It was our last day on the ship and, as sad as we were to leave, we were also kind of excited to get to Orlando as soon as possible and start the second leg of our trip. We couldn't leave the ship till 10/10:30 so we just sat in our room watching court T.V. and The History Channel (we had about 6 channel choices and, sadly, those were the best ones). Finally, around 10 ish we got packed up and stood in line to get off the ship. I had NO idea getting off and going through customs took SO long! It took us an hour to get off the ship and about half and hour to get through customs, which was especially pathetic seeing as how they don't go through your bags-they just ask you what you bought and send you on your way. Once we finally got off and back onto American land we got a taxi to take us to the closest Enterprise, not knowing it closes at noon and we pulled up at 11:58! Since the taxi guy had already left, we had no idea what to do. After much thinking we finally decided to use the wi-fi of the nearby hotel (which coincidentally was the same one from our first day) to find another rental spot that would be open. We found the one at the airport, made a reservation real quick, and hurried to call the taxi guys again to get us to the airport. We thought we got lucky, I should probably mention both phones were dead at this point, so we couldn't use them for anything. We drove the 3 to 3 1/2 hour drive on a lovely toll road to Orlando-yeah we aren't used to toll roads in Utah and they aren't cheap when driving 170 miles.
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| Our rental car, very spacious and a much bigger gas tank Than in my car back home. Larry thought I might want To take a picture of the car for memories. |
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| Orange groves we saw on our drive to Orlando. These are the ONLY pictures I got from this day. |
Finally, thinking we were all good, we checked into our hotel, after getting stuck in some major traffic, and drove the car to Orlando's airport to return it.We decided a shuttle would be the easiest and cheapest way back to our hotel so we went to find them in the airport. We told them we were at the Days Inn by Universal Studios (how many could be that close, right? Wrong!), we didn't have the paperwork so we told them it was 5858 something, we heard back 5827? Sure, sounded close enough, but HOLY HELL! We ended up being stuck on that shuttle for over an hour while the driver took everyone who got on after us to their hotel whilst filling us in on Florida history, I just kept thinking "we'll get to the hotel soon, in the comfy a/c'd room and in our soft, big bed!" Wrong again! Apparently there are two Days Inn within a mile and a half of each other by Universal Studios, Ugh! And guess who was wearing flip flops, carrying a heavy bag (because I though I might want something in it at some point in our night)?! This girl! A mile and a half over freeways, in weeds, in a strange area, looking like hippies. I. was. pissed!!
Needless to say by the time we got back to the hotel I was SO SO happy to finally relax and cool down, and also to get a shower! I know this was all our fault for not planning properly and really looking around before cabs or shuttles pulled away, but it was still a bad day. Larry kept telling me it's all part of our adventure, but in my head I was thinking THIS is why I like having a year to plan these things...now we know for future vacations. Plus it can only be downhill from here right? Guess we'll see
As an ending note, now that I'm much more calmed down and can see this from the outside it really did make it an adventure and I can laugh at it as much as it sucked at the time it made the day/night interesting and it is something we learned for when we have real family vacations. No way we could've done that walk with kids!
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