January, Part II

Elise, the magical Australian, flew in a week early to get over her jet-lag and see more of America than the Miami airport area. The Saturday she flew in I met Keri at her boyfriend's apartment to hang out with them until the plane got in--we were all three going to the airport. But then Keri got called into work and Darren and I ended up going without her. Darren is genuinely nice and really interesting (part of that is because he's moved a lot and people who have moved a lot fascinate me since I still have not managed to do it once).

The airport is divided into two terminals, Delta and Delta-partners (Terminal South) and everyone else (Terminal North). So it's easy: if they're coming in on a Delta plane, they will be at the baggage claim on the far-side of the airport and if they're coming in on anything else it will be on the other. Except, we learned the hard way that American Airlines comes in at neither baggage claim. They have their own secret baggage claim in the basement. There are no signs alerting you to this except when you're standing in front of the escalators to get to the American baggage claim. The lady at the information desk sent me to the South terminal, then down the wrong set of escalators. Meanwhile, Elise was exhausted, starving, and unable to convince the pay phones to let her call me. We did, eventually, find her. And now we all know that American Airlines is too good for the regular baggage claim.

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were crazy handle-it days. Oil changed, laptop fixed, nails trimmed, all that stuff, just rushing around like crazy. But then Wednesday we went to Disney world. Our hotel was really nice for what we were paying (I've never used Priceline before but man, did it hook us up) and Disney was a good experience. Since it was cold and rainy the lines were minor at best, so we managed to ride the Tower of Terror five times on our first day, plus see everything else at the park. The second day was The Magic Kingdom and to continue our tradition of over-riding we caught Space Mountain five times too. And the crazy railroad thing twice. And everything else once. It was interesting to visit the parks again as an adult, because I really don't remember much from the times we visited as children. I remember having a good time, but that's about it. It was nice to place the fragments I had in more of a context. Also, my parents must have been insane to take the four of us there. Not only is that place a total moneysuck but seriously? We weren't good kids. And they took us three times. Seven years apart, mind you, but still...I'm impressed.

On our way to the Orlando airport I got stuck in a lane that had a piece of tire in the middle of it. The tire hit the bottom of my car and when we stopped I discovered a piece of the underneath of my car was hanging off. Being my father's daughter, I had a role of duct-tape in my glove box so I threw the blanket I keep in my trunk on the ground and stuck that piece back up under my car. Problem solved.

Except that we were heading towards the Orlando airport to meet up with Cassie, our fourth and final cabinmate. She had rented a car at Hertz and we were going to pick her up after she turned in her car and head to Miami as a complete set. My tape-under-the-car skills were no match for the tiger-toothed speed-bumps set up to keep you from stealing cars. The part was hanging down even further and the metal thing that attached it to the car was bent. I did the logical thing and took a picture of it with my phone and e-mailed it to my brother. He told me that it didn't look like anything serious and that I should see if someone could look at it. I was hoping Hertz could do that, but maintenance was closed. Ramona, however, used her magical GPS powers to send us to the friendliest auto shop ever. The guy there, Dennis, told me what was wrong and fixed it for free. If I lived in Orlando I'd never go anywhere but there. It was amazing.

With the car only touching the ground where it was supposed to and all our luggage in the car (It looked a little doubtful for a minute or two) we took 75 all the way to Miami. This is, by far, a better way to go than 95. Just trust me. We managed to get to the host hotel and I dropped Cassie, Keri, and all of our luggage off there. By all I mean everything in my trunk, including the broken piece off of my car and my emergency road-side kit. I caught the car piece because it was in a blanket, and made them put it back, but the emergency kit did not occur to me until we were well on our way to The Blue.

The Blue is where you should stay should you ever go to Miami. We booked through Orbitz and got a room for a deal, but to top that deal they let me leave my car there during the cruise. 24-hour secure parking (they even inspected my car with me and noted down the cat prints on the hood, you know, so if there were cat prints on the hood when I got back I couldn't get angry) for free. The host hotel would have charged 26 dollars a day, which was slightly more expensive than the port's 25 dollars a day. There were some off-site parking lots but most of them charged twice as much for cruise passengers and asked you to leave your keys with them (um...no.). The Blue, is cheaper than most of the bay hotels (mind you, it did not have the view) and had a bathroom bigger than the cabin we stayed in on the cruise. That bathroom had a TV in it that was bigger than the TV we had in the cabin on the cruise. And not only was there free wireless, but every room had its own wireless router. There was also a full kitchen, complete with dishes and pans.

But we didn't stay there before the cruise, we stayed there afterward. We stayed at the Marriott before the cruise and it was nice. Not as nice as The Blue, but the view was amazing and it was nicer than the Radisson we'd stayed at in Orlando so we felt like we'd moved up sufficiently. We went to the pre-party until we were to cold and felt to awkward to stay and then we all crashed.

Coming up: February, Part I.