Thursday, April 24th
3:50 AM - Oh it is so freaking early. Thank Christ we got ourselves somewhat prepared for the time change.
6:00 AM - After a fairly uneventful check in and security (although I was randomly selected to be anally probed, er, I mean subjected to extra screening), our flight takes off. Well it doesn't really "take off" per se, it taxis to the runway. For eight minutes. Eight minutes isn't a big deal, you say? Perhaps, but this is a 29 minute flight. I'm not sure I'm crazy about the taxi-to-flight ratio here.
6:30 AM - At SeaTac waiting for an hour or so for our next flight so we sit down at the only non-fast food restaurant open, which is a Seahawks themed restaurant where all the waitresses are wearing Seahawks gear. The food is fine, although it tastes like steroids and rulebreaking.
8:30 AM - Our flight to Fort Lauderdale takes off slightly late and we are also told that there is no tailwind as there normally is so the flight will be longer than normal. Terrific. Oh, and there are three babies on the flight, all within 6 feet of us. The hits just keep on comin'.
5:30 PM - Eastern time now as the flight is about as pleasant as spending 6 hours in an enclosed metal capsule surrounded by infants can possibly be. One of the babies is a dream and doesn't make a peep the entire flight. The other two, notsomuch....although we've seen worse. They didn't much like takeoff and landing; but to be fair, neither did I.
We find the Hertz rental counter and stand in line for 10 minutes just to find out we didn't have to stand in line; we are actually Hertz Gold members so all we had to do was go to our car (which we could find because our name was on the big board telling us where to go) and drive away. A quick 10 second stop at the gate to prove we are who we say we are and we are off to Miami.
7:00 PM - We have little trouble finding our hotel in Miami, the Best Western that we stayed in last time. It's a good hotel, not too far from the Port and a reasonable price. The staff is excellent too, always willing to help.
Before we left I placed an order with one of our favorite California wineries, Hartford Court, for four bottles of some great wine. We arranged to have it shipped here and the winery made the appropriate arrangements for the wine to be here when we arrived. Nope. Apparently there was some confusion at the winery and FedEx didn't get the package in time for the 2-day shipping we arranged for on Tuesday. No big deal, the winery was happy to change it to overnight shipping and the concierge of the wine club delivered the wine to FedEx personally. But it STILL didn't get here today. The concierge called me and told me she was still tracking it and it was stuck in Memphis but she expected it to still be delivered tomorrow, which is perfectly fine with us but I didn't expect FedEx to be delivering on Good Friday....but as long as I get my wine before the cruise, I couldn't care less.
8:00 PM - Down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. This hotel is right in the heart of "Little Havana", so Tracey and I naturally ordered the traditional Cuban dish....fajitas. No judgement.
While trying to read the menu I inadvertently spill some candle wax on the table. And myself. And the menus. The waitress spends the rest of the night taunting me for being "a child". I thought she was going to offer to cut my meat for me.
After dinner up to the room to relax a bit and try to get some rest. Both of us have been sick for a while...not really sick, just a mild cold, but it has come with a bitch of a persistent cough which is a bit of a challenge. I'm sure our plane-mates enjoyed it. Neither of us really feels that bad but it rears it's ugly head big time tonight as Tracey sounds like she is about to hack up a fur ball most of the night. Not a spectacular night of sleep for either of us.
Tomorrow, a little pre-cruise shopping and whatever else the day may bring, we have no specific plans.
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