Day 2 – 4
After retiring to bed at a reasonable time I found myself bolt awake at 3am and being in a “strange” house I lay there trying to drop off to sleep again… No chance… so trailing a book and a blanket I went out to the family room and settled down on the sofa to read and see if that sent me off again.
After about 30 minutes I thought I heard movement from upstairs (we were in the downstairs suite) then nothing again. I thought I would go outside and have a cigarette, maybe that would help…. Errr OK how does the alarm work, is it even alarmed what if I wake the whole house up…..
I wandered over to the alarm panel to see if I could work it out. Isn’t it strange that in your own house you will fiddle with things till you work it out but daren’t do that in someone else’s house? Stranger still that I remembered we weren’t in our own home and put something on before going wandering…. As I was standing in front of the alarm panel Mr CDV wanders down the stairs in the same amount of clothes as me, just as well both our memories had been working at that unearthly hour or it could have been a bit too much for poor Mr CDV
Anyway he turned the alarm off for me, got a drink and retired to bed again. I went out to the deck for a ciggie. The noises coming from the conservation land behind the house were so loud I was amazed anyone could sleep. It’s a very eerie feeling being surrounded by total blackness and only hearing the noises of crickets and other critters. Back indoors and I settled down on the sofa to try and get some more sleep.
Waking up again at 7 to glorious blue skies made all memories of a restless night vanish. I went to get my cossie (we had gone round to our house last night to pick up some clothes from our owners closet with permission from our guests) I got changed and straight into the pool…. Ahhhh bliss, this is what life was made for, a leisurely swim under an azure sky with the sun beating down, it doesn’t get much better than this does it?
The rest of the party wandered out one at a time, got changed and took to the pool. Any plans we had for shopping or anything in the least strenuous were evaporating as quickly as any splashes on the deck….. It didn’t take long to decide that today would be an “admin” day… basically sit around and discuss plans for the rest of the holiday.
After a quick trip to McDonalds to grab a muffin the rest of the day flowed at the pace of a lazy river, with much talking, and sunning ourselves and swimming.
The plan was to leave early tomorrow for Naples on the Gulf Coast for a couple of days. Mr & Mrs CDV have done the trip many times, but we have never managed to leave Orlando yet so were really looking forward to it.
After a Chinese takeaway and some detailed route planning by the boys (I’m sure this must be a man thing, as I would just get in the car and start heading in the right direction, hoping to find signposts to guide us), we retired to bed exhausted by all the “admin” we had achieved today.
Day 3 – Tuesday June 28th
Up with the larks again, we packed and showered and were on the road just after 9am; trust me this is quite a feat for Al, stopping for breakfast at Denny’s on the 27. Fed and watered we were back in the car and headed West by 10.30.
We have never got further than the turn off for Auburndale so it was great to see some more of the countryside, even if it was only in passing. The journey was fairly uneventful, and when it started to rain in the early afternoon, we just slowed down until it passed. By this time we were approaching Fort Myers so pulled into Subway for a drink and a sarnie.
By the time we had finished, so had the rain and the trip down to Naples was lovely. We arrived at our pre-booked hotel around 2.30. We checked in and this is when I realised more than ever how much I loved staying in a home rather than a hotel. Although it was clean and tidy, it was exactly as I remembered hotels: small, cramped and impersonal.
Had this been anything other than a bonus trip I would have booked a home to stay in, b
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