Sigh. We have to leave. But if we have to leave, today is the day to do it. Wow! What a change in the weather. From blindingly bright blue skies with warm temps for 3 whole days to overcast, rainy and chilly on our travel day. Well, at least we aren’t hiking today! Packed up and ready to go, we make our way back to Zurich, once again navigating straight through the heart of town. There’s another way to go to the airport on the highway, but for some reason the GPS does not send us that way. Oh well, we’re experts at navigating through Zurich by the time we are done.
Rental car turn in, airport check in, security pass through – all goes like clock work and we are in the terminal waiting to find our gate in no time. We’ve managed our Swiss Francs carefully and have only 1.28 left. Surely we can find something to buy – but no – nothing costs 1 Swiss Franc here – nothing! Our gate is announced, and on the way we stop by one last kiosk, asking the salesperson how much this little 1 1/2 ounce candy bar costs. 2 Swiss Francs. Really? Darn it. I thank him, but tell him we don’t have enough left. And he says, how much do you have? I hold out our measly 1.28, and he says wait a minute, there’s a discount on this candy bar. He rings it up at 1.50 – which we still don’t have, but he takes all our money and hands us the candy bar anyway. What a sweetie!
So, off we go to our Iceland Air no frills flight with our candy bar made even sweeter with kindness!
The flight is uneventful. There are movies, the food isn’t all that bad, even though we do have to pay for everything. But, that’s the whole premise of Iceland Air. We land in Reykjavik on time, and make our way to our final flight to Orlando. Easy enough – although we’re late leaving, which doesn’t thrill us all that much since we have over an hour long drive to get to the hotel in Flagler Beach. Nothing we can do about it, except try to enjoy the flight – which we actually do – especially the view over Greenland.
We actually make up time and touch down in Orlando right on time, then make our way through passport control at record speed (love Global Entry!), and then, disaster! The bags take for freaking ever to arrive. One of the airport guys we talked to says this happens all the time with Iceland Air, they don’t have enough people working, and so it takes longer than normal for the luggage. Darn. We were so hoping to get out of here fast to make that drive, but that is not happening tonight. Finally after 45 minutes, the bags start to show up, we grab ours and trot outside for the shuttle to the parking lot. We’ve texted ahead and the car should be ready, but there too, we arrive and it isn’t waiting for us. Sigh. Ed goes to stand in the long line at the counter (even though we’ve pre-paid and the car was supposed to be waiting for us when we got there). Finally though, I walk over to the guys in the arrival/delivery lane and ask them – and they go get the car right away. Phew! No waiting in line – we can finally get on the road.
I’m driving, so I choose the route, and decide to go I-4 instead of that horrific toll road. I hate the Turnpike, it’s dark with very few exits and it costs a fortune. I figure at this time of night, I-4 should be fine. Oh ho ho. This place is more like Washington, DC, every day. There’s a TON of traffic out at midnight on a Thursday. Really? Come on people! We manage to make decent time though, and get out of Orlando as fast as we can to arrive at Flagler closer to 1 am than the 11 pm we had originally anticipated. Travel adventures – always going to have them!
Sleep comes really easy tonight – after our long, long day and what seemed like even longer drive here. We’re actually up a little later on Friday, than our normal crack of dawn, but we’re still on the road by 8, with a relatively easy drive (including a stop at Costco) which puts us back into Asheville around 4pm. It was a great trip, but it’s really nice to be home, and we’re looking forward to spending the entire summer here, settling back into our Asheville routine until the next great adventure begins….in October!
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