Friday, January 05, 2018

Where does time go- The last few days just went!!

Well I seem to have missed blogging for a few days and on one hand we have been taking it easy, on the other hand we have quite a few things to do.
Well we have booked this house until the end of January and have 16 days to do something else in Florida but as we have discovered, and so we have spent some time on the internet looking at other houses to rent , checking out Hotels and also Caribbean Cruises and after all is said and done we have decided on a Cruise with Holland America Line leaving from Fort Lauderdale on 4th February and returning on the 14th Feb. An so we needed to book hotels between leaving the the current house and whilst in between arriving back at Fort Lauderdale and leaving on the flight to London on the 16th should we decide to go. So hopefully it should be good and works out price wise in line with good resort Hotels in Florida nice places but include the food and Jennifer has no cooking or shopping to worry about.
MV Eurodam of Holland America Line
we have had one day out touring around to Boca Grande and Gasparilla State Park and it was quite nice and some very expensive houses by the side of the water which you can see when crossing the bridge. From there we headed to Manasota Key and drove all the way along the island strip with nice houses either side but no sign of any damage caused by the Hurricane last last year. We stopped in a Diner for a snack lunch and the chicken breast in a burger bun was really excellent and perhaps one of the best we have ever had, would go back If I can remember where it is. When topping up the fuel in the car its always a bit of a hassle as unlike UK when you can fill up and walk to the payment station, in US you can put your credit card in but it would accept cards from overseas and so you have to go to the payment counter and leave you card, walk back to the car and fill up, then back to the payment station each time having to wait in a queue. However this time the petrol pump data entry pad was not working and so we had to call out the guy from the payment station who seemed to know less than I on how it worked and in the end had to change pumps, what a palaver.
On Wednesday night we had a steak BBQ, the steaks we bought from Costco on the way here are great except the first one we tried we were not to impressed but we had just purchased them and perhaps it was not hung enough or to cold, however this was was really good and cooked to perfection with a grill I am not used to but it really turned out well.
We decided to order and Amazon fire stick so that we could watch programmes without the usual hundred of Adverts which you get on USA television but the one we brought from UK could not seem to understand it was now in USA and did not work properly and so when the new one arrived we hoped all would be well. Well it wasn't and after about 30 minutes on the phone to the excellent support  we discovered that due to using a UK based credit card it assumed you were inn UK not USA, however matter is now resolved and the Amazon prime choice together with a months trial of Netflix will provide more TV and films we ever watch.
We also had to wait for a courier envelope to arrive from the UK containing some urgent paperwork which Noel needed to sign and then return it back to France and so it arrived and we had to find a courier office somewhere and there happened to be one right next door to the Publix Supermarket we use and so twenty minutes in the shop and all was done. Total cost of courier from Uk and Back for one small envelop is about £ 85.00 which is a lot of money but we cannot rely on the normal post for a thing like this. Oh well. This courier office was also across the road from the Super Day Deli and Pizza joint where we had decided to visit to test a pizza for lunch. What a place it was and it was so busy and they had a huge amount of staff serving so they must do a big trade. Compared to the pizza joint next to Public which was empty this one was very active and so we bought three large slices of various pizza’s and two large chocolate éclairs and came back to the house and sat in the sum  by the pool end enjoyed the food.
Well that's about it at the moment and its Saturday lunchtime when writing this and we are off to the old town of Englewood later this afternoon to watch the Cruisin’ party of old cars, should be fun
w