Florida Road Trip

Click on photo for Photo Album

In late March of 2012 we did a short driving trip to the Florida Keys via Nashville and Cocoa Beach. It was a short trip in terms of time – we had only given ourselves 10 days (leaving Friday, returning Monday next) – but a long trip on the road. We like long drives and hadn’t done one in a while. Nashville is a bit of a diversion but there’s some music there we really like – we went to the “Bluebird Cafe” for music in the round on both ends of the trip. In Cocoa Beach (that’s Florida near Cape Canaveral) we visited with Joan (who stood up for us at our wedding) and Ron who rented a condo for the month. They do that every year and have always asked us if we’d like to visit.

In the Keys we went snorkelling on Looe Key off the Bahia Hondo state park near Marathon – that’s about half way down the keys. It’s a short boat ride out to the reef and one day the weather was good enough for us to get out onto the reef. It’s a bit disappointing as we have snorkelled a bit in Australia where the reefs are in much better shape. Nevertheless we saw some fishies including sharks (which are a bit scary but apparently common). We rented a “cabin” at the nearby Seashell Beach Resort (that's a heron photo from the "beach"). The naming is a flight of fancy that doesn’t hold true -- there's really no beach and it's not much of a resort. Nevertheless we had fun in the area. We ate lots of seafood – shrimps in our cabin, stone crab claws and “Lobster Reuben”.

A notable adventure in South Miami Beach on the way back.... we love the restaurant strip on Ocean Drive in the heart of the art-deco area of South Beach and had booked the Cardozo hotel (expensive, refurbished and quite nice but mind the cock roaches) so we could enjoy an evening stopping at different funky spots for drinks, noshes and an evening of people watching. All within a short walk of our room. As we’re starting the “greeter” at the Cardozo catches us with a two for one drink deal which we ought to have refused. We ordered a couple of caipirinha’s with the idea of having a quick sip before heading out to see more. The drinks were huge ($32 for the two – if we’d known the price we might have guessed the size) and of course we had to finish them. This meant we were quickly quite tipsy and couldn’t negotiate much of the strip. Saner minds prevailed and we went to our room with the idea of having a little nap and exploring things later ... when we awoke at midnight. There’s a lesson there, probably several.

Anyways, I have posted a photo album if you're curious.