Tampa, Florida - Vacation begins!!

To give you all a little background, one of my friends and I were brainstorming locations to go for vacation.  Yellowstone national park, and Grand Canyon were among the first 2 choices.  Then I realized that since we are planning a trip to either of the two places, we'll need to find lodging, we'll have to take care of food, and we'll have to rent a car to see these places, then why not just do a cruise!!  I instantly searched through my Carnival emails to see if there were any recent deals and came across a 4-days Bahamas cruise from Orlando which was priced at $129/person + taxes (if we have 4 people in the room).  I checked out the location, ports of call, excursions at those places, and felt that this was it!! This was the vacation we should be taking, and without having any second thoughts, I suggested this vacation to my friend.  She also loved it and we finalized on this wonderful cruise to Bahamas!!  I booked the cruise for myself, my brother, and 2 of my friends about a month before its sailing date.  After the cruise was booked, the next thing was to book the air travel.  One of my friends lives in Tampa, FL, so she suggested that we go to her place a day before, stay the night at her place, and then we all leave together for the Port Canaveral for the cruise.  I liked the idea, so we booked the air travel to go to Tampa and then once we return, we booked our return flight straight from Orlando back home.  Now, the 3rd question was the transportation from home to the Port Canaveral.  I inquired at couple of shuttle services and the cheapest price I got for the transfer from Tampa to Port Canaveral was $35/person.  Also since we were flying to Tampa and my friend didn't have a car, we would have had to get a shuttle from airport to her place, which would have cost another $15- $20/person.  With keeping this in mind, I decided to just rent a car on Saturday and return it on Sunday somewhere near the port.  I finalized Enterprise Rental Car for our travel from Tampa to Cape Canaveral (where they have their office to return the car) for as low as $32/day (plus gas money) for a mid-size car which was much better deal than going with any shuttles, plus you have the freedom to go wherever you want if you have the rental car.  After the car was rented, everything was set and we just had to prepare for a great vacation ahead of us.

Our cruise was from Sunday, so we were leaving for Tampa on Saturday and it was a really early morning flight for us :(.  With very little sleep the night before, we woke up, got ready, and headed for the airport at 4 am....yea...that's early!!  We got to the airport to find that there is a line for security check.  Seriously....Who travels this early(except us who had to choose this flight since we didn't have any other option)?? I had thought that the security check would be like a breeze at this early in the morning, but boy, was I wrong!  It took us about 25-30 minutes to clear security and then we headed for our gate.  I think partly reason of long wait was also the fact that they only had 1 person scanner open and only 2 baggage scanners running.  Normally I am done with security check within 20 minutes when it's busy time of the day at the airport...oh well.  We get to our gate and then on to the flight!! Off we go to Tampa!! With 1 stop in between, we finally get to Tampa at 1:30 pm, and start heading to Enterprise Rental Car office which is just across the street from baggage claim area.  One of my friends was flying in to Tampa as well and she was already here at 12: 30 pm, so she was waiting for us to get there and then get the car.

Enterprise Car Rental Experience:
We get to the Enterprise counter and I feel happy to find no crowd there except just 1 customer in the line.  I get in line to be called for my turn.  Apparently, the agent behind the counter was having good time chatting with the customer in front of me, so she was just taking her time to finish their transaction without even noticing that I had been waiting for over 15 minutes.  Finally, after about 20 minutes wait, another agent opens a 2nd counter to help us out.  Once we get our turn, I give my driver's license and he gets the basic info from that.  He asks me some basic stuff if I am interested in getting insurance, GPS, road side assistance, etc. etc., the services which they offer.  I declined all of them except one which I felt was good to have in case if we do get stuck somewhere in the middle, they send out another car to where we are which we can take for our onward journey ($4/day charge).  The agent was nice and didn't push us to take the services.  He gave us his card, and pointed us to go to the parking lot where we can pick the car we want for the class we paid for.  Once we got to the parking lot, it turns out that they only had 1 mid-size car, Ford Focus, which didn't have a good trunk space.  We needed a good trunk space since there were 4 of us and all of us had 1 carry-on bag + personal item.  The agent who was showing us the car pointed us to a different car, 2013 Nissan Versa, which was bigger in size and had a plenty of trunk space, enough to fit all the bags.  The only thing was that it was one class below the mid-size but was a better option for us.  The agent told us that he would give us 5% discount which should cover the price difference between compact and mid-size car, so we went ahead with Nissan Versa and continued with our journey!! Btw, I checked my credit card statement and I did not receive any 5% discount, but didn't want to call them back and be bothered with it since it was just about $2-$3 difference, but they should have been professional about it if they said they would give us the discount!

The trip had just started.  We put address of my friend, C, who lives in Tampa in the GPS of my friend, V, who was with us in car.  The structure of Tampa airport is so confusing that we got on the wrong road, and got lost instantly as we got out of the airport.  We stopped by at one of the parking lots, and quickly re-routed our way to make sure we get to C's place safe :).  Finally, after one and half hours after landing, we get to meet C!  We get to her apartment, freshen up, eat something and decide to just go out and see the town little bit.  My friend V had another friend, K, in Tampa whom she had contacted earlier, so he also joined us in the evening.  He took us all to one of the Tampa malls, and then after that he took us to Taco Bus which he owned.  This is the first time I have heard of this fast food chain.  It's basically Mexican restaurant and the great thing about this is that Taco Bus provides Vegetarian and Vegan food options and everything is cooked in separate vessels which doesn't cause any cross-contamination with non-veg/meat items.  We had delicious vegetarian Quesadilla and fresh watermelon juice!! That was delicious and very filling :).

Taco Bus in Tampa, FL (The area is called Brandon)

After that, he dropped us off back at my friend's place and we decided to meet later in the evening again since my friend, V, wanted to visit her aunt who lived in Clearwater, FL.  We all decided to meet at a place and from there K was going to take us to V's aunt's place since he knows them very well too.  We get to V's aunt's place around 9:15 pm and she had also prepared Mexican dinner for us including Quesadilla, rice, chips & guacamole!! We were kind of full from earlier but the food looked too delicious, so we sat down to eat again :P...haha.  We had great time with her aunt and uncle, we chatted about our cruise that we were going to take, the cruises they had taken before, etc.  Finally, at around 11 pm we say good bye to them and head back to Westin hotel where we had parked our car.  K actually owns that Westin hotel with other partners, so he was able to give us a tour of the hotel.  The tour included the visit to the rooftop of the hotel (15th floor) which gives you a great view of the city at night!! It was amazing!! Also, we got to see how one of the suites looked in that hotel....and boy, it was like a mini luxury apartment :).  The hotel had great views around it! Finally, after midnight we head back to my friend's apartment to get some sleep.

This was a very long day! But, it was great day with friends, exploring the place, and also I made a new friend!! Overall, worth the trip to Tampa!! Now, next stop is Port Canaveral to start a fun cruise to the Bahamas!! Stay tuned....more info coming!!!