We were all up early and ready to go by 9.30am, which was a bonus! I was glad I'd forced myself to pack yesterday afternoon rather than wait until this morning!
We sadly left our beautiful villa and after a brief stop to make sure I'd packed my car keys (!) we were on the road...the I75 to be exact! We followed this until we reached the turn-off for Port Charlotte and then took the 17, a road that wound its way through some very rural countryside and that was a world away from the Florida of Naples and the Gulf Coast.
It was mainly farmland with lots of grazing cattle and small houses dotted about. As we approached the town of Arcadia, there were a lot of roadworks going on so presumably a fair amount of traffic uses this road.
At Zolfo Springs we turned onto the 64, a two lane highway that again, wound its way through tranquil farmland dotted with occasional houses and farms. We had travelled on this road before, once when we returned from Anna Maria Island, and again when we left Bradenton, three years ago. The weather had improved and the sun was out in full force. In the car, with the air-conditioning, it was hard to imagine the heat outside!
We followed the 64 all the way to Avon Park and then turned onto the 27, the road that passes by Highlands Reserve where we stayed for our first week. We had looked out for somewhere to eat all morning but had hardly seen anything so we decided to once again stop at the Bahama Breeze restaurant on the 192.
It was very quiet and we had a great meal with lovely, friendly service from a girl who hailed from Pennsylvania. She was bubbly and chatty and we talked about the heat and her trip to London the year before. We started with three chicken Empanadas (one of us missed out!) followed by coconut shrimp for me, a burger for Mike, ribs for Keith and Jerk Chicken Pasta for Sophie who wanted to compare the dish with mine! She said mine was better and far hotter!
After we'd eaten we visited Target and Sophie bought herself a bag and a purse. It was a bit sad seeing other tourists shopping for their villas...a while ago that was us! Keith changed his clothes in the car park - how he never got arrested I don't know, as as one point he was minus any clothes on his bottom half! Mike opened both doors to give him some privacy but it was still a daring thing to do! I'm not sure what sort of prison sentence he'd get for "lewd conduct"!
The drive to the airport was straightforward but I did notice that the driving was far more frantic than it had been in Naples. We dropped off our lovely Toyota Camry and I was nearly in tears when we walked away. She had been a big part of our holiday and never once let us down. I'd really enjoyed driving her for the last three weeks.
We were able to check in for our flight straight away which was great. The lovely check-in woman called Samantha allocated us our seats on different rows and we discovered later that we had the two rows to ourselves, which was a huge bonus and made our flight home just that little bit more comfortable. She also selected us for the fast track security which was brilliant and we were through in mere minutes...looking over at the long queues for the normal security channels, we felt very lucky.
As we had some dollars left over we treated ourselves to a visit to the Club Lounge and I think we got our money's worth! We enjoyed free alcoholic and soft drinks, snacks and newspapers. There were also two showers you could use but as the lounge was quite busy initially, we never got the chance to use them. There were lots of comfortable seats overlooking the airport, an area for eating and a lovely bar. It was heaven to be in there for the three hours before our flight left!
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