The one I am DEFINITELY planning! Day 13 - Fort Lauderdale to Tampa

This morning we were awake at 0630 ready to leave our cabin at about 0745 before heading to the MDR for breakfast, I had granola and yoghurt with fruit and a cinnamon roll. Rob unsurprisingly had an omelette.

We disembarked after breakfast – our group had just been called. We were quickly through immigration and collected our luggage.

We got an uber to the airport and were baffled by the fact that a sheriff was directing traffic inside the port and he was being a complete muppet.

There was no clear pick up area for uber and he was yelling incoherent directions at the vehicles as they attempted to stop and collect people.

We went to pick up our car at Hertz, we had booked an EV and were hoping for a Tesla but were allocated a polestar.

Annoyingly they had only left it with 73% charge so we decided to stop and charge before we left Fort Lauderdale, mainly because we weren’t sure how far the next chargers would be.

We used the sat nav and found a charger at a dunkin’ donuts so I got a coffee while we waited.

We then drove about 100 miles before stopping to charge and get lunch, we got a Burger King whilst the car was charging.

We then drove about another 100 miles before our next charge which oddly was free – it was outside a hotel but had evidently been installed using some kind of grant to reduce energy poverty (we googled while charging).

As we approached Sarasota the traffic was quite slow and I’d estimate the traffic added an hour to our trip.

We arrived at the hotel in Tampa at about 1715, we checked in and got ourselves settled then decided on dinner at Bahama Breeze.

We walked from the hotel although were a little alarmed when the sidewalk just randomly ended – we had to cross over the road and then back again.

Dinner was good, we had beef empanadas to share then I had a salad and Rob had pasta. I also had a virgin pina colada.

Rob had a chocolate dessert and I had the key lime pie although I struggled to eat even half of it.

With hindsight I should have picked a different main – my salad was quite sweet (all the fruit) and I should have picked something more savoury.

We walked back to the hotel via a parking lot, avoiding the dangerous road crossing (not really dangerous lol) and were entertained from our room by a rather lavish Indian wedding that was going on downstairs.