It’s become clear that any short story I might write about my few days in Florida is going to take longer than I’ve got between weekends. I’m not terribly keen on ignoring Servusamanu entirely in the mean time so instead here are my pictures and a short itinerary.
Day 1:
- Flight from Laguardia. We volunteered to give up our seats so we got two free flights out of it on Spirit Airlines. We’re thinking maybe somewhere in the Caribbean in June.
- Since we gave up our seats, we were given a new flight and a taxi ride over to JFK. There we had lunch with a fellow less-voluntarily bumped traveler at the Chilis.
- Our flight finally left in the afternoon. We got to Fort Lauderdale that evening and drove over to the condo in Delray Beach.
Day 2:
- We drove around the Delray Beach area and saw all the big houses by the water. I turned the Zillow app off after seeing the 64 million dollar spanish colonials.
- Toward the afternoon, we walked around the Delray Beach main street – took in the assorted nightlife. Ate at a place called Prime – I ate slow roasted sea bass while a lounge singer crooned old Frank Sinatra tunes.
Day 3:
- The first half of the day was spent at the beach. Fairly standard Florida beach fare.
- That afternoon we went to the Delray Beach Tennis Tournament. We saw Del Potro play Berankis in the first round. I believe Del Potro went on to win the tournament. (He was #4 in the world in 2010)
Day 4:
- Spent pretty much the entire day in Everglades National Park. (That’s where most of the pictures are from.) We started off driving along the length of the park stopping at each of the small easy hiking trails. One we reached Flamingo (the far side of the park – some 30-40 miles away) we spent an hour hiking a mosquito infested swamp trail. (great fun!).
- As evening set in, we drove to Key Largo and ate at Jimmy Johnson’s Big Chill. The jerk mahi mahi was excellent.
Day 5:
- We talked to the Delray train station and took the train to West Palm Beach.
- In West Palm Beach we took the bus to the West Palm Beach Zoo (the rest of the pictures). Sadly, we didn’t see any Bush Dogs which have become possibly my new favorite animal anyway.
- After the zoo, we ate at a Chick-fil-A thus adding one more regional fast food restaurant to my resume.
Day 6:
- We flew home. Rain pushed back our flight six or so hours but I got most of my weekend work done sitting at the airport. Vacation over!
That’s the blandest possible writeup of six odd days of vacation but it serves it’s purpose. I’ve gone a few writing projects on the horizon so I wanted to get my vacation of the entry list before too many things piled up. Also, the Everglades needed to be shared – absolutely gorgeous and unexpectedly massive. We drove across the entire park and I doubt we saw a thousandth of everything there. Easily the best part of the trip.
