Flying home from our June 2007 vacation to Florida. Overall, it was a great trip, which when you go to Florida, this time of year means the weather was nice. It was the start of the rainy season in Florida, which, for past vacations, has meant days and days of dark skies and pouring rain. But for this trip, the weather was outstanding, hot; yes. But the humidity and heat was as palatable as one could ask for, for mid-June. We got in tons of pool time, lots of good eats, and a nice array of fun and recreation that you’d expect.
Lots of great pictures on Kodakgallery!
We started for a few days with Grandma Minnie. Well, we started off with a Saturn Vue. As I’ve blogged (more like whined), american cars are just awful, and american rentals are the crap cars they can’t even sell, so you’re really talking about the bottom of the barrel. we did upgrade to get to this, but anything nicer was gonna cost, and having never been in or driven a vue, i thought it worth the try. i’ll give it an overall rating of a C+, which is a compliment. the ergonomics were awful as expected, the entire car felt like it had been pressed from a single plastic mold, and when you slammed on the gas, it sounded like you stepped on a fat old cat, it just whined and wheezed, with zero power response. but it got us where we needed to go and the air conditioning worked well.
minnie’s was great, except i had one minor migraine like headache. aviva was a hero, called the doctor and got me some relpax. it may not have been a full blown migraine, or the relpax did its job, either way, i took a nap and by the next AM was feeling much (not 100%) better. we had a few meals at the beverly hills cafe and found our new food love: Ritter’s Frozen Custard. Miles loves “Cubby Paws” – their version of the Carvel ice cream sandwich. We spent tons of time at the pool, enjoyed a few nice clouds, and took for an evening swim, which they loved.
We took the 2 hour drive to the Hyatt Coconut Point and did all we planned: lots of swimming on the slide and lazy river, an evening boat ride to see dolphins (which we did), took the boys on wave runners, a few evenings on the beach to collect shells, and just lots of easy relaxing. We did go to Roy’s Hawaiian for father’s day dinner, which was great. MUCH more kid friendly than we expected and the food and service were top notch. We hit Ben & Jerry’s once too, of course.
Other miscellaneous excitement:
- We sat through a 2 hour tour of the timeshares at the Hyatt, they gave us the hard sell, but we held off. We might plunk down one day, but didn’t feel the urge that day, we’d like a new roof more
- On the last day, Mack was swimming and a bug the size of a small poodle crawled onto his shoulder (yes, in the pool, this bug was an excellent swimmer). while it was probably some harmless beetle, i cooly dragged mack out of the pool and swiped the big off him. i was proud he didnt shrill or freak out, i tried to play down exactly how large the bug was. the handy net man came over to remove said insect.
- the hyatt is wonderful! we had 2 adjoining rooms, which were great, nice big bright bathrooms, nice big clean rooms, great toiletries, you name it. the hotel restaurants were excellent and the hotel staff & service are also outstanding. we got a great deal, in fact, we took them to the cleaners
we used like 3 different specials: 1) family fun to get the kids room at 1/2 off, summer splash for like 20% a bunch of crap and some other vacation getaway to make our room discounted. top that off with $150 gift certificate we earned for the timeshare “hard sell” tour and 2 free nights, courtesy of AMEX points, and the ending invoice was a fraction of what it would have cost had we just booked it.
- The lazy river is awesome, 3 feet deep so Miles loves it, and you just and float and float, with the new age music in the background, every pool should build one of these
- I found Florida has a cool new kind of bug – the no-see-um. they are smaller than mosquito’s – so they fit through even screens! and they don’t bite… well… they don’t bite, but when they land, some chemical on them has a negative reaction with your skin that causes welts. i managed to pick up 1-2 of these bites, what a wonderful new breed of insect.
- Wave runners were great, I took Mack, Aviva took Miles. Which meant Mack and I went fast, Aviva and Miles were in the right lane. But we all had a blast. I was wise and suggested we do 30 minutes, not an hour (still $120 for all 4 of us), 30 minutes was enough for the kids and grown-ups
- Noone got sunburned - mostly because we went nuts on the sunscreen, I think we’re getting smart
- Finished almost 1/2 of “The World is Flat” – excellent book
The kids had a blast, we had a blast – definitely one of our best vacations ever!