OH MY GOD, its this morning the 31st January we are due to leave, not tomorrow the 1st, by latest 10.00, and so having made the tea I headed back toward the bedroom with two cups and said Jen I think I have made a mistake , we don't leave tomorrow its today, I am so sorry if messed up!!! or something along these lines. So all hell let loose as we ran about packing suitcases and cleaning the place as we went along thinking all the time we only now have an hour left but somehow we made it and we left the house at about 10.10 , the cases were packed, not brilliantly, but all was in the car. Next problem was where do we spend the night as as we are booked only for two nights in the Hampton at Clearwater and so communication was made with them and they said they were fully booked for tonight but they had a sister Hotel, within the Hilton Group, at the Hilton Clearwater where they had a room for just one night and so rather then mess around we accepted the booking, rather expensive mind you, and so we left Rotonda West in a bit of a hurry and headed north.
We decided to use the more quieter side roads rather than the US highways and headed North to Sarasota and then on to Whole foods where we purchased two rather excellent beef sandwiches and the headed over to the beach Dido beach area to eat them where we sat in the sun and enjoyed the sandwich. Then North we headed mostly on highways to reduce the time spent travelling and we arrived at the Hilton Hotel around 15.30 and checked in and we had nice room overlooking the Hotel expansion and car park, and also to be fair the beach and sea. Although nobody had informed us of the Hotel woks which started at 0800 in the morning which we discovered the next day. I failed to mention that on Tuesday I had found out by chance that my payment to HMRC although made was to the wrong HMRC bank account, how could this haver happened as I though I had checked it multiple time??must be getting old and now messing up the departure date. This is not good Groves’y’
The view from the window of the Hotel was quite nice and it was at this time suddenly my nice Sony DSLR camera decided to play up and stopped working, Oh NO, why as I need it for the cruise next week and why what's wrong with it. So I changed the batteries three times and the last time the camera started showing a battery level of 89% and the halfway through a panoramic shot it shut down never to reopen, Oh bloody hell I don't need this.. So I changed batteries 2 or three times more and nothing would make it start up. Now what to do???. So over the next hour I researched on the web what could be done, who could mend it etc and finally found a place about 35 minutes from here in St Petersburg who did Sony camera repairs but by the time I had found it they had closed. So nothing to do tonight except be unhappy with the camera and so we left the Hotel seeking some food and a glass or two of wine. Just across the road from the Hotel there several joints from pizza to most everything else and so we found a bar and went inside and said lets look at the menu, for me a Hamburger should be O.K. and how about a bottle of wine?? The waiter looked a little surprised but not as much as us when they presented us with a 1.5 litres bottle of Chardonnay and is this Ok??? well how much we said and actually the price was not to bad and so we went ahead, Jennifer having a Greek salad with shrimps and Noel with a burger and fries, got to watch the stomach problems, and it was quite good really. Then back to the room and sit on the balcony taking in the lights and reflection from the sea.
Oh dear what to do about the camera as that is vital for Noels blogs etc, lets see what the Camera shop can suggest.
Tomorrow should be interesting
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