Final Florida Fling - the final bit - Easter 2022

[archibald]

The pre-amble

The Orlando Bit

The middle bit

The final bit


Day 10 Monday 18th April, Caspersen Beach, Mels Diner

This was the only big travel day of the holiday – a 5.5 hour drive down to Boca Raton just above Fort Lauderdale. We have a sneaky feeling that this might be the last family holiday – we can only really travel at Easter, next year is out due to GCSEs and we’re not sure at what age the boys will bale out, so we’d always intended this to be a kind of final fling, re-doing some of the things we’ve enjoyed the most over the years.

With this in mind we gave the boys the choice of either going to Busch for a final few hours of coastering or stopping off at Caspersen beach near Venice to hunt for sharks teeth. I was secretly delighted when they chose the beach (although that’s probably not that much of a surprise to anyone really). This meant that we got to drive over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge once more, saw lots of pelicans (I bloody love peli’s), do the beach sharks teeth search thing and then stop at a Mel’s Diner somewhere for a late lunch. Mel’s Diner is a small chain of diners in SW Florida, and some of them are the classic diner brilliantly shiny silver.

The beach was busier than it has been on previous visits, and, because the sun went behind the clouds for a while we stayed far longer than we’d intended – but I do have to finish Riders and it is a very long book! We found a few sharks teeth and just generally had a nice time messing in the sea and watching the pelicans and dolphins – just brilliant.

We also visited one of the shiny diners and it was just as perfect as it ever could be, the best meal of the holiday even though it was just burgers and fish sandwiches. Everything is just so right, the food, the décor, the music, the other customers who were mostly of the age of the golden age of diners (although I guess that’s to be expected on a Monday afternoon). If you ever get the chance and you’re passing anywhere near, you really should visit one, and if you can, make it a shiny one, and you have to get a portion of Mile High Coconut Pie with 4 forks, it’s huge mountain of creamy coconut loveliness - truly amazing.

I took over the driving here – dh isn’t the best at navigating, but with a 93 mile stretch in a straight line across alligator alley, I reckoned we’d be pretty safe!
I’d booked another small condominium resort – the Ventura at Boca Raton – about 25 private and timeshare two-storey apartments set around a pool & bbq area. We arrived well after the 5pm check in time but I had called ahead and had been emailed some elaborate instructions reminiscent of the Krypton Factor with a long list of things to do including gates, and boxes, and envelopes and constructing a small model of the apartments. Ok, so I lied about the model making, but sadly we fell at the final hurdle – the phonecall for a pass number, but luckily one of the guests who was relaxing by the pool came to our rescue.

We were really impressed with the apartment, there was a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, dining area and living room built around a central private glass atrium (open at the top), and a patio area that opened onto the pool. Upstairs the master bedroom had a full length balcony and a 25 steps long corridor to the master bathroom which also came with it’s own balcony (into the atrium). The boys were very happy with their rooms, although we did find one of them in our bedroom looking confused as he’d got lost looking for the stairs! There was a lot of wardrobe, closet and storage space, an insane amount to be honest. Also a lot of seating – I think I counted 26 dotted around the place which seems a lot for somewhere that sleeps 8, although I think that number included the loungers on the balcony.

Tuesday, Wendys, Gumbo Limbo Nature Reserve, Santos

We started with a quick early morning pop out to pick up breakfast from Wendys as we hadn’t bought any food yet and thought we’d check in at 9 when the office opened before heading out for the day. Check in was fast and pleasant – I was surprised to learn that the resort fee had already been paid when we booked and we headed off to the Gumbo Limbo Nature Reserve.

We spent a lovely morning at the Nature reserve – it’s very informative and tells you all about the native animals and also is a hospital for sick turtles. There’s a couple of big aquarium and lots of re-hab tubs with explanations of who is in there, how there were injured and what treatment they are receiving.

There’s a gift shop where we tried to add to our collection of polyresin tree ornaments of Florida, not surprisingly, since the first time we visited was 10 years ago, the same range wasn’t available anywhere that we visited, although we did pick up a palm tree for the Christmas tree, and some small ‘tins’ for our mirror.
Exisiting collection from visits between 2012-2018

The best we could manage was a palm tree!

There’s also a butterfly garden at the Reserve and when you arrive it initially it looks quite empty, but when you spend a little time on one of the benches in the shade you can soon learn who is doing what and where, a lovely time. The kids went out on the nature trail, but the only thing discovered was a mummified fish – they were suspiciously fast though!

It’s embarrassing to admit this, but one of the reasons for the location of the final condo was it’s proximity to Santos, a sushi buffet. It is also roughly in the middle of Peanut Island, The Water Taxi of Fort Lauderdale and The Keys are accessed in a couple of hours – we weren’t entirely sure what we wanted to do or when so kept options open with a central location. We hit the lunchtime buffet – just as remembered, lots of lovely sushi and sashimi.

We went back to Ventura for a lazy pool afternoon and I almost got too much sun – that book really is very long. As soon as people discovered that we were English, we got the typical interest and a list of who has ancestors from where, followed by the sending over of elderly relatives to chat about where they lived in the 1950’s. It’s nice getting to know a little window on people’s lives – there was a large family reunion going on – they owned one of the condos, and the rest of the family rented a couple of the others and they were really lovely people. It was about now that we realised that our bucket of swimming goggles and my trusty snorkel that I’d had for many years had been left in a bucket at the side of a beach shower at Caspersen Beach. That’s where my sharks teeth are too.

It was getting close enough to the end of the trip to be thinking of getting the homeward haul – there’s a certain type of Aussie Hair mousse that I like, and the typical Walmart shopping list of sweeties for friends etc. and a new snorkel set. We arrived at the closest Walmart – I think it was Deerfield Beach but not too sure, but it certainly underlined why Deerfield Beach has such a terrible reputation and high crime rate. We moved a few miles down the road to a much shinier nicer one (often the easiest way to snap gauge an area is looking at the number of swimming pools on google maps) in an area that we’re quite familiar with. In fact we drove past the huge Monarch waste plant that we’d visited on an earlier trip – we go to all the best places!

I think I probably need to elaborate. The waste plant was having an open day for local families (we were visiting one), with cash prizes given to the schools with the highest attendance. Happy to help, we attended and registered, and spent a quite a nice few hours learning about rubbish – loads of activities for the kids, food, drink, photographs and t-shirts and all free. Anything to make the hideously huge plant and massive mountains of waste more appealing to the neighbourhood. There has to be somewhere for my 52 carrier bags to go to. That was the number of bags we had been given in 2 weeks, bearing in mind we’d already used quite a few for rubbish and wet swimmers etc. Almost all of our 52 made it home, they’re in a bag on the wall behind me right now having been used to pack around a frog ornament and the toiletries.

Wednesday, Everglades Holiday Park, CiCi's

We weren’t sure what to do today. We had a list of things we’d enjoyed on previous visits and we could easily fit everything in to the time we had, but we weren’t sure if we really wanted to do all of them. We decided on the classic Everglades activity of an airboat ride.

We’ve done a couple in the past, and decided to return to the Everglades Holiday Park as it was closet and cheapest, and wow it has changed. 10 years ago it was quite a small rustic affair although it was home to the Gator Boys (as seen on Animal Planet) – in fact one of them did the alligator show and the boys were much smaller then and quite starstruck. It has grown massively into an easy, slick operation, big tarmac car park, loads of boats.

In spite of this we still had a great time – once you’re on the boat and away, you don’t really see anyone else other than fishermen on the river. Saw the alligators, had the added excitement of a fish jumping in to the boat, it’s not crowded, plenty of space for everyone to see everything, each boat could probably fit 50 people yet they go with 23. The alligator show afterwards was a fun way to spend 20 minutes and we learned a little more about alligators.

I’m still cross about this one, but we went looking for lunch and found an Outback and CiCi’s pizza, and we caved to kids request for pizza, which is what it is, a cheap, fast lunch, but I could smell the steak across the car park. The location did redeem itself slightly though as there was a TK Maxx nearby where I found a lovely tin frog to take home, and he was small enough (just) to fit in a hand luggage case.

Another lazy pool afternoon and we realised with all of this down time that we need to decide what would fit into our remaining time and returning to The Keys was knocked off the list, mostly because we couldn’t be bothered to drive, and we’d decided to spend the next day on a beach anyway.

Day 13 Thursday, Peanut Island, Taco Bell, BBQ

This was a day that I had really been looking forward to and it was at the top of my ‘to do’ list for the whole holiday. Peanut Island is an 8 acre island in the middle of the intracoastal waterway but in one of the more open areas. It’s manmade and it is amazing for snorkelling.

You can spend far too much time facedown with the fishes in a really safe, reassuring area. There’s paths and restrooms on the island, and you can even camp out there too if you want to. Access is by shuttle boat which is a pleasant 10 minute sail around to the other side of the island. No alcohol is allowed, but everything else is, and it always amazes me exactly how much stuff people take can take with them for a day on the beach.

It was just brilliant, and I concentrated hard and keeping everything under the water as much as I could. Our first visit had left me with slightly sunburned back of wrist/hands, hairline, and a stunning strip across tops of the back of my legs where the swim skirt had floated up and away exposing bits that had not seen the sun for an internity. That certainly made for an ‘interesting’ flight home from West Palm beach a couple of days later – and we flew right over the island on take-off (which I now remember looked surprisingly busy, don’t go there at the weekend).

We left the island and wanted a quick late lunch as we were tired and sandy, so we went through the Taco Bell drive through and lunched in the car. The last time we bought them, the soft taco’s were 99c, this time $1.79 – quite some inflation there, but those little soft tacos are just too lovely.

I haven’t tried any in the UK branches of Taco Bell, but I’m assuming given our countries very different list of acceptable ingredients, they’ll taste quite differently to those scoffed in the sun. I can’t quite believe that we’ve become so lazy in our old age, but we went back to the Ventura for a few hours before heading out to find some BBQ food as we had also realised that we were starting to run out of meal times to eat our ‘must do’s’!

We followed these two for a short distance

There wasn’t much choice to be had locally – the one we ended up choosing was actually in a strip mall – not the ‘proper’ type we’ve enjoyed so much before with the smokehouses out back and served up in huge portions on paper plates. Because we’d only booked 7 weeks before travel, I hadn’t really had the time to scout around for the best places to eat – the little diners and restaurants in pokey corners. We typically eat far more at independent places rather than the chains that are everywhere, and this was something definitely missing from this trip. We ordered the big sharing plate, and that was a LOT of food and it was nice, but it was probably not as good as what you’d get even from a chain like Sonny’s.

The last day, Friday 22. Boca Raton Museum, Mexican food, Mini Golf, Corn-holing

This was the day where the idea of spending the day on the water taxi around Fort Lauderdale was also abandoned. This had been one of my favourite days that we’ve ever spent in Florida, and although the boys were happy to go, they didn’t really seem all that keen, and it’s a lot of money to spend and a long day if the enthusiasm wasn’t there. I was also a little worried that it would have changed beyond all recognition and maybe I’m not too far wrong, as a clip on the recent Jayne MacDonald programme made them look like large party boats where people drink all day rather than the small friendly boats with the happy staff that we remember.

You know earlier on when I mentioned the museums we visit where we look at stuff that we have in the back of the shed in buildings younger than our house? Today’s was the Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum in the old town hall in the historic district of Boca Raton. It’s a nice enough way to spend a couple of hours learning a little about the area in which we’re staying, and yes there was stuff that is still kicking around in sheds at home (mangles & washboards) but when you consider the population of the USA was fewer than a million in the 1920’s, these artifacts that you can pick up for a couple of pounds here, are valued for their scarcity there. The population of Florida is now over 20 million, with 75% of them arriving post 1960!

The volunteers are always very lovely and chatty and very proud of their towns and their history, although some important involvement of others is sometimes skipped over, for example in the enthusiasm to explain how the US developed RADAR in this mall town in Florida, there’s no mention of the german bloke who discovered the concept, or of Marconi’s input, although the US are generally credited with naming it …

Anyway, I’d recommend visiting any one of the small town museums you may see along the way (apart from the Military History one, sorry), if only to get recommendations of the best places to eat, which leads us nicely to a no-frills Mexican where we had lunch. Texas was the king (rather unsurprisingly) of this kind of eatery. Small, cheap, amazing food, full of workers eating lunch, and strangely, it seems, more often than not, next to a railroad. This was no exception although at least it didn’t rattle when the train went past like some in the past have! Fantastic plates of taco’s & burrito’s although this was actually the first time that we’d tasted the Florida water through the soda’s and realised that Orlando must have improved it’s water since our last visit – I know the area above Tampa has.

We headed a little further up the coast to Delray Beach for the afternoon. To be honest, everything is now so built up along this coast, it feels as if Miami meets West Palm Beach without a break, and when you look on google maps it pretty much does. This was a family first, a game of mini golf- we chose the Everglades course as it was more shaded than it’s companion. What a great way to spend the afternoon – I even scored a hole-in-one on the hole overseen by a pelican – it was a sign!

There was little streams and ponds and we ended up with balls in most of them, but we managed to fish them out with the nets provided, a good time had by almost all, as DS2 can sometimes be a little too competitive!

And so to the last evening of the holiday and that didn’t go to plan either. We popped to the pool for a quick dip as we planned to go somewhere ‘nice’ for our last dinner. While there we were invited to play ‘corn-holing’ by the lovely family we’d been talking to through the week – I’ve just googled the rules to save you doing so (I initially ended up on the Urban Dictionary page, please take care!), which are;

Cornhole is a lawn game in which players take turns throwing 16 ounce fabric bean bags at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. A bag in the hole scores 3 points, while one on the board scores 1 point. Play continues until a team or player reaches or exceeds the score of 21

It was such a lovely evening – the boys all did far better than me at it, but I was suffering lightly from the smallest bit of sunburn to my back where DH had missed a bit, but it was right under my bra strap and it was quite uncomfortable!

Apparently you can get sponsored through college and can make your fortune by being a professional player, which seems odd for a sport that really is as simple as throwing a beanbag through a hole in a board. Thinking about it, I suppose than golf is hitting a ball into a hole, and even the most popular sports are pretty basic. It is one of those things that is so much better than it sounds, and it really made a great ending to our Florida holiday, however it made us very late for food so we ended up at another buffet where we knew we would be fed quickly, there would be lots of lovely seafood & sushi, and we’d get back in time to get some packing done.

Home - Saturday 23rd April, Cracker Barrel, The Venetian Pool, Miami airport

This is flying home day. Boca Raton is only 45 minutes North of Miami airport and the flight wasn’t until 9.15pm, so had the day to fill with a midday check out. Instead of going out for breakfast, then checking out at 12 after dip in the pool, we re-arranged our day and upgraded our final swim. We finished the bits of snack food for a ‘pre- breakfast’ and packed, boo hiss, printing boarding passes, pool tickets, and the very kind lady in reception gave me a stamped envelope to enable me to post the Visitor Toll Pass back to Orlando, as you’re supposed to get it back to them within 3 days of the end of your trip. It’s sitting on the desk right beside me, oops, we forgot to find the post box at the airport and had to pay the $10 fine, but far cheaper than using car hire toll passes. I wonder if we can re-activate it if we ever go back?

The kids wanted a cracker barrel breakfast, and let’s face it, who doesn’t? So we packed up the car and drove off for the final time. Breakfast was very good and we bought yet more stuff from the shop – we’d got our gifts for those managing the farm and caravan site while we were away from there on an earlier visit. I don’t quite know how it hooks you in, but you always come out with a bag full of stuff that didn’t know that you need!

So this is the absolutely best recommendation (in my humble opinion) of the holiday for anyone that is flying out of Miami, and has an hour or two to fill before their flight leaves. The Venetian Pool at Coral Gables.

It is absolutely beautiful, a pool carved out from the coral almost 100 years ago so positively ancient by Floridian standards. It’s spring fed so a little cooler than you might expect, but there is caves and water falls and a little sandy beach area, loungers to hire and plenty of shade. Numbers are strictly limited so it’s not too busy, and the best bit is that it’s only 15 minutes to the car-hire drop off at the airport!

The area around it is so lovely too, it took us a while to realise that although the streets and houses were nothing unusual, the fact that the area had been in existence for a relatively long time, means that the trees were fully grown, and it made everything so green and tranquil and not quite what you expect when driving in Miami only 10 minutes from the airport!

The showers and changing rooms are very good and spacious, and we parked easily in the little car park right outside. It really is the most perfect place to spend your last few hours in Florida, relaxing in the sun and arriving freshly showered ready for the travel home, although we called in at a Publix en route – actually our only Publix visit of the trip.

I decided that even more booty was needed, so took my pillow out of the case – a feather pillow always comes with us, even though only hand baggage outbound (just squeeze the air out in a clothes storage bag) – and we filled the space with more goodies for home. I’ll be taking the feather pillow onboard everytime in the future, so much more comfortable for sleeping with on the way home.
Actually a little more about the taking stuff home thing.

We travel light outbound, but check in a couple of the cabin cases (zipped out to maximum size) and the 32” folding holdall that DH had used as his ‘extra’ item on the way home. We also bought an additional fold out 32” holdall – think it was only $25 in Walmart and sturdy enough to get stuff home in if you pack it carefully.

All of the part used toiletries come back with us as I don’t like waste, as well as the instant vanilla coffee drink etc. I thought nothing of popping a 500g tub of salt in the hand baggage – DS had an infected toe so had needed it to bathe it – although I then felt a proper fool at security when the bag was pulled aside, forms filled in, the salt was removed for a drugs test apparently needing three officers – two of them just to work out how to open it! What kind of idiot packs a big tub of white powder in their hand luggage?
The car drop, check in and security were all quick and easy (other than the salt issue) but we always seem to have to go to the furthest end of the airport every time!

A lot of the food airside was closed, not sure why, but I’m glad that I’d checked before we arrived and we’d grabbed a sandwich from Publix. We got an over-priced Starbucks (no final Dunkin boo hoo) and onto the plane. I’d paid the extra to BA to choose seats upstairs in the A388 in the tiny section at the back of 2x2 seats. This small section has fewer people in it (hopefully for a quiet sleep home) and the additional luggage lockers at the window seat gives good storage and extra space, even if they need a good slap to open! Loads of legroom for the 35” leggy teen, and a great flight home.

Really pleased that we’d chosen Heathrow’s own Meet & Greet – the car was waiting for us at T5 (we flew out of T3) and with a long drive home we were out of the airport and away less than 5 minutes. The baggage was out quickly too, although to be fair whether the bags make it home at the same time as us is less of a worry than if they don’t start the holiday with us, which is the main reason for travelling light outbound.

And there we are, all home safe and sound. DH drove the first couple of hours while I slept and when we swopped and drove the remaining 2.5 hours. The drive back was a lot easier than we had anticipated. We had an amazing time, I wonder if we’ll ever get back?

[Lola]

Saw a huge lizard at Gumbo Limbo once.

[Twinkle-Dolphin]

Loved reading this - thanks for sharing your holiday