Well the day has arrived (Sunday) when Hurricane Irma arrived and this is the first hurricane that either of us has had to experience. We went for a walk this morning to break up the day before the curfew starts at 19:00 and will be in force until 18:00 on Monday.
We purchased some supplies on Friday while the stores were still open and we've been eating all our meals in our hotel room, luckily the room has a fridge and a microwave oven. The hotel also has a small shop in reception so we've been able to pick up some additional supplies to supplement what we picked up earlier. The hotel doesn't have room service and it has a dining room where they provide breakfast with your stay.
Our food and drink stash to sustain us for lunch and dinner on Sunday and lunch on Monday. Our hotel has been providing breakfast
The view outside our hotel in the afternoon as the hurricane arrives.
The Tornado warning sent to my mobile which advises us to move to a "Safe" room, away from windows.
The tornado warning came through at 18:00 to move to our safe room, which was the bathroom in our room until 19:00 and then it was extended until 19:15. We've also been watching a local weather channel so we could monitor the wind and rain and the outer band of the hurricane that arrive over Orlando at about 18:00 and will be passing over us until around midnight Sunday. The winds will continue until about 06:00. The wind is being reported at between 59-73 miles per hour and 74+ miles per hour at 01:00 and then it should drop off at 06:00 and return to 59-73 miles per hour.
There are 250,000 people without power as at 22:00 across Florida. We're currently fortunate and still have power although earlier in the evening we've had the lights flicker on and off a few times and the hotel Wi-Fi also dropped out for a few minutes.
At midnight the wind really picked up and so we moved into the bathroom in our hotel (which was our decision to err on the side of caution) and spent the next 3 hours there whilst the storm passed over. The power went out at 1am.
On Monday morning we went down to the breakfast room of the hotel and managed to get some food which sustained us for breakfast and lunch and we used up the remaining supplies for dinner. It wasn't a fun day as we had no power, everything is closed and there is a curfew until 18:00 so we've pretty much been confined to our hotel for the day. We went for a walk after the curfew to see if anything had opened and what damage had been done.
The hurricane in full flight before the power went out
View of the car park after the storm
View of the pool with some minor damage
A pile of leaves whipped up by the storm. I was amazed at the pattern left by the storm
We've decided to give up on the cruise as it's scheduled to leave from Miami tomorrow. Port Miami is still closed, we'd have to hire a car and drive back down to Port Miami and considering it took us 9 hours to get here when it's normally a 3 1/2 hour drive, who knows long long it would have taken us. American Airlines have also rescheduled our flight from tomorrow (Tuesday) to Friday so flying isn't looking like an option for us either. So our new revised plan is to stay in Orlando until 24/9 and then fly up to New York as per our original plans. We're hoping that from tomorrow we can get back to enjoying our holiday.
Thank you to all of our friends and family that have contacted us to check that we're ok. We've certainly had an interesting couple of days.
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