Ft Lauderdale

This was our last day of vacation and we wanted to spend the whole time………drumroll……. pretty much at the beach :). We wanted to check out the Hollywood Beach and the famous Boardwalk. We packed our lunches and icebox and drove there just past 11 AM. We forgot that it was a Saturday and the parking lot was already starting to get full. Parking entry fee is $8 for the day. The beach was pretty crowded by the time we got there. We were there to spend our day in the water and without much ado, jumped right in. The …

We woke up early and decided to head out for the Keys after breakfast. The rental car agent had told us that it will take us about 5-6 hours to drive down to Key West. Since we were staying the next two nights in Fort Lauderdale, we didn’t know if we would go all the way there because the round-trip drive alone would take the whole day. We decided to get to some point midway, spend the day and return back. The drive is pretty interesting. You get through many stretches of single lane road where there is water on …

We arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport just before 9 AM after an American Airlines non-stop red-eye flight from Los Angeles. I had 2 AVIS Free-rental-day paper certificates and only after arrival at the airport did I realize that I had left them at home. Bummer !! I knew that the rental rates were pretty expensive here, but remembered seeing better rates at carrentalsavers.com compared to Kayak/Southwest/Hotwire and all the individual car rental sites. So using the phone, I booked a 2 day rental with Budget through that website. After arrival at the Budget Fastbreak counter, we got a complimentary upgrade …

When life gives you lemons, make some hard lemonade !! We had originally planned on a trip to the Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands for the July 4th weekend this year. I was planning on staying at the Comfort Suites, Seven Mile Beach using Choice Privileges Points. Since the booking window for award stay in Caribbean properties for US residents opens 90 days out, by the time the booking window opened, the award flight availability using British Airways Avios points (MIA – GCM route operated by American Airlines) had completely vanished. That meant that we were going to spend our weekend …