Florida, 2007

Travel broadens the mind, and travelling on stand by even more so. We've been travelling like this for more than a decade, and are now pretty much used to all the stress it can cause. But we don't mind, since seeing new countries and meeting new people can't be spoiled by ordinary things, such as not being able to board the wanted plane and having to run all over the airport to try another airline.
It wasn't any different this time, on January 5th.

During the flight from Zagreb to Frankfurt we still had no idea if we were heading for Miami, Orlando, or a last minute destination on the Balearis or the Canaries. Once bitten by a travel bug, you just don't pay any attention to such 'unimportant' things. What matters is that you are on the road, or, in this case, airborne.

We had booked a room in Orlando, since you can't enter the US without a place to stay. Orlando is way cheaper than Miami, so we reckoned, if we don't make it, we'll lose less money this way.

Luckily, it turned out that the Miami flight still had a few seats available, so we got aboard!
After a ten-hour flight we landed in cloudy, but hot Miami. It was about 3pm and since our hotel was in Orlando, more than four hours away, we immediately got on a shuttle to a Thrifty office where we rented a Dodge Caliber and off we went to Orlando.