It was an early start on our last day – up at 5.30am for breakfast when the ‘Windjammer’ opened at 6am. We needed to be with all our luggage ready to go by 6.45am so that the ‘Tour of Miami with airport drop-off’ could start on time. There was no immigration check – only the customs form to hand in and they were – as always – very friendly. We found the tour bus and were on our way by about 6.30am.
The tour was very good, especially for the two in our party who had not visited Miami before. We had a stop on Ocean Drive and an extensive tour of the main areas including the Biltmore Hotel and the exclusive community of Coral Gables where you have to get agreement on the colour of your house walls, to whom you sell on your house and where you are fined by the local community if you leave your garage door open for longer than 15 minutes at a time! The photo on the steps is outside the so-called "Villa by Barton G" and now a small private hotel, the spot where the fashion designer Gianni Versace was shot dead on 15 July 1997 at the age of 50. The tour dropped us off at the airport just after 11am. The trouble was, our flight was not until 5.25pm and check-in didn’t open until 2pm. We had some time to kill, so we loitered in the food and drinks court for quite a while, enjoying public readings of Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘A Bear Called Paddington’. That passed the time happily enough and we went to drop our bags off and get our boarding cards.
Thankfully, Catherine had checked us in online within the previous 24 hours. They weighed only our suitcases – at no time on this trip have we had anything other than our suitcases weighed. The heaviest of the bags at Miami was 23.3kg and with the limit supposedly at 23kg, there was not the slightest quibble or murmur from the lady on the desk. Then it was security – the full Monty – a long wait for the one and only pre-checker to tick our boarding passes through (whilst a number of his colleagues stood round chatting to one another) so that we could go through the main scan – taking almost everything off, including shoes and belts and stand in the scanner with hands firmly clasped above one’s head for 3 seconds.
Even then I was asked if I had a watch on – I said “no” and was told it was probably only the buttons on my shirt cuffs and was waved along – so much for security - we’d all made it and we then put our lives (and clothing) back together again, ready for the departure gate. A quick scan of the departures board confirmed that the flight was only 30 minutes late so far! In nearly 50 years of flying, I can safely say that I’ve never departed early on a flight, although some flights have made up lost time en route!
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