It never ceases to amaze me at how difficult it is to find a rental car in Orlando that isn’t at the airport itself. We eventually were able to get one from a Doubletree Hotel that looked like a hurricane had destroyed the lobby. No cookies were included with the rental car. Given that we were renting from a Doubletree, the options were somewhat sparse, yet quite varied. I had rented a compact and was offered a Mazda Miata sports car, a Kia Optima sedan, or a pickup truck. We went with the most practical, albeit the most boring option.
Luckily I had the providence to decline the toll pass. As we soon discovered, all tolls had been suspended for a seven day period following the hurricane so that people would be able to find safety without the fuss of finding change. It was about a 90 minute drive to the Conadio in St. Petersburg on the Isla del Sol. Our first discovery was that the air conditioning was not working. The indoor temperature was a constant 90º. Being a holiday weekend in Florida, our prospects of getting it fixed seemed slim.
Furthermore, having felt a bit under the weather for the past few days, Nicole’s health seemed to decline further. She took a rapid covid test and was positive. It wasn’t the most ideal of situations to be ill with low-grade fever in a condo with no AC. Yet, with few options we decided to make the best of it. After all, what is summer without getting COVID?
The following day we mostly rested. We opened as many windows as we could to try and allow some semblance of a breeze through the Conadio, but the heat was still energy-sapping. Nicole felt a bit better later in the day, and we went downtown to the Salvador Dalí museum. Nicole posed here with a portrait of “The Sick Child” as seemed appropriate. I had always thought that there was some sort of connection between Dalí and St Petersburg, but it is more just a story of rich collectors and donations. He never lived in the area and only resided in the United States for a brief period around the Second World War.
The museum was smaller than I remember it, and was quite crowded. Nonetheless, it was nice to experience some industrial air conditioning at work while being cultured at the same time. After the Dalí museum, we got takeout from a Mediterranean place and brought it back to the Conadio.
The following morning, an air conditioning tech showed up on a holiday to attempt to fix the AC. He assessed the problem and informed me that, “He just needed a part from his truck and we would be feeling cool air soon.” He returned twenty minutes later saying it did not fix the problem and there was nothing he could do for at least a week. Sigh.
The beach was surprisingly sparse for sunset on Labor Day, but we were not complaining. We timed our departure the day after to avoid the bulk of holiday travel. Our flight wasn’t until about 4pm (later delayed to 5 due to a United IT-induced ground stop). We made one last trip to the beach that morning while the tolls were still suspended. It was already quite hot out. It was no easy feat to put on pants while cleaning up a hot condo in preparation for our flight.
The Tampa airport has thusfar been a significantly less stressful airport to depart from at least from a TSA standpoint. There are still multiple trains that must be ridden and a somewhat inefficient means of getting around the terminals, but it is fairly quiet in comparison to its neighbor to the east. We eventually boarded, got an exit row to ourselves, and soon found ourselves back in Los Angeles where we would try to recover from illness and heat stroke.
passports & pepto bismol 