Savannah

Well, we are now having adventures in our sleep. Wednesday morning I woke up to hear Felicia tell the story of a big fracas in the room next door in the middle of the night. I did not wake up; neither did Brad. (And I wonder Felicia heard anything considering how loud she said my snoring was!)

According to Felicia, a couple were fighting. There was some throwing of stuff, apparently. The woman said, "I can't believe you broke my......." (Here Felicia lets us down since she did not hear what was "broken.") The man says something along the lines of "$1,000 wasted." And then there was inconsolable sobbing for the next 45 minutes.

When we went to our promised "deluxe" continental breakfast in the morning (it wasn't), we told the front desk about the noise and they said there had been a number of complaints and the family was being asked to leave. That's when we found out that there were two kids in the room. What a shame! As we left our room, the man from the fight came out of his door, got on the phone and started talking about how he was being disrespected by the hotel. He was kind of scruffy, with a beer gut, a baseball hat and a bad attitude. We certainly can't say that we were sorry to leave the Comfort Inn in St. Augustine Beach.

So, we braced ourselves for a boring day of driving, but then we decided to have lunch in Savannah. What a beautiful place. We walked along River Street,


and had our picture taken in front of the paddle boat that gives tours of the area.


While we were there, a huge freighter came by and a tug boat sidled up to it to guide it into port. The boat was registered to Amsterdam, which we kind of figured out before we saw the registration because it had a name that looked somewhat like "Scratchen Croch", which Ada and Felicia insisted was the name of a street in Amsterdam near where they stayed many years ago.

Then we drove around the city a bit and saw some really beautiful homes. Savannah is yet another town we have visited on this trip where we could live very well, thank you.


And you might think that was the end of this blog. But no. After driving another 7 hours and getting to our hotel about 9:45, we discovered that Felicia had been named "guest of the day," which involves a free bottle of water, bag of pretzels and a really good parking space.
It's Thursday morning and we're up about 8AM. We're going to get another deluxe breakfast, check out the pool for an hour or so and get back on the road.

The Saga Continues

We've taken to calling ourselves Team Florida and our trip, Road Trip '08, the year of the goat. (For an explanation, see the entries below.)

Anyway, we woke up on Monday still dreaming of ways to impose revenge on our next door neighbor at the Blue Heron Resort, despite the fact that we had not seen her since that first very weird encounter. We took the resort's shuttle to Disney and got the driver and other passengers involved in our plots. It took a violent turn when the driver suggested that a line of fishing wire be strung about six inches from the floor across the neighbor's apartment door. We rejected that idea, mostly because of the possibility of jail time.

We were also not sure what park we would go to on our first day, or whether we would go to more than one. At the driver's suggestion, we went to the box office window and met our personal Disney representative, Ada, who told us to get the park hopper and start with Epcot. It turned out to be great advice. We went directly to our first choice ride, Soarin', right away and waited 40 minutes. That turned out to be the longest wait of the day, despite the fact that the parks were very crowded. We ended up going to Test Track, Spaceship Earth, a Finding Nemo ride, where Felicia got to see her beloved manatees. Dinosaur and Killimengaro Safari (In Wild Kingdom), and Barn Stormer in the Magic Kingdom.

Turns out we went to three parks instead of two, ate three meals (without a bit of vitamins or nutrients in any of them, I fear) and went home at 10:15. I don't know about the rest of the party, but my feet hurt so much that night that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stand the next day, let alone walk around a park.



A couple of weird things happened, of course. For one, we appeared to be the only ones who went through the Spaceship Earth ride without the camera taking our picture. Either that or the pictures went directly to our permanent files at the FBI. Also, as we left the parks at 10PM, we were almost run over by a woman driver, who looked curiously like the woman from our resort. We screamed and she put her head out the window and chided us for overreacting to our imminent death. Later, a guy who witnessed the whole thing said it was crazy what she did. So we felt a little better.

We woke up on Tuesday and got to Disney Hollywood Studios, the resort formerly known as MGM Studios, at about 9:30AM. I am sorry to report that were in our car before we remembered our revenge plots, so our next door neighbor escaped injury.

After a quick breakfast we headed for my favorite ride, Star Tours, and it did not disappoint. Brad, especially, loved it. We also got on the Great Movie Ride, which definitely needs some updating, and the very funny Sounds Dangerous, a show with Drew Carey showcasing sound effects. Then it was off to the airport to drop off one of our esteemed members, Meredith, who had to go home early for a Lacross game.

We miss her a lot, but are not sorry that she did not see the pretty skeevy hotel room we are staying in in St. Augustine Beach. (Is it St. Aw' gust teen, or Aw gust' tin? Anyone know?)

In order to spend as little time as possible in the hotel room, we took a drive to downtown St. Augustine, which is a beautiful, quaint town with a lovely harbor and a very impressive school, Flagler College, occupying a number of historic Victorian buildings originally constructed by Henry Flagler one of the founders of Standard Oil.
And we had dinner at a very nice pub/restaurant.
So tomorrow, we begin our homeward trek in earnest.

The Last Few Days

Sorry for the delay in this post, but apparently Clearwater Beach has not reached the 21st Century yet and WiFi is hard to come by. In any case, we are now in Orlando, but we have had a lot of adventures since our last post, some good, some not so much.

The weather here has been mostly wonderful. Friday was a clear cool day that we spent mostly on the beach. Thankfully for me, the beach just a block away from our home away from home, the Camelot, has cabanas that can be rented for the day.

We have discovered our favorite restaurant here—Frenchy’s Rockaway Grill, a block from our beach. Good food, nice people, and geographically desireable. We tried a different place one night to watch the sunset, but it just wasn’t the same. We realized that we have the best of everything right down the street/beach from us.

We are also enjoying the pool very much. An added bonus is that the pool is on webcam, so we called Ada to take a look while we waved to her from the pool. Very cool.

Friday night there was an almost full moon on one side of us as we walked down the main drag here, Mandalay, and a gorgeous sunset on the other. It was inspiring really. I tried to get a picture to give you all an idea, but my camera just did not do it justice.

On Saturday, we went to see the Phillies. We had already met people at the Camelot, and at the restaurant we went to Friday night who had been to see the Phillies and gave us the scoop about how to get the best autographs. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible. We waited for a long time for autographs, but were told the Phillies might not come out before the game at all. But after we got to our seats, there were a few who were there signing baseballs. We were bummed. But we did get the autograph of a Tiger, Mike Hessman, who we hope we will hear about some day, to make it worthwhile.

Anyway, the game began and we got a look at a couple of our heroes, Ryan Howard
and Chase Utley
But then the heavens opened up and the rain came down.
As you can see, we were some of the only people who braved it in the stands for the duration. They eventually called the game and we got vouchers for a game next season. After the call, one Phillie did sign a baseball for us. We wish we knew who he was! He had a jacket on that obscured his number, and we didn't recognize him. And, of course, his scribble was undecipherable. We think that he has the initials J.S.....any ideas anyone?

That night, we took a dinner cruise, and since it was Saturday night, and apparently in Clearwater dinner cruises are a way to have a reception, we were on the boat with not one, not two, but three wedding parties, including James and Megan, who were at the next table.
That's Tom in the foreground.

That didn't stop us from dancing with the wedding party.
We were very tired when we got back home, but we had to be up early to get a full day of beaching (after church) before Tom had to leave.

It was an absolutely perfect beach day on Sunday. The sky was clear, it was about 80 degrees and the water was cool and refreshing. And, of course, we had one more meal at Frenchy's.After we left the beach, we took a little drive south to see what was in the area, and we stopped at an ice cream place where the woman insisted on turning our cones upside down and putting them in cups, with the cones protruding. It was weird, especially since we asked that she not do that. It just fed into the impression that Felicia has that the people in Clearwater are a little off. Except the people at Frenchy's, of course.

We dropped Tom off at the airport, and headed for Orlando. That's when the weirdness really kicked in. When we got to our hotel, they had no reservations for us. A little research showed that our reservations had been canceled by a woman named Ann (?) for some reason. They had a room, thank God, but we could not figure out what happened. The room is terrific, but the place does not include the 75-foot water slide that Felicia thought was part of the package.

When we got to our room on the 14th floor, we opened the doors to the balcony; the view was spectacular. There was one problem with the room,. however, the door to the hallway always slammed shut no matter how we tried to prevent it. We were in an out a couple of times before we heard screaming from the next apartment. Then a women of about 70, with a book in one hand, curlers in her hair, clad in pajamas and with a very mean expression stormed out of her apartment and threatened us with physical violence if we were to slam the door one more time. It was about 9PM and she was upset because we were keeping her up!!! From behind her we heard a male voice saying that we couldn't have both the balcony door and the hall door open at the same time or the door would slam.

Now wouldn't it have been easy for her to just tell us that? We would have been terribly apologetic and always made sure the balcony door was closed. Instead we spent the next hour devising plans of revenge including the tried and true dog (or Meredith's) turd in a flaming bag at her door.

We have calmed down now, but we are still thinking we will do something before we leave to let her know we were a trifle bit displeased with her attitude.

Tomorrow we got to DisneyWorld, the cure for all crabbiness.

In Clearwater

Once again on Thursday we got a later start than we hoped—6:30AM—but that was very good for us. And later we were very glad we got an early start. We really like the place we stayed, but it seems like only Meredith got a good night’s sleep, but then, as I have demonstrated, she can sleep anywhere.

Here is Braqdley getting ready for bed and demonstrating by his "Flood" pajamas that he is growing fast.

We took 95 past Jacksonville to Rt. 4 through Orlando and down to Tampa and then Clearwater. At least that was the plan. When we got about 4 miles from downton Orlando, a billboard announced that the road was closed because of a jack-knifed tractor-trail . We had to divert into Orlando, once again using the services of TomTom to great advantage. Although we we delayed about an hour, we saw some beautiful homes in Orlando and we generally very impressed with the town. Bradley has now decided he wants to live there, or at least he did until he found Clearwater.

Here are some of the sights of downtown Orlando:

We got into Clearwater Beach at about 1:45 and immediated went to lunch at a little joint on the beach called Frenchy’s Rockaway Grill. We were very hungry, yes, but we still think the food was good on its own. Then we went to the beach. Very nice, but very windy. Still, Bradley and Meredith took the time and effort to do some practicing for the Cirque de Soliel.

Last night we picked Tom up from the airport. We waited for him at the cell phone parking lot, which we were very impressed with since it had WiFi (Too bad I didn't know before we got there), a screen indicating the arrival times of the flights and a port-a-potty. Very forward thinking.

Friday has turned out to be a very beautiful day, so we are spending it at the beach. More later about that.

We Get To Savannah

Well, we left New Jersey a little later than we hoped--about 7:30--but we apparently left the stone in NJ, so it was all good.

It took us about 12.5 hours all told, which was good considering we stopped for an hour to have lunch at Applebee's in Emporia, Virginia
And we ran into two other situations. Before lunch, we had a guy drive beside us for a while to inform us that the carier on top of the car was opening and things were coming out. Despite Meredith's concern that her underwear would be flying down 95, we caught it before we lost anything, but it did require a trip to Lowe's in Richmond, VA. (And I take back what I said about Tom Tom, it really helped us get in and out quick.)
And there was also the unfortunate accident involving the pick-up truck and the cart full of goats. I can't write that without laughing, but everyone else thinks I am callous because we didn't know of all of the goats survived.

Anyway, we are at our hotel now and waiting for a pizza to be delivered so we can watch the American Idol results show. We do have our priorities!

We are hoping to get an even earlier start tomorrow and be at the beach by 12 or 1. That would be great.

Oh, and by the way, Bradley takes too literally that old saying ,"wherever you be, let the wind blow free." And Meredith can sleep anywhere. To wit:

Last Minute Preparations

I'm at Felicia's where we are deciding where to stop and where to stay-- a hotel that will not skeeve Meredith out. From my last trip to Florida--just last month--I have almost all the maps we will need, and Felicia has contributed a Disney dollar that she claims has shown up in every location in her house at least once. (She says it's worse that Easter grass.) She also thinks with inflation, the Disney dollar should be worth at least ten by now.

Felicia and I have decided we'll drive to Savannah on Wednesday so that we have less time to drive on Thursday. It could take us about 13 hours to get there.

Besides trying to figure out the Tom-Tom way to go.....
(By the way, that's Bradley behind her, so you get an idea what we're in for)

Felicia has been trying to get rid of what she thinks is a kidney stone by jumping up and down continuously. She read about this method on the internet!

So we leave at 7AM in the morning, hopefully leaving the stone behind. We'll report on our first day of traveling tomorrow.

Here's a description of the trip ahead of us from Felicia:

Leave Southampton, NJ on Wednesday 3/19 early. Drive an unGodly amount of time and stop in a cheap flea bag hotel that skeeves out Meredith over night. Get back in the lovely Razzi (Buick Terraza) and continue southward until we reach the beautiful and well appointed (a must) Camelot resort in Clearwater Beach Florida http://www.royalcamelotresort.com/live-photo.html

We will be staying there until Sunday. Tom (Felicia's husband) will be flying down on Thursday night so we will have to pick him up at the airport. We will drop him off on Sunday and we will drive over to Disney.

In Disney we will be staying at the beautiful and spotlessly clean, a must, Blue Heron Beach Resort, Orlando. http://www.blueheronbeachresort.com This resort has a pool bar and a 75 foot slide that dumps you into a pool. I had planned to leave at some time on Tuesday but I might stay and leave Wednesday if you are flexible. We will then reverse the process and arrive back in Southampton having had a wonderful time on either Wednesday or Thursday.