Day 31 - Taking the Mickey!

Our last Miami photo

It's now 7.30 in the evening and I'm starting this blog while waiting for our food to arrive.  Today has been a funny one - not totally gone to plan - the plan was to drive to Kissimmee from Miami, drop off our car, an have a low key night before picking up the RV tomorrow morning.

We're now in Disneyworld, still with our car, which we've now arranged to give back tomorrow instead.

Our drive to Kissimmee was pretty uneventful - we got here around 4pm.  We had an hour to find somewhere to stay, unload all of our belongings and hand the car in at the car rental place.  Oli had scoped out some hotels for us to look at about 2 miles from the rental place and across the road from were we'd be picking up the RV tomorrow, making it v convenient.  However...

The three rooms in three different hotels we had a look at all looked like we'd catch a disease if we stayed there for the night - one in particular had stains on the carpet, a dirty bathtub, a pungent smell and an air conditioning unit hanging off the wall that looked like it was made in 1952!

The whole area seemed a bit of a dive, and with time running out as the car was due back in 10 minutes, we had no idea what to do, but had no choice but to head to the rental place to hand the car back in.

On our way to the car rental place we got a little lost (for the better!) and we ended up on the road to Disneyworld!  15 minutes earlier we were in a run-down area and now we were in a sparkly magical world where everything was shiny and fun.

We eventually got back on the right track 10 minutes down the road and found the car rental place.  The guy behind the desk was really nice and when we explained that we were 15 minutes late handing the car in and still had no place to sleep tonight he told us that for no charge we could keep the car until tomorrow morning!  How nice of him was that?  :)

Now back in the "Beast" there was only one place we could go - Downtown Disney! (an area full of bars, restaurants, theatres and nightlife).  Okay so we still hadn't (or haven't) a place to sleep tonight, but we gotta eat, right?

So here we are in the middle of all that is Disney, in an Italian restaurant called Portobello, finishing off my spaghetti bolognese and Oli his gnocchi.  As we went to Disney Florida a few years back we had always had in our minds that we'd skip it this time around and possibly go to the original Disneyland in California when we go back to LA at the end of our trip.

Ideally we'd be making a move from this restaurant soon but Orlando is having one of its flash showers, so we're seeking refuge for a bit... no need to panic, the shops around here don't close until midnight! :)  The plan for tomorrow is hand over The Beast, drive to pick up the RV, dump all our stuff in it and then onwards towards Jacksonville - providing all goes to plan that is!!

J&O

Ps. Susan, thank you for buying us those two lovely pack-a-macs, which I'm sure will come in handy, but as it wasn't raining when we got here we left them in the car!

Miles driven in the Beast just over 5,000, blog views 1,648, pounds put on from eating so much...unknown!