Clearwater to Fort Lauderdale

An early start and we finished a light breakfast and left the Hotel at about 0900 and collected some ‘gas’ for the car. Paying for petrol in USA has often been a problem in the past and mentioned in these blogs, that the card reader on the pump does not recognise the UK post code as a zip code which is only 5 numbers rather than letters and numbers mixed up. We have now found that if you use say and AMEX card and only user the numbers from our address, in our case KT13 8HN, we use therefore 138 then add two zeros making 13800 Zip Code and for some reason the card is accepted and it saves a lot of hassle going inside to leave a card, fill the car up, then return for your card etc, so this was good news.
There were three routes offered by Google to get to our destination, one was via Highway (motorway) going south via Fort Myers and then crossing to FL, or go straight west near Lakeland and then South using the Florida Turnpike which is what we did and we were glad we did this as it was more interesting than using motorway all the way. We missed our junction which delayed us by about ten minutes whilst a lady pulled up behind us at a traffic light and got out of her card to there is something wrong with your rear wheel? was this a trick to catch and rob us , but No she was a single lady in a car. We stopped a few minutes later to check and believe she may have been deceived by some dried mud on the tire and with the shape of the rear of the car over the tires, this mud could give the wrong impression. Anyway the car was performing well and not vibrations which would suggest a problem.
We stopped at a Pub-lix store for some sandwiches and then carried and stopped in a PLAZA (Motorway Service Station) and ate our sandwiches and then departed again this time on the Toll road which is a lot cheaper than the toll roads in France until we reached our Hotel Gallery One by Double tree ( a Hilton Brand) , and it was a nice Hotel but we then dumped all the suitcases and all the other stuff in the car, had a cup of tea in the room and then took the car back to the rental company finally getting back to the Hotel by Taxi at around 17.45. I think we had driven about 289 miles that day and the car had covered over 1200 miles during our stay.

We were considering where to go for dinner but had not realized the Hotel had a restaurant and room service so we availed our self of the room service and glugged down some Kirkland Malbec for an enjoyable relaxing evening whilst watching some TV.
Outside the hotel there is a main road going over a lift bridge , the bridge part was made in metal and so when the cars went over the bridge it was quite noisy and the windows were not double  glazed and we were worried we would not sleep  because of the noise but perhaps we were so tired after the journey it was not problem. Tomorrow we have to repack our bags to accommodate some wine we want to take on the ship and then we are booked on the 12.00 shuttle to the cruise port.