Friday, March 04, 2022

Well we are pretty much settled in

The last couple of days have been about food shopping, part in the local Publix Store which is ten minutes away and also our regular visit to Costco in Sarasota to purchase enough meat and fish to last the next two months, all being well.

Costco was a busy as ever with no obvious empty shelves whilst Publix was restricting the sale of toilet paper and to be frank there was not much on the shelves anyway but we have enough now to last a little while. Its much quicker to shop than when you get back home the meat particularly has to be separately wrapped and frozen for later use. WE have decided that the next few days will mostly spent relaxing and swimming and perhaps we wont go to the local car drive by this Saturday but wait till next months event.

So for the time being I will not reporting on a daily basis unless there is something to Blog about.

So now its time for the pool…….

Tuesday, March 01, 2022

ON, On they cried- Rotonda West here we come

There was no need to leave the Hotel to early as with a ,say 4 hour drive, we still are unable to access the house until after 1600 hrs and so after breakfast we stayed in our comfortable Hotel room until final check-out time at 11.00.

The car loaded we left the Hotel and plans to use the slower non toll and main highways and use quieter roads where we could stop as required. The trip took initially West and then North followed by West again and about an hour from Punta Gorda we stopped for lunch having pulled of the road on to a farm field entrance and sitting there with both front doors open when along came a ‘Sherriff’ who had slowed down to see if we were OK, nice of him. Eating our lunch we were watched for what seemed like a long time the cows in the field opposite clearly were interested in us and stood and watched for at least twenty minutes before moving on.



We finally arrived around 3pm at the Publix Supermarket where we stopped to by basic rations, bagels, crisps a bottle of wine etc and also two large rib eye steaks and also two even larger pork chops and finally a bag full of shrimp as an appetiser. We arrived at the house at 4pm and pleased to see that there had not been any new houses built on either side of ours which ensures our complete privacy which enables us to swim without distracting swimwear. The electronic door lock had broken and so we had to get the key from the lock box which is also not in good shape but finally we made it in to the house just as the maintenance guy came to change the lock which shortly after he left started to make strange noses which went on for about 3 hours before finally stopping around 8pm after I complained to the agents.

The state of the BBQ last time we arrived in 2020 was poor and so I advised and reminded the agents that it needed to be really clean when we arrived ,only it was not, and so another bollacking and the next day they sent somebody round whilst we were out shopping and did a proper job ( as they say in Zummerset) .

Anyway as I had no BBQ cleaning stuff I took a risk and cooked up the steaks which were excellent as it got dark around 7pm and so in the half light I cooked which was not the easiset to do. To end the evening we watched the final episode of ‘inventing Ana’ on Netflix, worth a watch.

And so to bed