What Went Wrong

Today is the last day of my vacation, and I am sad. How can a week go by so freakin’ quickly, I ask you?

But rather than spending today feeling sad that all of the great experiences from this past Florida vacation are now over, I decided to instead recall what went wrong on our trip. That should make me feel better, right?

So let me tell you about Orlando—or as I like to call it, The Most Confusing City in the World. Okay, I guess it would have helped if we would have brought directions, but it shouldn’t be that hard to find downtown Orlando, right? You just look for the big buildings, right?

Wrong. Here is essentially what happened:

7:30 PM—Iwanski and I take one of the three exits that are designated for “Downtown Orlando.”

7:40 PM—We realize that we don’t seem to be anywhere near downtown Orlando.

7:50 PM—We drive around what appears to be a lake. What is a lake doing in the middle of a city?

8:00 PM—We no longer see any tall buildings and instead, appear to be in a retirement community.

8:05 PM—We get out of the old people area and start heading in the other direction.

8:15 PM—We start to see big buildings again. Hooray!

8:20 PM—We are definitely in downtown Orlando now. We search for Pine Street (the street our hotel is
on).

8:25 PM—We get to Pine Street, but there are two signs on the street—one that says “No left turn” and one
that says “No right turn.”

8:30 PM—We drive around the block and don’t see any more signs. Iwanski turns right on Pine Street. (There are two cop cars parked on the corner.)

8:31 PM—A construction guy yells “Wrong way, buddy!”

8:32 PM—Iwanski turns off the street and starts to freak out, positive that he’ll now be getting a ticket in the mail for going the wrong way down a one-way street.

8:35 PM—I finally manage to calm Iwanski down, and now we are going the right way down Pine Street.

8:36 PM—We see our hotel and drive up. We notice that there is valet parking only.

8:37 PM—Iwanski starts to freak out about valet parking, which we’ve never had to do before. When do you tip the guy??

8:40 PM—Iwanski turns over the car to the valet guy and we check in to the hotel.

8:45 PM—We drag our heavy suitcases up to our room.

8:50 PM—We open our hotel room door and notice that there are dirty towels on the floor, the wastebasket is full of garbage, and there is a lemon wedge lying in the middle of the carpet.

8:51 PM—We call down to the front desk, and they tell us to come down so they can give us a key to a different room.

8:52 PM—We drag our heavy suitcases back down to the front desk.

8:55 PM—We get our new room key and drag our heavy suitcases up to our new room.

9:00 PM—We open the door to our new room and—well, everything is perfect, thank God!

9:05 PM—Iwanski goes back down to tip the valet guy.


OK, I do feel a little bit better now. I’m glad that at least those hassles are over!