Oct. 29, 2013:

Today we woke up bright and early and ready to head to Miami for our 9:55 am flight to St. Thomas.  Unfortunately, our great planning didn't pan out too well---for much of the trip, actually!  They had done a test run to the airport a couple weeks before and said it was about 45 minutes from their place.  So they allotted for that, another half hour to park their car, and another half hour to check in.  Little did we know, Miami closes their flights 1 hours before flight time and it took a little longer then 45 minutes to get there.  So they dropped us off by AA check in and we hustled to check our bags.  That's when we were enlightened about the 60 minute flight "closing".  We missed it by 2 minutes!  So, the first of our regrouping and replanning went into effect.  There was another flight to St. Thomas 8 hours later.   So we got the 4 of us confirmed on it---even getting assigned the exit rows (for a fee, of course).  

I'm sure Ken would have been content to sit in the airport for 8 hours, but Angie, Josh, and I weren't.  So we loaded back into their car and took off to South Beach.  They aren't fans of Miami, but I rather enjoyed the excursion.  We drove around looking at the Art Deco buildings and newer sculptures.

 We even managed to find a parking spot on the road closest to the beach and had breakfast/lunch at an Irish pub there--Finnegan's Way.

 We paid for about 1 1/2 hours of parking (think it was $3, maybe $4), so after eating, Angie, Josh and I walked over to the beach.  First we had to cross the green space.

The walkway from the green space to the large Miami Beach.

Would have loved to spend more time at the beautiful beach, but I was dressed for a chilly plane, not for chilling on a beach!  Here's my beautiful daughter and fantastic son-in-law.

Lovely way to spend a late October afternoon!

Back to riding around Miami a bit.  Seeing a little of how the rich and famous live!

 Bridge to one of the many islands.

After killing about 5 hours, we headed back to the airport.  I got a kick out of the name of the street the airport is on:

This time we made it back to the airport in plenty of time.  I even enjoyed wandering around a bit and checking out the fishy sculptures hanging throughout the concourse we were in.  Those who know me know I'm a fanatic about snorkeling and photography.  So these decorations were right up my alley!

 black tipped reef sharks

 flying gurnards---I've only ever seen these guys around Hawaii.

 parrot fish

 One of the walls with fishy art.

Our 5:40 flight was on time and we were finally on our way to St. Thomas! We had expected to be making our way to the East side by daylight and snorkeling in the afternoon, but we saw the sun set from our plane window. 

It was about 8:30pm St. Thomas time (and EST) when we landed.  I had read the car rental places had long lines so I headed straight there and left the others to get the luggage.  Turned out the luggage and car rental were right next to each other.  Here we had the next of our aggravating plan changers!  I had read lots of bad things about Budget Rental Cars on St. Thomas, but we had used them from the cruise ship at an off airport site twice with no problems so we went ahead and booked with them, again.  BIG MISTAKE!!!!  I had even passed up cheaper rentals to go with tried and true Budget!  After waiting our turn--which seemed quite long for only 2 people being ahead of me---we were assigned a 4 door Yaris.  I had reserved a Standard car so was expecting a real car with 4 doors and a trunk!  I was not too happy when we got to the car lot and saw this tiny toy hatchback car!!!  Upon checking the website later, the Yaris is listed as an economy car even though in St. Thomas they claim it's an intermediate. Needless to say, we had no choice but to "upgrade" for $13 a day to a Jeep Wrangler (the only other car they had left, so they said).  They also insisted on another $7.50 /day charge for Ken to drive since the reservations are in my name!  Everywhere else I've booked at Budget the spouse got to drive for free.   I will be contacting Budget headquarters!  (I did write a letter to Corporate Budget and received a response in about 2 weeks.  I'm happy to say they forwarded my letter to the manager at the franchise Budget there at STT airport and he responded by saying he was able to see that I was assigned a Yaris at first and should not have been charged an upgrade fee if nothing equivalent to a Lancer was available.  He refunded that charge to my credit card.  He also said the $7.50/day extra driver fee is stated on the reservation and wouldn't do anything about that.  Corporate Budget also sent me a $25 voucher for use on a corporate rental as a good will jesture.  So all in all, I'm pretty happy with the outcome.  Wish I had reserved it in my husband's name instead of mine, but that was my fault.)  Good thing is it was plenty big for the 4 of us and our luggage.  Bad thing---It was BIG and the door on my side had the hinge broken so it would swing freely all the way open.  Being 5'4", I had to literally climb into it each time I got in.  Sure glad my knee wasn't acting up then!  But finally, we were on our way----but where?!  I had found that our Garmin included the USVI, but hadn't set the address for the Elysian before leaving home.  When I tried to set it from our newly acquired Jeep rental, it came up with no such address, but a similar address was good so I set it to take us there.  Having been to the island a few other times (for the day, and Angie and Josh to Elysian for 5 nights before), we knew it was taking us the wrong direction.  Some screaming and cursing ensued.  To top it off I had caught a pretty bad cold a couple days before and I wasn't feeling all that great.  Finally Josh and Angie got out their phones and used the GPS on them to direct us to the resort.   (Later I noticed the Elysian listed in the hotels part of "places of interest" on my Garmin---even had the correct address that wouldn't come up when I typed it in) I hadn't called the resort about a late check-in, because my confirmation sheet said they were open until 11 pm---it was only 9:10.  Of course, they closed at 9!  Strike 3!!!  We had passed a guard building when we drove in, so back to it we went.  The lady there did indeed have our room assignments.  I had requested to be near the pool and/or close by the kids, but as the day was going, we were put in a room farthest from the pool, a different level and several buildings apart from the kids, and neither of us even had much of an ocean view.  By now, that didn't even phase me----we were at least here!!!