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Published: October 29th 2007
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Fort Lauderdale
Landed in Fort Lauderdale approx. 15 miles north of Miami. It is another popular spring break spot with its long sandy beaches, being made famous because of a movie made here in the 1960's called "Where the Boys are". The weather wasn't great for the two days I stayed here, but made a trip to the beach, even though I spent most of the time sheltered in the dry of the pub across the road.
Florida Keys
Whilst in Fort Lauderdale hired a car for 9 days to drive around Florida and decided to drive to Mainland USA's most southern point - Key West. Once I navigated my way past Miami & its toll bridges, it was an easy drive . There is just one route all the way down the Keys to Key West: the Overseas Highway (US-1), this road connects all the Islands by this road and bridges up to 7 miles long. I headed to the end of the Keys, to Key West, the journey from Ft Lauderdale to there was about 300 miles, and I was glad of an easy drive as it was my first time driving a left hand car,
Key West, Florida Keys
Most southern point in US an automatic and first time driving on the right.
Stayed in Key West (which is only 90 miles away from Cuba) for a couple of days, visiting the home of the famous US author Ernest Hemmingway, and trying out one of the beaches. Also went drinking in
Duval street and saw the sunset in
Mallory Square.
Decided to drive from Key West to Miami in one drive, not staying at any other part, though wanted to dive in the Keys. Stopped off at Key Looe (as said as each place is on the US-1 you do not go out of you way at all to visit anywhere) early in the morning and did a wreck dive and dived five-square-mile protected reef. The reef was quite shallow, parts as shallow as 10m, and were infested with plenty of Jelly fish, so spent some of the dive dodging them, making sure I did not get stung!!
After the dive made a beach stop at
Bahia Honda State Park for a few hours. Also on the visit to the keys tried some of the locally famous Key Lime Pie, and Conch Fritters, neither I found to my taste.
Miami
After the diving and the beach stop it was dark and quite late before I arrived (and got lost) in Miami. Finally found my way across the Bridge to
Miami South beach where I was staying. The views whilst crossing the bridge of the Skyscrapers all lit up were pretty amazing, and reminded my of Hong Kong sky line.
Location of my digs were ideal, just 1 block away from the beach, but I had moved into a room shared with local middle age American's who living in a dorm had become a norm. Included in our room was a doorman with a glass eye, and one of those guys who cleans your windscreen whilst your parked at a red light. Still got on fine with them as we sat down to watch the Yankees get knocked out of the world series, which had half the room smiling and half crying!
Orlando
After Miami stayed in Ft Lauderdale for one more night before driving up-to Orlando (home of Disney World). My uncle owns a holiday home very near to Disney World and he kindly let me stay here for a few days (it
was weird going from sharing a bedroom with about 8 others, to having a 3 bed place to myself!!).
As I had been staying in back packer accommodation since Australia it has always been easy to meet new people and sight see with them, now as I was staying in Private accommodation, this was not the case. Anyway got up early in first morning and headed to the main theme park (though there are loads in Orlando)
Disney World. Did enjoy it but was a bit strange queueing up for the Whinie the Pooh ride on my own (kept getting asked how many were in my party as they expected kids in tow!)!!
Decided not to go to another theme park as not the most fun on your own and including parking was quite expensive (though did have a great day in Disney World going on all the main rides using the fast track system to my advantage). So for the couple of days before flying to Boston (NY State) I chilled in the pool by the accommodation.
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