customer service.
We also then found out that with all the rental car
companies at the airport, none had a rental car at any price!!
The Enterprise agent did call to other locations and one in
Clearwater about 20 minutes away had a car we could rent, so we signed up for
it, took an Uber to the location and picked up our car.
We originally had allocated 2 hours on the beach at Clearwater
to eat and walk the beach, one we had walked many times when our parents were
still alive. We ended up having only a
few minutes as we were to meet friends in Ft Myers.
We were only ½ hour late when we got to the restaurant in
Ft. Myers to meet Renee and Eric Degelau and Pam and Jeff Beier, both friends
who we had met because of Corvette Adventures who were now living in the Ft. Myers
area.
We had a fun dinner talking about traveling and families
before we left them at 8pm.
It was a 2-hour drive across Floridia to get to Ft. Lauderdale
where we checked into our room at 10:00pm and just collapsed into sleep!!
Day 2 – December 28
We had hoped to sit around the pool and just relax before boarding
the ship on Friday. Well, the rain
spoiled that.
Ed had breakfast and then ran some errands to pick up some “stuff”
we needed for the cruise.
At noon we left to go eat at a great deli, went looking for
sweater for Barb – didn’t find one and then we took the rental car back to the
airport so we were only changed for one day.
It was a short Uber back to the hotel and we packed and got
ready to go to the ship tomorrow.
Night from Ft. Lauderdale
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