Sunrise Resort--Year Five?

 We have been coming to Florida for short vacations in January for the last several years.  The first year was just five days in Clearwater.  From then on we kept extending our stay--and have settled on Sunrise Resort in St. Pete Beach for the last few years for a two week stay.  Last year I thought might have been our last year but when June came around,  we decided to go for it again and I made reservations.  After today's travel, I am thinking that I need to enjoy every minute of our stay because this really might be our last time.  The journey was not easy!

We left home before six pm Wednesday travelling with an Uber driver who was pretty grumpy and had Fox radio news on for the hour trip.  We are not Fox fans and it was very loud and very nasty.  I felt myself getting angry but tried to just laugh it off.  Guess he has a right to listen to whatever he wants! Not surprisingly, he was not wearing a mask but it bothered me less this year than last.  We wore our masks anyway. We used a free night that I have had coming for a long time and stayed at the Newark Airport Hilton.  With $15 credit for being Hilton Express members we treated ourselves to drinks and wings in the bar.  Even if there was no $15 credit, we would have treated ourselves!  

It was a short night of sleep and a very restless one for both of us with alarms set for 6:15 and 6:30.  We quickly dressed, checked out of the hotel, and got on the airport shuttle. That's when the trouble started.  We were told to go to the new Terminal A and gate 23. When the app said "new" it meant day one for Terminal A.  The TSA lines were endless and confusing.  It would look like we were almost to the screeners and then the line seemed to twist and turn away again.  At one point, everything shut down.  It was frightening to be in such crowds with some very tense and shouting TSA personnel moving people around.  They were clearly not prepared for day one.  There was also an experiment with facial recognition technology with our faces showing up when we scanned our boarding passes. 

We thought that our gate was moved to A11.  At that point Jim got in line at Dunkin Donuts and got us some much needed coffee and pastries.  He was observant enough to see that the flight number was wrong at A11--That was another Tampa flight which was delayed.  So back to A23 where we boarded on time.  However the plane was held back to accommodate travelers who were stuck in those endless security lines.  My seat mate was a young mother who was going to a bachelorette party and leaving her four children for the first time.  She went through three little bottles of vodka in her bloody marys in a pretty short time.   For her the steward ignored the announcement they had made about providing only one drink at a time! 

We handled finding our Tampa Uber driver very smoothly and were at Sunrise Resort well before the time we could check into our room.  Even though the website said they would store luggage for us, Dawn said they were no longer supposed to do so because of liability but she made an exception for us.  We walked across the street to Tradewinds Resort and the outdoor Tiki bar on the gulf.  We got our favorite drinks--a margarita for me and a pina colada for Jim but they were no longer serving food.  So we just drank and really enjoyed sitting under the palm trees and feeling the ocean breeze.

Shortly before 4, Dawn called us and said our condo was cleaned and ready.  She showed us how to use the keyless codes to get into the condo and gave us the wifi passwords.  We unpacked and then walked to Publix to get groceries for supper and breakfast tomorrow.  It's only about a half mile walk but my back objects and I had to sit down several times.  We had a great supper--and our only decent meal of the day--of bread and cheese and fruit with best of all, Key Lime Pie for dessert.  As always Florida fruit is tasty.  I am aware of inflation when I shop for groceries in New Jersey, but prices were even higher here for many ordinary items.

It does seem that my blog centers on eating and drinking, maybe mostly drinking. But that is definitely an enjoyable part of our stay here.  We are both glad we don't have to set an alarm for tomorrow morning.  We might have rain but the view from our condo is lovely all times of day and in all kinds of weather.