North Eleuthera Airport (ELH)
Orlando vacation ~ Day one
Now that we have decided to spend the next few years traveling around Europe and blogging about our adventures, we thought it might be a good idea to get in a few practice runs.
One of the rules of living in the Bahamas is that you can only stay for six months at a time. You can get a homeowners card that allows you to stay longer but we have never bothered. Anyway, since we had to leave because our six months was up, we decided to have a mini-vacation in Orlando.
Part of what we plan to do on our adventures is travel as cheaply as possible and document everything we spend. We want to show that it is possible to travel a lot in your retirement years without spending a fortune.
We’ll talk more about timeshare later but for now know that we exchanged into a resort in Orlando where we plan to spend a week. Timeshare (now they call it vacation ownership) can be a great way to save money but one of the downsides is actually getting to the resort.
American Airlines Special
American Airlines currently runs a $69 one way special (plus taxes – total $396.40 return for two) from Eleuthera to Miami on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. This is way better than the $704 we normally pay to fly into Fort Lauderdale with the other carriers that service the island. The only problem is we keep a car in storage close to the Fort Lauderdale Airport so now we have to get from Miami to Fort Lauderdale.
We figured a taxi was out of the question as it would have eaten up any savings on the airfare. We checked for limo and shuttle services between airports but it was still more than we wanted to pay. The best price we found was at shuttlediscount.com but it was still going to cost almost $80 for both of us.
Then we remembered the Tri-Rail system that runs parallel to I95 from Miami to West Palm and beyond. A quick check online at http://www.tri-rail.com and we discovered the trip from Miami Airport to Fort Lauderdale Airport was just $1.90 each for seniors and that included a free shuttle bus from arrivals at the airport to the train station. Add a $15 (including tip) taxi ride from the station to our storage unit and we had a pretty sweet deal.
Air travel is increasingly becoming a royal pain in the ass even from a one room terminal like North Eleuthera. We still had to arrive two hours before the flight and sit and wait for the plane to arrive.
We arrived at the North Eleuthera Airport at 11:30am for a 1:30pm flight to Miami. The flight was more or less on time, which is rare for here, but we got into the wrong line up at customs. The guy ahead of us was interviewed for a long time and finally got hauled away. Of course this meant we missed the train we had planned to catch and had to wait another hour at the station. We finally got to our car in Fort Lauderdale at about 5:30pm ready for the 3-4 hour drive to Orlando. After reconnecting the battery it started immediately (I love my Jeep) and we were off.
Hard To Beat Denny’s
Before getting on the highway we stopped at Denny’s for the first food we had had since breakfast. It’s tough to beat their senior specials – huge salad, grilled Talapia, two sides and coffee for just $20 including tip.
We had printed out our Google maps to the resort before we left home but somehow they didn’t seem to match the reality of the street we were on when we eventually made it to Orlando. Anyway after a couple of stops to ask directions we got to the Celebrity Resort – Orlando around 11:30pm just 12 hours after leaving home. We were looking forward to crawling into bed for a well deserved rest but the days adventures were not over yet.
Because we booked on short notice the only unit available for exchange was a studio which can often mean very limited cooking facilities. When we got to our assigned unit we quickly discovered, as we had feared, that it was small and only had a microwave and bar fridge. Worst of all it had not been cleaned since the previous guests. Needless to say, after traveling all day, we were not happy.
The resort staff were very apologetic and immediately offered us an upgrade to a one-bedroom unit which we gratefully accepted.
So it worked out well and we got a beautiful unit with a full kitchen just across from the pool. It was a long day but we are here and looking forward to our first vacation in several years.