Flying to Fort Lauderdale

view from our room

After a wonderful night at the beautiful Fairmont Vancouver Airport we were up very early for our 645 am flight.

We are flying Westjet to Fort Lauderdale via Toronto.  This is not our ideal routing but we were limited due to booking so last minute and costs. 

I sat next to a lovely couple from Maple Ridge who is on our cruise.  There were in fact a lot of cruisers all around us. 

Many who were going to board the Holland American Eurodam on Saturday for a Panama Canal Cruise that ends in Vancouver April 28.

The first flight is just over four hours was quite nice and comfortable.  

We arrived in Toronto and had to go thru US Customs and it was very smooth thanks to Nexus/Global Entry.  In fact the 
Customs agent just took our form and said thank you have a good day.

We had just under three hours between flight and wanted to grab a nice meal but the terminal is under renovation so people are squished into smaller areas and the food options are limited.  We finally got a seat and order via those ipads and they deliver the food.

Now I had not realized this was going to be one of only two options to sit and eat here and we were hungry but normally I hate this type of service. And today’s meal only reinforced that. Prices were crazy high, service was just delivery and hard to get a hold of someone when we needed something – like a napkin or the fries that we ordered and did not get. 

Plus the tablet defaults to 18% gratuity automatically which is sad since there really is no service. Food is, well how do I say airport made.  In the end it hit the spot but it was not good, and each meal was around $20!

After boarding our next flight we had a bit of delay as we waited for bags to arrive at our plane.

The second flight is only three hours but it felt like forever! Seemed like everyone was having a rough day as so  many were moving around and chatting over us and bumping into us and others.  Didn’t help we were tired and that meal was not sitting well with us.  But overall the flight went by and we arrived only around 45 minutes late.

After collecting our bags we called for a Uber and for $25 we were delivered to our hotel – Sawgrass Grand Hotel near Sawgrass Mills Mall.  

The hotel is just north of Sunrise off University Drive.  Looks more like an office building and it was built in the 80s it looks like.  

Daniel at the front desk was very helpful and assigned us to a room on the fifth floor and after going there and seeing that there is an adjoining door (we hate adjoining doors due to the noise that transfers).  So even though it was an upgraded large room we did not want it – plus we smelled smoke (tobacco and other types of smoke). So back to the front desk and a new room – this time on the first floor but it is quiet and will meet our needs for the two nights.

If you go back and read about our hotel booking a few posts ago you will see we were limited with hotel options.  You see there is a huge music festival happening – Tortuga Music 

Festival where they anticipate 90,000 people!  Not to mention all the cruise ships that are in port too.  So prices were crazy high and selection was limited.  We got this hotel for just over $100 a night.

We crawled into bed and even with the three hour time change we both were asleep rather quickly.