Okay, here's the story of the Redland trip.

First, the Festival was fabulous, as expected, even better than last year.
The wind was blowing hard out of the north, so the flowers suffered, but
what can you do about weather?

On to the adventure. We drove down to Key Largo on Thursday, reservations
at Marina del Mar "Resort" in hand. (We like to chill for a couple of hours
after a day at Redland, complete with hot tub, so we wanted those
amenities.) Last year we stayed at the Holiday Inn Resort, and when I was
searching the online reservation services this year I came across Marina del
Mar. It appeared to have everything we wanted, so why not try a new place?

Our first clue that something might be amiss came when we saw the "resort's"
bill board sign. It was faded beyond legibility. The next ominous sign was
dirty glass surrounding the entrance to the lobby. Still, the check in
folks were nice, the lobby was clean, etc.

So we got our keys and took the glass walled elevator (more dirty windows)
up to the fourth floor, bags over our shoulders. We were on an outside
catwalk, and as we rounded a corner, following directions to our room, we
ran smack dab into.......no railing on the catwalk! Four stories up! Over
the parking lot with nary a bougainvillia bush to break the impending fall!

I noted that the catwalk went all around the building, so we went the other
way, only to run into what I will call yellow crime scene tape blocking our
way. (Okay, it said caution, not crime scene, but by that time it was a
crime!) As we retreated once again, a woman came running out of a large
apartment (manager?) and found a workman to untie the crime scene tape so we
could get to our room. We noted that the crime scene tape was retied once we
had passed. We were assured that by nightfall there would be brand new
railings in place. Uh huh. Once inside, we thought about coming back at
night and falling over the edge of the building, and I called the desk to
demand relocation.

"The only thing we have on a lower floor", said the smarmy clerk, "is a room
with two double beds".

Frank is 6'3". He wears a size 52 jacket. Well, he may be down to a 50.
Not fat, just *big*. He hasn't slept in a double bed since he was four. But
down we went. The room looked like it should have rented by the hour rather
than by the night. There was a coffee machine, but no pot. There was a
half roll of TP. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

I had prepaid for this disaster, and I knew that Largo was pretty full up,
so we sucked it up and stayed. We had plans for dinner with friends from
our society, and beforehand we walked down to the pool, which wasn't bad;
the "hot tub", on the other hand, smacked of a latrine, long, thin and
slightly bubbling. We hit Coconuts next door and had a couple of pops.
What else?

Dinner at the Fish House was wonderful, as always. Reluctant to return to
the purgatory of our room, we went back to Coconuts afterward. When finally
we went to our room, we took coffee and a bottle of Sambuca to lessen the
pain.

The next day was Redland, yippee! Pigged out on orchids, and stopped for a
late lunch on the way back to the "resort", unloading all the orchids and
taking them into the Tiki bar at Gilbert's with us so they wouldn't fry.

Back to the no tell motel. Frank wanted to take a nap, but it was tough
with the heavy equipment working on railings literally outside our window
(dirty window!). Later, we went back to Coconuts, had some more cocktails
and some shrimp, and stayed to 'people watch'. Clearly Frank had a sign on
his back that said "ALL DRUNKS STOP HERE!", but by then we were laughing so
hard that it didn't matter anymore.

And a good time was had by all! LOL

Diana