D Day (departure day that is..)

Well, we all made it through security and duty free without incident and the stress levels started to drop but not for long as after boarding and moving out onto the runway the plane developed a fault with one of the engines. It appears that a flap on an air extraction valve was stuck and the old fall back option of turning the engine off and starting it again didn't work, so the captain had to call out an engineer. The cure he came up with was to bolt the flap shut - they'll fix it properly when we get to Orlando. The result was a delay of 90 minutes and one or two rather sceptical passengers.

After that the flight went well apart from some rather violent turbulence which must have revived many passengers' interest in religion. We chased the sunset over the last hour of our journey which provided some really beautiful skies. We'd have probably missed these if we'd been on time!

After booking in at the Hyatt we had a late supper (by English time anyway – about 1:30am I think) and it was back to the Hyatt for some sleep. It seemed like we'd almost just got to sleep when Eunice woke me up with the news that the alarm musn't have gone off and it was twenty to eight already (we'd agreed to meet our companions for breakfast at 8am). Panic was just about to set in when I noticed the hotel's clock radio was showing only ten past two – Eunice had been reading her watch upside down!!