An early arrival in the the Port of Fort Lauderdale at around 0715 and by 0800 people were allowed to get off the ship but called based upon a well tried colour system put on the baggage. If you did not check your baggage then you could walk off once the doors were open but as most people have rather large amount of suitcases, we had three suitcases, two roller bags a large camera bag and Jennifer's large handbag and no way could we manage this ourselves even without Noel’s gammy leg and age against us.
Anyway we left the cabin for breakfast around 0745 and enjoyed breakfast in the La terraza before then heading downstairs to the lounge to await the call for the colour ‘ORANGE’ so that we can get get off the ship and collect our suitcases which were already visible as we entered the building. We found a porter, no trolley here which if introduced would have the unions up in arms, and she gladly took all our luggage and led us outside to the taxi rank where a few minutes later a taxi appeared and by 0930 we were leaving the port en -route to the car rental place in a town called Margate, part of Fort Lauderdale.
When we arrived at the Avis rental car place there was a mid aged lady raging against the staff because she said she had booked a rental for which they had no information. They pointed out that with no reservation no car as they were pretty much oversold. This delayed me reaching the counter but finally when I did it all went smoothly but the amount of paperwork that they needed to print out was quite alarming, about ten sheets of paper in all. They did not need the DVLA proof of no driving offences document or insurance but only passport and credit card and a few minutes I was handed the keys for a brand new Nissan Altima in Black with 1200 miles on the clock and it is great for what we want .Rental car companies in USA have a maximum time you can rent a car it would appear that the car leasing companies would get up in arms and so I have pretty two contracts, both for 34 days each, hence the large amount of paperwork mentioned earlier, and the requirement to phone the rental company in approx. one months time to reconfirm the details.
From there we went to the Hotel, we are staying at a Hilton chain group called the Home2 Suites which come equipped with a mini kitchen and large rooms and this one was no exception and quite new. As we were rather early we left a couple of suitcases with them and headed of to Wholefood's with a view to getting a made up sandwich but this branch did not do this and so we purchased a baguette, four slices of ham, packet of crisps, mayonnaise ad some water and sat outside on the provided chairs and made our own sandwich . Unfortunately at the time we did not realise that the ham had garlic in it as did the mayonnaise which would affect Noel when after Whole foods we went to Publix (like Waitrose) and so a quick dask back to the Hotel, check in and gather all the luggage and then to the Loo. This problem with certain foods is a pain in the arse as far as Noel is concerned, literally.
We were both tired and so after checking in we had a cup of tea then a couple of hours in bed before unpacking and Noel sorting out the TV and added out Amazon Fire TV Stick so we could watch Netflix and YouTube rather than searching through several hundred channels for something intelligent and without adverts which is hard to find. Dinner was a turkey salad together with some really great strawberries followed by a couple of Netflix and then bed.
Driving in USA is easy once you have a couple of hours under your belt but the rules are quite different here and roads very wide and getting in the wrong lane when you need to turn can be a challenge and so hence why we were both a little exhausted after all of todays events. Tomorrow will be a quiet day we have decided.
