Taking off Travel blog

On my recent trip to Florida, one restaurant chain stood out for both taste and value - Sweet Tomatoes (also known as Souplantation in some areas). We happened into it one afternoon after rejecting the nearby Italian restaurant we’d been considering.

Sweet Tomatoes, Dania Beach

When we walked in we were greeted by a salad bar several feet long, and this on its own would have been enough to keep us happy. Not only did it have a huge selection of fresh individual salad items (including a couple of things I’d never heard of), but it included three lettuce based salads, two pasta salads and potato salad. You could put as much on your plate as you wanted, though we discovered that if you were too full of salad you would miss out on the other items on offer. To accompany your salad you could choose from water, iced tea, lemonade, strawberry lemonade and soda. Read more »

I’m just back from a trip to Florida, in the Hollywood/Dania Beach area. (It seems the person who planned the area was originally from California, hence the name.) It was fun. Flying in and clearing security went smoothly, and we were through in less than half an hour. Just as I was thinking we’d be in the pool by 2, we hit a snag - the extremely lengthy Alamo car hire process. We had prebooked so it should have been smooth. Instead we had to wait for the rep to:

• double check our reservation
• try to con us into upgrading to a bigger vehicle (for more money)
• try to sell us insurance coverage which we already had
• get a GPS system

Finally, we had to be bussed to the Miami offsite airport parking lot to collect our car. Most of the time when I hire a car, the reps give me the car that’s available. With this Alamo rental, we had the novelty of walking to the appropriate parking lot section and picking anything we wanted - and all of them were quite big enough for our luggage, despite the rep’s dire warnings.  We plugged in the GPS (later to be christened the ‘gremlin’ but that’s another story) and away we went to our hotel, one of the Marriott chain.

Pool at Marriott Springhills Suites, FL

The room was spacious, though the bathrooms needed a refurb and we had a great view of the pool and a few palm trees. (Overall, we thought the hotel was a good choice, as it was close to places to eat, local attractions and Interstate 95 without being too noisy.) Free internet access and breakfast added to the value. By about 4.30 we were finally able to hit the pool, which was practically deserted. That’s what you get for traveling at the tail end of the season when most kids are back at school.

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