We woke up around 8, got ready and headed to the long stay car park. Waited a few minutes for the bus and them we went for a tour of the terminals (we were flying from terminal 3).
It took a little longer than I would have liked and meant we arrived at check in about 2.5 hours before the flight.
We used the machines to check in then waited in a fairly slow moving line to drop off our bags. Thankfully we then got through security quite quickly.
Being a Saturday morning the terminal was quite busy and the restaurants seemed to have long queues so we got sandwiches from Pret a Manger. Whilst we were walking around Rob saw 2 guys that he knows from work – one going on holiday with family and the other heading off on a work trip!
Shortly after our gate was announced and we headed down; we boarded quite quickly but then were held for a little while.
It turned out that there was a connecting flight (I assume a little red flight) which was delayed and the empty seat next to me was filled by a man who was quite grumpy and negative about Virgin. We eventually took off about 30 minutes late which wasn’t too bad.
The flight itself was fine, although the grumpy man kept talking to me and moaning about Virgin and the cabin crew, they were running a couple of crew short due to illness so meals etc took a little longer. I understand why he was not especially happy but I was off on my holidays and not unhappy so didn’t share his grumpy mood!
During the flight I watched Jersey Boys and Planes, Fire & Rescue which was cute. The flight to Miami always seems to take forever but given that we used miles and only paid £500 it was fine
We had the standard economy food; I had the mushroom pasta and Rob lasagne. I also quite like the afternoon tea of cheese sandwiches (allegedly with sun dried tomatoes but I don’t notice them), caramel shortbread and crisps.
We landed around 18.20 which was about right; we then walked about a hundred miles to the main terminal where we were greeted with a fairly long immigration queue. They are using the machines (similar if not identical to those in Orlando) but lots of people don’t know how to use them so I’m sure that slows the process down.
I would estimate it took us around an hour to get through, collect bags and clear customs. We then took the MIA mover to the car rental collection. We had booked through usrentacar and our car hire company was Sixt. We arrived to find a line out the door (they have a relatively small office space) and discovered that they had been experiencing computer issues. We waited for around 30 minutes before getting seen and we got the keys to our car shortly after.
Whilst we were waiting the American guy in front of us got impatient (not sure how long he had waited before we arrived) and so he marched off to another supplier to get a car... we got ours about 5 mins after he left. Not sure if he will have managed to get his original booking refunded.
We collected our BMW 328 and headed off towards Palm Beach. The drive wasn’t too long, although Rob was starting to get fairly tired by the time we got to the Doubletree.
We parked the car and checked in – shockingly it was chilly outside! We got our warm cookies and headed to the room. We ate our cookies and went to sleep!
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