Dela Frijoles: Speeding Up Summer

Hands up if you’re in the Hat and this “spring” with it’s gloomy days, morning chill and snow has been affecting your mood in any way. 🙋🏽 B-Rod and I had been talking about getting away at the end of April, but when his schedule came out not exactly how we had hoped, we weren’t sure if it would happen. We had to wait until April 20^th to see if his schedule in May would have some days off at the beginning of the month to add to his days off at the end of April to give us time to get away. April 20^th came and . . . . success . . . we were going to go somewhere. DawnO had me sold on Boston, which is a place I’ve wanted to go as everyone I know who has been there raves about it. But, with it’s forecast of sporadic rain, I just couldn’t go away and face more gloomy days.

Travel for this trip is also a little different. We have the luxury of confirmed seats!! BRod’s company had gifted everyone with a super cheap flight this year, so we decided to use them. I had my heart set on Hawaii and was super pumped as The Big Island is one of “my places.” Unfortunately, a few things factored into crossing a lot of the warm spots (including Hawaii) off the list. The tickets had to be of a certain fare class, or (and this was the one that affected us the most) we could get to a destination, but we couldn’t get back in the time that we needed to be back. This is the time when the schedules are changing from the winter schedule to the summer schedule. So, until the end of April flights are still going to many of the warm destinations, but then there appears to be a week off before the summer schedule kicks in with limited flights to and from these warm places. Guess we’re still learning travel lessons and tricks of the trade!

So . . . . . . . Fort Lauderdale, Florida is what worked and where we have ended up. So far Florida has been an “interesting” place!! We are staying at a smaller place called Lauderdale-by-the Sea that is a bit of an older crowd. We ended up at a pub one night and we were the youngest there by probably about 20 years. It’s not the spring break crowd on this end!! There are a lot of dark whiteys here, you can hear accents from every part of the States, the beaches aren’t quite as pristine, but it’s been warm, humid and sunny and there’s not a lot that tops the smell of the ocean AND wearing flip flops! We spent the first half-day we arrived at the beach and our hotel pool recovering from spending the night sleeping at the Toronto airport, then yesterday we spent the day riding the water taxi. Fort Lauderdale branded itself as “the Venice of America” as there are more than 480km of canals snaking through the area. This is a town of cruise ships and yachts and the 1% that live along these canals.

. . . . what it looked like when we arrived. Pretty, pretty, pretty good!!

We arrived in Toronto at 1:00AM and our flight out was scheduled for 7:00AM, so we decided to spend the night in the airport. We seemed to be the only passengers on the secure side. We went to both terminals and only passed by a few workers. It was actually a bit eerie, and I kept waiting to get kicked out, but it never happened. Instead we had a "restful" sleep on on of the many benches that thankfully had no armrests and we could sprawl out on.