If you have read even a few of my other blogs you would know that Destin Florida is my favorite vacation spot. This year we traveled with my 6 year old son Nathan and my 12 year old step daughter Leanna.Leaving from Middletown Ohio at 3:00 a.m. in the morning we made good time on the trip and with light traffic and great kids we had an enjoyable ride. Of course our favorite stop on the way down was the welcome center on I65 South right across the Tennessee border. If you have not traveled this way before you are missing one cool place to get out and "stretch". As of course Alabama is deeply involved in our space program it is fitting that their rest stop has an actual Saturn B-1 rocket.
Completing the trip in just over 13 hours, not sure what happened as we were expecting 12 hours, we were pleasantly surprised with our newly refurbished room at the Islander Condominium in Destin. On room on the seventh floor, was roomy, updated, and offered a great view of the gulf.
The water this year was again perfect. The light emerald green of the water is of course the the reason the area is called the Emeral Coast. One thing we noticed right away was the large school of minnows hugging the shore line. The schools were so large and dense that you would not from any distance believe that the large dark spots could actually be a bunch of fish. This of course gave the kids a constant source of entertainment as their efforts to catch them never ceased, nor did the efforts of some larger fish that often darted in and out of the school.
After four nights however it was time to head back, and I think we did pretty well with the condominiums recommendation to leave all technology behind and enjoy the view. My wife i think managed to get thought about 500 pages of her book, while I managed 5 pages but got a lot more wave time in. But of course we had high speed internet in the room and a nice 50 inch plasma that we seldom had time to turn on.
Speaking of hardware and technology on the way back we stayed in a very nice Hyatt in Nashville Tennessee. The room was amazing and the large screen plasma there had a custom built in connection panel in the side of the bookcase on which it was sitting. The connection panel allowed for the hookup of just about any device you could imagine and not just video devices.
There was however on problem with the trip that involved Orbitz and the Hyatt. As we had booked our Hyatt stay on Orbitz prior to leaving Destin we never thought twice about their "Price Assurance" and we thought our Orbitz rate of $159 for such a nice hotel so close to the Nashville airport was a good rate. Well we thought that until the Hyatt kiosk we used to checkout with gave us a receipt for $109. After several calls, e-mailing and a faxing of our Hyatt receipt to Obitz we have not heard back from anyone and we have had to dispute the charge through our credit card provider.
So if you take anything away from this post it should be that Destin Florida is still a great place for a trip if you live within 12 hours or so and that if you need a room, go ahead and call the property first to check rates before you just trust that some giant travel site will actually follow through with their low rate promises.
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