Florida for Christmas and New Year - getting there

To do the madness that is air travel we needed to get up at 04:45! We loaded up the car with our luggage and dog to make the first trip to our friends Sarah and
Doug in Hatfield where we dropped off the dog for it's 2 week holiday and picked up Doug who drove us to Heathrow terminal 3. Of course, despite my stress and panicing, we arrive in plenty of time at about 06:35. The American Airlines flight is un-eventful apart from the slightly grumpy old maids who pass as air stewardesses and we land in Miami about 10 hours later at 15:00 local time.

Of course, that's the easy bit! Immigration is actually not too bad as I'd managed to fill in the reams of paperwork on the plane, but the baggage reclaim is bordering on third-world, with all the cases just dumped in a heap behind one of the conveyor belts, inviting a scrum! Luckily we make a reasonable escape and then head outside to the steaming hot underground car hire shuttle bus pick up area and hence to the car-hire depot to pick up our Pontiac C6.

Now the fun really starts as we've been travelling already for 17 hours and it's about 17:00 as we head north for the drive up to Orlando. We have a map that I'd taken trouble to print off at home and we managed to find the I95 heading north with no trouble, although in retrospect this might have been the wrong choice as maybe the Florida Turnpike runs the whole route, the map I had was not too clear about this. We stop off for a Mucky Macs tea and then manage to somehow miss a turn to get us heading NW to Orlando, so we have to detour slightly. We get there in end, but still manage to make a complete hash of finding our apartement just a few miles away from Disney, I think fatigue, bad maps and large distances are taking their toll.

We finally arrive at about 21:00, some 21 hours after leaving home and manage to get access to our 3rd floor apartment which is pretty super. Huge and well equipped with 2 double en-suite bedrooms, nice lounge and kitchen with three TVs and free internet access, hence this post.

It's still 75 degrees outside, but we manage to crash out, exhausted!