Florida – September 2008
Day 4 – Jax – a day at the zoo
Thursday 25th September
The kids were up at a more reasonable six a.m. this morning. Sandy was up with them, as usual, but I followed shortly thereafter. Our bed has to be the most comfortable I’ve ever slept in. In fact, this condo pretty much exhumes the sort of level of comfort that I’d wish for my own house.
We drove out to the airport this morning to drop off the 2 child-seats that we initially rented. I was quite stunned to learn that these $49 child car seats were being rented to us at a rate of $10/day/seat. Had we kept them for the duration of the car-hire, we would have been charged no less than $600 for the privilege! The other odd thing is that we’ve been given 2 car keys but they are tied together in such a way that you can’t separate them. I queried this since we are both down as named drivers on the rental contract and I would expect that we could each have our own key but this is apparently not possible. If we separate the keys, we’ll apparently be liable for a $68 surcharge at the end of the rental.
After leaving the airport ($60 lighter for having kept the 2 child seats for 3 days), we stopped off at the nearby Waffle House for brunch. I could eat breakfast there every day of the week.
The remainder of the morning was occupied by our search for a couple of lightweight buggies (or umbrella strollers as they’re known here). We eventually found what we were looking for at the Baby’s ‘R’ Us store near the South-side mall. It’s relocating to another location in a few weeks and everything was on clearance. We left the store nearly $300 lighter!
Since it was still early enough, Jennifer, Kristin, Dillon and the four of us went to the zoo for the afternoon. It was a fun day and we all managed to get in on the season ticket that Jennifer owns. Nobody bothered to check the fact that there were more of us than the ticket entitled but since nobody asked, we didn’t volunteer the fact either.
We stopped for a lovely dinner at Chilis before getting off home to put the kids to bed. The evening was rounded out with Dave & Jennifer coming by for a nightcap and some chit-chat. Dave really hasn’t changed at all – which is a good thing!