Devall Travels

This is a right bloody palaver. A troll through the internet and National has resulted in a reservation for a full size at MIA. It's damned expensive.  I had a look on TripAdvisor to look for recommendations and have a few other ideas to follow up on. I have had a look at a few of the comparison sites and there are cheaper offers. With National, they include most of the the insurances and I have never paid for anything on top so need to check the cheaper companies to see what level of cover there is. On one of the TA pages someone was saying they have third-party insurance that covers any excess that they would have to pay on the rental in the event of an accident.  I will look at that as well.   As for the Timeshare. Looking at Orlando area for week 1 and week 2 nearer Miami. It's still seven months away so hopefully a few more resorts will pop up. posted from Bloggeroid

Now that flights have been booked and we are committed it's time to look for somewhere to stay on the first night. As usual I went to booking.com for answers and found a Motel 6 with free cancellation and no advanced payment. The reviews give it 7.4/10. It looks from blurb that many hotels like to take a deposit or even the full amount immediately on reserving a room, even if there's free cancellation. We had this before at the Blue Marlin in Key West where we stayed two nights and were about $300 out of pocket five months before going. It wasn't so bad as we still went. I know a lot of hoteliers don't like the free cancellations part of the system but to me it gives flexibility to the customer. If you're honest and give good service, then people will still stay with you. Car hire seems to have hiked a bit since October 2017 when we last busied ourselves over. Currently checking the booking sites to see what deal there are. With the chances of the times...

Booked today.  Cost £64 for the car on top of the Assen MotoGP trip fare that I had parked with them after we couldn't go. To accommodate taking Reggie to the kennels for the weekend on Friday morning I have booked 28/9 1120 out and 1/10 1750 back. As we will be back too late to go and get him on the Monday I have Tuesday leave as well and so I can go and get him in the morning.

So. We have ordered three tickets for the race weekend.  Claire and I will go in the car and Neill on his BMW, I expect. Before then he had a trip to Canada to fly in the Lancaster bonber. Before we make any firm travel plans I have booked the leave from work and Reggie is booked into Wyncot. We need to sit down with Neill and see what his plan is for the journey up. He won't want to be contrained by the progress a car can make especially when the roads get a bit busy. We have to take Reggie to Wyncot. That is easily an hour round trip from home on nasty narrow country lanes. I don't want to be thrashing it all the way there to wherever the hotel at the Assen end is located. I think we'll be looking at around an 11am Shuttle. Anything not to be around Antwerp at lunchtime or evening rush hour. That place is a bloody nightmare through the tunnels and merging highways. The Insignia has a range of about 650 miles to a ta...

So. The question of how to use the 36 RCI points I have banked was coming down to two periods of time. From UK to the US it is really not good value to spend 9 hours plus flying for one week away. So it needs to be when there are two weeks or more to fit into. Easter and Summer holidays. Surprisingly July/August was best for the timeshare exchanges in the more westerly states; Arizona etc. But from reading Roger Naylor's articles for Arizona magazines it's monsoon time. After last year in Florida following the hurricanes, no thanks!!!  But airfares to Phoenix or Last Vegas are for the rich only. So my attention was shifted to Easter. Schools break up on April 5th and return the day after Easter Monday. And since our management dictated our holidays could only be in school holidays I booked that fortnight off ages ago. Now the problem was looking for flights. We went into the Thomas Cook agency in Hythe. Got some ideas. Then used Skyscann...

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