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| Florida | |
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Visit
Florida Ah, the Sunshine State! What a perfect name for Florida where you can watch the sun rise on the Atlantic Coast and set below the Gulf waters and enjoy all those Vitamin D-loaded rays in between. Just be sure to bring your sun screen! If you're looking for Florida vacation packages (flight plus hotel), Priceline often has better prices than Orbitz, Expedia, and Hotwire. Trip Report - My Big Fat Florida and Caribbean Adventure, October 2003 Well, the trip was awesome, to say the least. We started off with a couple of nights in Fort Lauderdale. The beach is great - warm water, nice sand, very few people. It was pretty darn inexpensive as well. We ate at a crab place, The Rustic Inn, that I highly recommend. Of course, I cut the shiitake out of my thumb there and should have gotten a couple of stitches but didn't. Oops. We went to a Florida Marlins game against the Philadelphia Phillies which was fun. The playoff berth was on the line so it was a great atmosphere, despite the constant rain the game was played in. Speaking of weather, we saw some awesome lightning while in Fort Lauderdale. The cruise on the Celebrity line was great. I've never been taken better care of. We lucked out and were seated with several other couples that we got along with smashingly. I proved how much of a geek I am by winning the sports trivia and darts contests. Ports of call included: Ocho Rios, Jamaica - I wouldn't really recommend visiting Jamaica. We and many others got real tired of the constant bombardment by the street vendors and shopkeepers. They were way too aggressive for everyone's taste. Dunn's River Falls was a blast to hike up, though. It is definitely worth a visit just for this. I picked up an awesome shell and a funky woven palm leaf hat from a diver, which I will thoroughly enjoy. The hat is quite the conversation piece. Many people wear 'em around my home area, but I guess if you are from Wisconsin, it is pretty exotic! Grand Cayman - We got to swim with, feed, and pet stingrays. It was friggin' awesome! They swim up to you like hungry toothless dogs and seem to enjoy the interaction with people. The 7 Mile Beach was quite spectacular as well. Perfect water. Unfortunately I wasn't able to open a bank account while there. Too many rules and restrictions. It would have been cool to have a Grand Cayman bank account! Cozumel - We spent the day at Chankanaab Park, which is a marine sanctuary. The beach and snorkeling were fantastic. The water was perfect. We saw stingrays, lobsters, conchs ... and Mayan ruins in the water. It was quite stunning. I had an interesting run-in with a curio shopkeeper who started swearing at me for not buying some of his junk. I managed to remember my nasty insults in Spanish, which made things fun and exciting. Key West - Quite a hippy, dippy, trippy place. There must be a bong shortage elsewhere because they all seem to be in Key West. Headshop city. Fort Taylor, originally built in the 1850s, was fascinating to explore. It was a fortress built originally in the water, accessible only by a drawbridge, with a bunch of big-ass cannons to pick off pirate ships and whatnot. We are talking cannons that shoot 10 miles. We finished the trip by driving out to check out the swamps. We spotted a bunch of wild 'gators, which was very cool. We also spent a little time checking out South Miami Beach. Beautiful beach, and the topless women only added to my viewing pleasure. Damn, it is tough to be back at work ... zzzz. |
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