Free isn't always free...or is it?

So in my previous post I wrote about our room 'upgrade' at the Drury Inn in Morrow, GA. Kris and I have been Gold Key members (Drury's reward program) for about 4 years now and whenever we are able, we stay at a Drury. We had finally earned enough points so that our room last night would be free. Since we only had a certain amount of money saved for our anniversary trip, it was really helpful that we didn't have to pay for this hotel stay on our journey back home to St. Louis.

You can imagine our surprise when we looked at the bill they had slipped under the door in the amount of $565.00! I'm not making this stuff up:




But as the Drury has proven itself (or is it 'herself'?) time and time again, they fixed the problem and assured us that the room really was free. And of course, Kris was pleased that they were well-supplied with biscuits and gravy this morning!

I can't stop laughing!

I wasn't planning to write again tonight. I usually don't write unless something happens to provoke me :). So as you might guess, because I am writing, something has happened. Something quite funny has happened. At least, Kris and I think it's funny. And because we think it's funny, you get to read about it.

We LOVE the Drury Inn. With the exception of being out of biscuits and gravy in Ohio over spring break (which upset Kris more than me), we have never had a bad experience at the Drury. In fact, sometimes when we are fortunate enough to get away for a night, even in St. Louis, we go to the Drury. There is a story behind how we wound up falling in love with the Drury, but now is not the time. Now is the time for the culmination of the evening.

It was a long day in the car. We left around 10:30am and got to the hotel at 9:12pm. Yes, 9:12. The GPS SAID 9:10, but they were wrong. Besides my usual distrust, after the GPS/Florida Turnpike Conspiracy, I don't believe a word that the GPS says. Two minutes. It was off by two minutes. Technology has come so far...it should be able to detect the exact moment, down to the second, that I will arrive somewhere. (If you're new to my blog or don't know me well, insert sarcasm here).

So anyway...let's get on with the story. We got checked in and went up to our room. It smelled horrible! If you smoke, you smoke. That's your prerogative. I didn't know until just now that it was spelled with that extra 'r' in it. Good to know for my next spelling bee. So, back to the smoking issue. Kris and I do not smoke and we do not make it a habit to sleep in rooms with people who do, or in this case, did. It was very obvious that it was a smoking room, even though we had requested a non-smoking room. We love Drury so much that we don't care that they put us in a smoking room. What we care about is that they fix whatever problem we have. And fix our problems they do.

We called down to the front desk and told them that we would like to be put in a non-smoking room. There are a lot of people here, and so they didn't have any regular rooms to give us. We always get a king size bed when we go to the Drury, and when they asked if we were sure we wanted a king (bed, not person), Kris told them yes. The only thing they could give us that was non-smoking and had a king size bed was a King Conference. Now we've stayed in a lot of different rooms at the Drury. King size rooms, King size suites, room with 2 double beds. I have never before stayed in or seen a King Conference. I was joking around with Kris about staying in a conference room...you know the big ones at hotels where there are a lot of tables set up and there is a little table with cups and ice water? So I'm picturing that kind of room, with a king size bed placed somewhere in it.

Well, I wasn't far off, though I have to say I was completely shocked when I saw the room. Kris and I just laughed and laughed. And of course, I HAD to take pictures to show you. We have had a great week and been able to share some really funny and memorable experiences together. Tonight was just another to add to the list. Check out what our hotel room looks like.

Hey, we have 8 extra seats. Anyone want to drive to Atlanta, GA for a conference? Ha ha...don't really. We won't open the door for you! Enjoy the pictures.

In the words of Shane "Are you kidding me?"

Ok, I don't care how hard times are. This is just wrong! We stopped for dinner and gas just outside of Valdosta, GA and saw the sign below. Note: we did NOT fill up at that gas station!



I am SURE it must have been a typo! Makes for a great picture though right?

Oh the romance...

Have you ever gone on a dinner cruise? I hadn't. It's something Kris and I have talked about doing, but have never done. So we heard about the GREAT dinner cruise in Fort Lauderdale, on the Jungle Queen. Beautiful scenery, great dinner on a private island, entertainment. Sounded good to us. Sounded like a wonderful way to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary yesterday. We got a little more (or less perhaps) than we bargained for. The tickets were about $40/person, and it was cheaper than most of the ones we've seen advertised in the past, so don't get me wrong. I wasn't expecting to go sailing on a yacht and feast on lobster. However, I also wasn't expecting it to be as bad as it actually was. Are you ready for the story of our anniversary adventure last night?

It started out pleasant enough. The storms we had yesterday were just in Miami, and they were not predicting anything more than cloudy skies in Ft. Lauderdale. As we drove to Ft. Lauderdale, sure enough, the rain died down and the sky cleared up. We were told to get to the boat at 5:15 to get our tickets; the cruise didn't actually start until 6:00pm. Because we weren't sure how long it would take to get there, we left early and ended up getting there by 5pm. We parked the car at the marina and walked around until we found the Jungle Queen (see below).



Once we got seated on the boat and surveyed our surroundings, this is what we saw. In case you are wondering, YES THOSE ARE LAWN CHAIRS!!! Oh and we have NO clue why there were rolls of paper towel on the fake steering wheel.




I do have to admit that while they looked tacky and the boat itself seemed 'run down' those lawn chairs were actually pretty comfortable.

And then it started to rain. Actually, it started sprinkling. No big deal, of course. The boat was covered and while open on the sides, we weren't getting wet. But there was this couple behind us. I think based on their thick accents, they were from Texas, or somewhere else where you can hear that distinct Southern drawl. Kris and I had trouble containing our laughter, before the boat ever set off. The couple was two rows behind us. And when it started sprinkling (I must emphasize that it is BARELY raining at this point!) the woman starts talking to the man. They are two rows back, so we can hear their conversation. The woman says "It's really raining. I'm sopping wet!" At this point, she proceeds to pull out an umbrella and utilize it to shield herself from the torrential downpour that was actually just a very mild sprinkling. It was quite amusing. We tried to pretend like we were taking a picture of ourselves, which is why our faces are cut off; we really wanted to get a picture of this woman holding her umbrella up for what apparently she felt was heavy rain (sorry for the poor quality-we took this one from Kris' phone).



The cruise got underway just after 6pm. The 'captain' was this older gentleman, who kept telling all these ridiculously stupid jokes. As we 'cruised' along, making our way to the private island where we would have dinner, he pointed out what we were looking at along the way.








So, after about 45 minutes of this beautiful scenery, we made it to the private island for dinner. Here is where we ate:



So it wasn't quite what we had expected, at all! But we had a great time with one another, laughing at how the evening turned out. For those of you who don't know, on our wedding night, after we left the reception, we took a trip to the Martinsville Walmart because one of Kris' friends had gone back to St. Louis early and had Kris' tennis shoes and toothbrush, etc...so the limo driver took us to Walmart, then waited outside for us, while we went in (wedding clothes and all) and picked up the essentials! This dinner cruise kind of reminded us of that. What classy people Kris and I are!

Seriously though, it was not actually quite as bad as I made it out to be. Well, it was. But the area we went through on the cruise actually had some really nice houses and yachts. The guy who started Waste Management owns this HUGE house on the water. Here are some pictures of the nice things we did actually get to see on the trip. Dad, you could buy one of these houses. Some of them were on sale. Granted, they cost upwards of $$5.7 MILLION, but we'd come visit you with the kids ALL the time!







Oh yeah. We spent about 3 hours out in the Miami sun yesterday and burned worse...myself included. So in addition to all the craziness of the cruise, we were SO sore last night it was ridiculous. We stopped at Walgreens on our way back to the resort to get some Solarcaine to help take some of the burn away. We were a miserable pair. We were laughing at ourselves for how 'old' we've gotten in just 10 years and how we are falling apart at the seams. Can't wait to see what the next 10 years have in store for us!!

More FL pictures

Miami in the morning.





Miami by night.

Only three more days...

...until we get back home. Only one more day here at the resort in Miami. Saturday morning we will head back to Atlanta, GA for the night, then Sunday we will get up and drive the rest of the way home.

We got to talk to the kids tonight. We talked to them last on Monday or Tuesday night. It was good to hear their voices. I really miss them. Not so much that I want to rush home now. I can wait until Sunday! ;)

Kris and I managed to burn today for the first time. Well, Kris has a little redness on his shoulders yesterday but his chest and back are red as lobsters now! I managed to get some sun on my face and forearms, but that was it. I think the tanning I did for two weeks before we left really helped!

Here are a couple pictures of our lovely sunburns.





Just for the record, Florida drivers LOVE to honk their horns!! They don't scream and drive crazy. They just honk their horns, ALL THE TIME!

Here is a picture of Kris and I pretending to sleep in the hammock.

Seems like a good day for contacts

The day started out like any ordinary day. Except we didn't have kids, and we slept in, and we are in, oh that's right, Miami Beach! We went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, which was NOT as good as I remember it before it 'left' St. Louis. Then we went to Sports Authority to get Boogie Boards for some ocean fun. And of course, like any other day, there was some arguing that went on and more than a little anxiety on my part due to someone doing a u-turn (I won't mention who) after someone else (again I won't mention who)asked the first someone not to. A long silence ensued, things calmed down and we headed down to the ocean. We were there for about, I don't know, 20 minutes if that. Suddenly I hear someone calling my name. It's Kris, just a short distance from me. I realized right away what had happened when I saw him without those all too familiar glasses. A wave had come and knocked them off. Now I am not going to say anything else beyond that-we're going to keep this friendly. So of course we couldn't find his glasses. And I'm thinking, how am I going to drive back 20+ hours all by myself? Unlike me (who needs glasses but can see just fine without them-yes it makes sense), Kris can basically ONLY see shapes and colors without his glasses.

Suddenly I have an idea. I happened to grab my cell phone at the last minute and stick it in the backpack we were taking down to the beach. So I decided to look up local eye doctors and find out if there was any way to get glasses done ASAP. I found a place but they didn't accept our vision insurance (which THANK GOD just went into affect on June 1!). We found another place and they said there was no way they could get glasses, but they could do the exam and get him a pair of temporary contacts. At this point, I'm secretly thanking the Atlantic Ocean for swallowing up Kristopher's glasses.

You see, when Kris was in high school he wore contacts all the time. I guess he was trying to impress all those high school girls. In college, I barely remember a time when he wore anything BUT glasses. But for our wedding, he got contacts, at my request. And he looked great! Don't get me wrong...he was attractive with the glasses but man did he look good without them! He has really nice eyes and the glasses seem to hide that fact. But after about two weeks, the contacts started bothering his eyes and so he went back to his glasses. And has worn glasses for the last 10 years. He has wanted to get Lasik for quite some time; we just haven't been able to afford the payments. But I think he figured, 10 years ago, that once he snagged me, he didn't have to impress me anymore by wearing contacts. I don't really think that, but it's fun to tease him about it.

So we spent the afternoon at the eye doctor's and Kris is now wearing contacts. I think he looks great!! I'm pretty excited about it, even though it's a silly thing to get excited about I suppose. It's just that he looks so sexy with his head and face shaved and contacts in! I can say sexy. It's my blog. I can say whatever I want. ;-) Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from our excursion today.



WOW he looks good!

I finally got a tattoo!

JUST KIDDING MOM!

I did see this picture though and really liked it and thought I'd be silly with my blog title.

No tattoos for me.

Day 2 in Miami

We started out the day by sleeping in past 9am. It was lovely. We ventured out to the beach today. The weather was great. Well, it wasn't raining. It was overcast mostly but not too bad. And it was warm enough that we weren't cold. It was a lot of fun waiting for the waves, and also very relaxing. We spent more time out there than I thought we would; we did decide though that we would like to buy boogie boards so I think tomorrow we are going to Sports Authority to get a couple. We looked at Target, but I wasn't sure the small Spongebob and Spiderman ones made for children would really work the way we wanted them to. ;)

Tonight we went to the Hard Rock Cafe/Casino in Hollywood, FL. It was really great. We had a lot of fun. Something I recommend to anyone who likes to go to the casino: anytime you are in a new city that has a casino, GO. Sign up. You usually always get something free. When we went to PA, we got $5 free I think. Every time we have gone to a new casino out of state we get something. This one was the best by far though. Because we were new, we each got $20 to play on. In addition to that, we got a credit for $7.50 to be used for food within the casino. And for giving an email address we got an additional $5 for food. So together we ended up playing on $40 of the casino's money and got dinner for free. It was great! I have a lot of pictures I am going to post on Facebook, but I will post a couple here too.

The Hard Rock Cafe/Casino/Hotel was pretty cool. It was like the Landing in Branson, combined with West Port Plaza in St. Louis, but so much better than both of them combined. It was beautiful there and there were a ton of shops and restaurants. There was a Brookstone there and of course Kris wanted to go in. In the past the only things I have cared about are the massage chairs they always have. I had THE BEST massage tonight. I WANT and believe that I NEED this chair! After 15 minutes, I was pain-free (back/neck/shoulders) for the first time in 2 months. I'm just now starting to feel the pain creep back in, but I went about 4 hours feeling great! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that it 'only' costs $1800! However, if you got massages regularly, that's roughly 18 massages.

After the massage, I tried out the bed they have in there. I didn't care for it too much, but I found my pillow. Finally. I go through pillows too fast. I can never find a good one and if I do find a good one, within a month it's lost its shape. But Brookstone has this pillow called the Bella or something like that and it was perfect. The let me lay down on it on the bed to test it out. Problem is, it costs $130. But here's the thing. We have spent a lot more than that on pillows in the past (combined-not on ONE pillow) and this particular pillow has a 4 year warranty. So if it wore out in 2 months, they would replace it. And if it wore out again, they would replace. Key thing is that it is not suppose to wear out! I WANT that pillow. Kris agrees that if we should get it for me. I'm sure that's at least half of my neck problems right there, not to mention my troubles falling and staying asleep. He said that if we can set aside about $20 each paycheck that in 3 months we could get it.

Hurricane?

So Kris just asked me "Wouldn't it suck if there was a hurricane and we had to evacuate?" And I looked horrified and said "Why would you even say something like that?" I mean, the man has been married to me for 10 years (almost). He KNOWS how my paranoid mind works. He knows that if he says something like that I will most likely obsess about it and freak out for just a little while wondering if there really will be a hurricane and we really will have to evacuate. His explanation/rational for telling that to begin with was something about seeing a hurricane evacuation sign. I'm not exactly sure because I started obsessing and stopped listening and decided to write it down.

Now let's talk about tolls and the Florida turnpike. From the beginning I had looked up directions on Google Maps. And I knew from the start that there was a turnpike in Florida. Kris and I discussed our options. Did we want to get cash out and pay whatever crazy amount they wanted to charge us to take this toll all the way down to Miami? Or did we want to find an alternate route that avoided the toll altogether? We checked the additional time it would add and found that we could add 1/2 an hour and avoid the toll, and it seemed worth it to us, as we would have probably spent more on the tolls than on the gas to avoid the toll. SO...once we got past the exit that took us to the turnpike, and continued on I-95, we decided we would check the GPS in our phones to make sure it would readjust itself and match the route we had on Google Maps. You can probably guess, since I am writing about it, that they did not match up. The GPS told us to go about 60 miles, then turn and take a different road, then get back on the turnpike and it was 'only' going to add an extra hour or so!! Are you kidding me? FINALLY at our last stop (mind you we were only 2 hours away from the resort at this point) the GPS FINALLY matched the directions on Google Maps and stopped trying to put us back on that stupid turnpike! It was kind of amusing. Oh, and there was another 'adult store' at the same exit to get back on the turnpike. So, my theory is that the porn industry, the State of FL, and GPS creators are all working together in some sort of lucrative money-making scheme. Just a theory.

And just to continue with adding a picture to this post because I like pictures and because I can (you know, because it's MY blog), here is a picture of a palm tree. I know, settle down. It's a little exciting but try to contain yourself.

Georgia Hotel Signs

I like signs. Especially strange/funny signs. We didn't get murdered or anything at our cheaper hotel that we stayed at in Valdosta, GA. I say that because I have a nervousness about staying in hotels/motels where the doors open to the outside, not because I have anything against Valdosta, GA. The hotel we stayed at was a Quality Inn and it was nice enough, and better still, the price was 'right'. But you can tell by the signs they have posted around the hotel rooms and lobby that perhaps they've had some problems in the past. Take a look for yourself.

Wash cloths weren't on the list here, so Kris and I contemplated taking one, but decided against it!

This next picture is a sign we saw down in the lobby, where the free continental breakfast was.



And the biggest reason I took this next picture is because due to the sign (which happened to be directly above the bagels), I couldn't help but laugh and think that at some point, they USED to offer full-size bagels, as opposed to these miniature, baby bagels.

More random pictures

Here we are getting ready to leave the hotel in GA for Miami. Also, a couple pictures of our pretty nice rental car.

Day Two

We are about 5 hours away from the Solara Surfside Resort, and starting to see palm trees. I'm getting excited. I've never been on this side of Florida before. I was born in St. Petersburg and can't remember how many times (more than a handful I think) I went back there as a kid. And I think that one year for Bible Bowl we went to Orlando. But I've never been to Miami. I don't remember the trips to Disney (Mom, did we go more than once?), and I barely remember that Bible Bowl tournament. So this is going to be a good chance to create a new memory, doing something I've wanted to do since before we got married-take a vacation, on the beach! Here are some pictures of our resort - though they don't always give you a real idea of what it will actually look like once you get there.