This morning we got up so early. I'm not a morning person at all. I struggle to get up this early, but its vacation ahead so I manage to get up right away when the alarm goes off. We had signed up for the 4:30AM shuttle( 4:45 was filled). Our flights are at 6 and you never know how long the lines through security are.
   I'm glad we did get there early enough to beat a mad rush of people coming in through security just after us. We grabbed an expensive coffee at one of those little shops on the way to our gate. We only had between 30 and 40 minutes before boarding. I made a big mistake when getting up to take a picture and set my coffe down. I kicked it over as I got back to my seat and spilled the whole $5 cup all over.

Theres the top of the coffee lid just under the Running shoe. OOps! well live and learn.
  Our flights with Southwest were great. I had pre checked in exactly 24 hours prior to flight to save a place in line. If you have never flown Southwest Air, there are no assigned seats. What they do is give you a boarding number when you check-in. The earlier you check in the better. If you travel with a larger group like us. It may pay to pay the $12 to check in weeks early so you can sit together. I checked in at 6am the day before and had B group boarding in the 20's. we were able to sit together. Last cruise husband and I never got to sit together, and that was just 2 of us flying.
   I noticed too, that people board and take the window and aisle seat. So, as the plane fills its harder and harder to get a seat. People just dot want to move and let you sit down. Planes these days do not fly half empty anymore like years ago. They fly full to oversold in most cases.
Our flights were pretty good. The pilot would announce often that we were flying over some bad weather so the flights would be bumpy. It wasn't too bad though. I've been on much worse turbulent flights. The kind where its white knuckle on the arm rest until we touch down.

Sorry this pic is sideways
   Its so beautiful to be above the clouds. One thing I love about flying is the awesome sights to see from the air. Todays clouds were pretty flat. I love the fluffy clouds that have a lot of texture to them. No clouds too are nice to see the ground. I have never been one to read while flying. If I have a window seat I would rather just look out the window. On this fight I was sandwiched in the middle seat, so, I read one of my "romance" novels. Someday I'll blog about that subject. :o)
   Our flight landed right on schedule at 9:20am. I love direct flights!
After getting our luggage we headed to the Budget rental car counter. Holy cow! It was at least an hour long line! I hoped they would still have a car for us when we got to the counter!
 It was over an hour wait and the line was longer than it had been when we first got in it. It was worth the money savings. For 5 people a shuttle would have costed us 5 times more, plus shuttle to the port the next day, and we wouldn't have the freedom a car gave us to go anywhere we wanted for dinner.
  I had a coupon code for Budget that made the cost of our SUV ridiculously cheap. We were in Orlando and we could drop our car off in Cocoa Beach where our ship would be.

It's  a 45 minute easy drive from the airport in Orlando to Cocoa Beach. Their are 2 tolls to drive through. I think they were a $1 each. Along the way we drove by a wild brush fire. On the news later on today I heard there were 3 in the area. A helicopter was flying around it dumping water on it.
 Almost to Cocoa Beach we could see the port. It looked like 3 ships were in port today. We could also see Kennedy Space Center in the distance. That brought back memories of visiting on a rocket launch day. That is an amazing site to see if you ever get a chance.
 Driving into Cocoa Beach you can see its very much a tourist town. Hotels everywhere, surf shops, restaurants, tourist trap shopping, and lots of traffic.
Next installment..............Cocoa Beach, our hotel, shopping and more!