Mystery Trip – Escape from Miami



We returned to the Embassy Suites hotel to find that the EZ Car Rental desk wasn’t open yet. We stood there looking around, but no one was showing up. The Goddess asked the Concierge about when EZ would show up, and he offered to take the keys for us. We decided to eat breakfast in the restaurant at the Embassy Suites.

This is one of those hotels that has a free made-to-order breakfast as part of the room rate. If you’re not a guest, you have to pay for the breakfast. No problem. So we go to the reception desk, and say we want to pay for breakfast. Our request threw the clerk into a tailspin. She didn’t know how to do that. I mean her job is checking people in and out, how the hell is she supposed to take payment for breakfast. She asked her co-worker for help. Of course, the co-worker had to ask us all the same questions the clerk has just asked us even though the co-worker was standing right there. Now, I’ll bet if I had been talking about Ashton Kutcher, she would have heard it all! Anyway, we paid for the breakfast and went to eat. They gave us an entire hotel print-out for a receipt.

We arrived at MIA (ironic name, no?) with time to spare. One thing I noticed in Miami is that if you don’t yell at the person you’re trying to ask a question, they will ignore you. We couldn’t find the right line to get in for checking our bags. I asked one American Airlines woman who was helping to get people into the correct line two times where we were supposed to go. But, I wasn’t shouting, so she just ignored me. I swear I was no more than two feet from her! We pried the information out of another woman, but what she said was half-intelligible, and we had to ask someone else. Oh my!

We waited our turn through the line and got cleared. The desk clerk told us to turn our bags in to the TSA guys at the big X-ray machine. We stepped over there, but they were all talking amongst themselves, and the completely ignored us. Then, I shouted, “What do we do here?” Let me tell ya, they wait until you get mad in Miami before they do anything to help. We were there the day after a Federal Air Marshall shot and killed a bi-polar man who had gone off of his medicine. The guy was yelling that he had a bomb. Probably he was just trying to get someone to tell him where the bathroom was.

We went through the metal detectors along with about 500 close friends, and found our gate. Fortunately it was not all the way to the end of the concourse. We took off on time and arrived in Curaçao on time. By the way, in Curaçao they don’t incessant ringing schoolbells in the jetways. That’s because they don’t have jetways. They have stairs. And you don’t have to yell at someone for them to stop ignoring you. Life is just simpler there.

In the shuttle on the way to the hotel the driver told us that people in Curaçao have a saying – it’s “poco poco”. That means take it easy, if we don’t get to it today we will tomorrow. Now, that attitude I can live with.

Mystery Trip - Oh Wow Curaçao!

Friday morning we get up at 6:00 am, because I’ve been told that we have to be at the airport by 9:00. We have a flight that’s leaving at 11:00. That’s all I know. After I take a shower, I find out that we’re going to Curaçao, an island in the Caribbean. I can’t believe it! It’s a place that has always interested me, and I’ve always wanted to go there.

The Goddess doesn’t remember typing it up for me, but I wrote a semester paper in college on bilingual education in Curaçao. The languages in question were Papiamento and Dutch. What’s Papiamento? Well, it’s a creole language developed from Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and English. There’s a whole process that causes creole languages, but it’s enough to say that the languages get mixed together. But, it’s not some Pig Latin, it’s a real language with all the capabilities of any other language. Anyway, I’ve been fascinated by Curaçao ever since I wrote the paper. She picked Curaçao, because Dutch is an official language there. It would give me a chance to practice Dutch. And it did!

By the way, Curaçao is a Portuguese word meaning “heart”. The reason for that name is because the island has a natural harbor that is shaped like a heart. Besides being a place with interesting languages, it’s a Caribbean island with resorts! I’m really thrilled. We’re going to stay at an all-inclusive resort called Breezes. It just don’t get any better.

We get ready and go downstairs to check out. We get our rent car and head toward the airport. As we’re just about to leave Miami Beach, we stop at a stop light. Three little ladies come walking around the corner. They each have on flower print dresses and one of those hair wrap things that looks like you have your hair wrapped up in a towel. All three hair wraps are pink.
One of the ladies stops on the corner and steps into a flower bed which has an automatic sprinkler spraying water up about waist high. She sort of stands with her legs farther apart than normal, and thrusts her pelvis forward. I reckoned that she was letting the water hit her back and was cooling off. The the Goddess says in an animated voice, “She’s peeing!” Yes, she was peeing in the flower bed standing up. We had seen this before in Guadalajara, but that time the lady was at least a little discrete. This one wasn’t trying to be inconspicuous at all! Ah Miami, it’s a complete nuthouse. Just imagine New York City in the tropics, and you’ve got Miami. Everyone in both places speaks English with a hard-to-understand accent. ¡Dios mio!

Mystery Trip – Once in a Blue Moon


We found the Blue Moon Hotel on Collins Avenue in the middle of the Art Deco section of South Beach. As we pulled up in front of the hotel, a guy came out to get our bags. He asked me how I was doing, and I said that I was hungry. The Goddess asked him if he knew of any good Cuban restaurants. He said that Lario’s was close and excellent. He also told us that it is owned by Gloria Estefan. Okay.

We went in the Blue Moon and walked up to the front desk. The Goddess said we had reservations, and gave our name. The clerk, a red-headed woman with a strong Spanish accent, said that she didn’t have us down on the list. The Goddess explained that she had already paid for the room and that she made the reservation through Travelocity. Still didn’t impress the clerk. The clerk said that she had a room, but that it had twin beds. Now, remember the Goddess was already pissed off about the car rental place. She asked if she could use a phone and they let her use the bellhop’s phone.

The result was not pretty. Some poor sucker at Travelocity got reamed out as only the Goddess can do it. Anyway, Travelocity called the Blue Moon while the Goddess waited on hold. That was a sight – the Goddess on one side of the lobby holding the phone while the clerk is on the phone to Travelocity on the other side. The clerk had to get the manager to come speak with them. I was sitting about half way between them, and could hear both conversations. When all was said and done (which was a lot), we took the room with twin beds.

We went to Lario’s and saw some of the beautiful people. We saw some not-so-beautiful people too. They have tables outside and inside. We sat outside and watched the parade of people pass by. I kept getting the feeling that we were among some shadowy South American exiles plotting coup d’etats with rogue CIA agents.

We got back to the room so exhausted from the travel that we pretty much went right to sleep.

Mystery Trip - Miami, South Beach, and One Pissed-Off Goddess



We arrived in Miami at about 4:30 or so. The change of planes in Atlanta went smoothly. In fact, as we walked up to the gate a young blonde woman was talking to the gate agents. I heard one of the agents say, "Oh, we have a celebrity then! Which magazine cover are you going to be on?" The blonde said, "Playboy, next month." The agent said, "Oh." The Playmate said, "Yeah, people always do that when I say Playboy." She said she had been to the Playboy Mansion, and that all the girls there hated her.

But, back to Miami. We found our luggage in the American Airlines unclaimed baggage office. The bags did beat us there! We began looking for the EZ Car Rental desk. Hmmm...don't see it right here. Those free phones that the Chamber of Commerce locates in airports didn't have any car rental services listed, just hotels. We didn't have a phone number for EZ, so we asked a few people. One woman said that they might be on the upper floor, because she thought one was up there, but she couldn't be sure. The print-out that she had said to go to the EZ counter. The Goddess got on the phone with Travelocity (who she booked through), who had to conference in EZ Car Rental. While she was waiting for all that to happen, I went upstairs to see if it was up there. I saw two Transportation Safety Administration workers talking, so I went up and asked if they knew where EZ Car Rental was. They both said, "Yeah, downstairs, by the baggage claim." I said, "No, I've already looked there." They said that no car rental desks were on that floor. Then one of them said, "I guess it's not so EZ after all!" That's our TSA at work.

When I got back downstairs the Goddess said that the rental desk is in the Embassy Suites, and we have to take the Embassy Suites Shuttle. We went out to the driveway, and waited for the shuttle. I arrived pretty quickly, and off we went to the rental desk. We got a Ford Focus and the threat of paying $4.99 per gallon of gas, if we didn't bring it back full of gas. Off we went to Miami Beach (South Beach to be exact) in search of the Blue Moon Hotel

Mystery Trip - Ice, Ice, Baby



Yes, there was ice. The Mystery Trip started on Thursday, December 8, 2005 at 3:30 am. You read it right, 3:30 am. We got up early so that we could be at the airport at 7:00 to check in for a 9:00 flight. The trouble was that during the night we had sleet and freezing rain, so the bridges were iced over. The roads themselves were okay, actually, it was the bridges. We left home about 4:30, and drove very slowly to the airport. We got there, checked the bags, and went to the snack bar for some breakfast. It was just after 6:00 at this point.

We went to the gate, and waited. The Goddess went to the desk and asked about making our connecting flight. The man there said that we would be delayed and would miss our connection in Dallas. All the other flights from Dallas to XXXX were full and we couldn't get there. So the Goddess arranged for us to switch to Delta and change planes in Atlanta. Since our bags were already checked on American, they would stay on American. While the Goddess was explaining this to me she slipped and said that our bags would be in Miami by the time we got there. I said, "You just told me!" It wasn't too bad though, because I already knew it would be a warm place.

We went to Gate 4 and waited. We waited some more. Finally, they decided to start letting people board the plane. Right after they let 1st class board the alarm bell started ringing in the Jetway. Now this was the kind of bell that I had in school so many years ago. It was very loud, and very uninterrupted. I sat in my seat with my fingers in my ears while the staff started to work on it. After what seemed like two straight minutes of ringing, they turned it off. Then every minute or so they would try it to see if they had fixed it - they hadn't. So, we kept getting this bell ringing for about 15 minutes. Finally the cut the wire or something, because it stopped.

We boarded the plane only to find out that we had to de-ice. See, the entire plane was covered in about 1/4 of an inch of ice. The pilot told us the de-icing truck would be there momentarily. Twenty minutes later the captain told us that the de-icing truck was having some trouble with getting the mixture just right, but that they would be over to us in about 10 minutes. Half an hour later, he apologized profusely, and said that it should just be a few more minutes. Another half hour and he told the flight attendants to pass out drinks and snacks. He even came into the cabin and went throughout the plane to answer questions. He returned to the flight deck, and waited some more. We wound up waiting 3 1/2 hours on that plane waiting for the de-icing truck! I was afraid the toilets were going to back up.

We left for Atlanta about 11:30. I don't know when our bags left for Dallas, but I'll bet they beat us to Miami.