Sunday, April 5, 2015

Day 13 - Travel to Seattle

Port Charlotte to Tampa to Seattle to Sunland; 3-22-15

It was a very lazy morning. We didn't even get up until about 7:00 or so. We lazed around drinking coffee and visiting until it was time to make breakfast (or brunch) late morning. We had a nice visit with Steve and Barbara but had to head back up the coast to Tampa Bay by about 1:30 or so. Our flight was scheduled for 6:00 but we didn't know what the traffic was going to be like. There are so many people in that area we had discovered stop and go traffic a lot.

We got to the airport about 3:00 or so. The Tampa airport security was definitely not like SeaTac's wherein we had to take our shoes off, 3 ounces had to be out of our carry on, etc. But security went pretty quickly. Alaska Airlines is in a terminal with just a couple other smaller airlines so it's not too busy. There was a restaurant right next to our gate so we decided to go ahead and eat dinner since our flight was 6 hours (non-stop) then we had a 3 hour drive home.

It was a full flight and wouldn't you know the guy I had to sit next to had a San Francisco baseball hat on (fortunately it was the baseball team NOT the football team), was just off a NCL cruise and didn't really smell all that great, and was kinda big and was encroaching on my space which meant I had to encroach on Jim's space.

On the other hand, thanks to T-Mobile and GoGo In flight (or whatever it's called), I get free texting, so I pretty much texted with Tracy most of the flight. It was very handy when I wanted to know where we were when we were having "heavy bumps" and the pilot asked the flight attendants to take their seats!

We also did something different with our car this trip. Whenever we fly out of Seattle, we drive over the day before and stay at the Hampton and leave our car at a paid parking place (usually Seatacpark.com). This time, I happened to ask Hampton if they allowed guests to leave their cars for a price - YES, they did and it was half the price of the other paid parking plus it was in the underground parking! It was great to be able to use the restroom, get Jim a cup of coffee in the lobby before getting our car in the parking garage! We might have gotten on the road before 10:0 p.m. local time, but it was after 1:00 a.m. east coast time which is the time zone we were used to.

And now ... back to reality. And waiting for our next adventure!

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