And finally - Miami!

Our holiday was sadly coming to an end. But we still had a couple of days to kill in Miami before that, which we were rather looking forward to. We were staying at trendy Miami Beach, but before heading there, we decided to check out a couple of places elsewhere in Miami, while we still had our rental car (we were dropping it off later on the same day).

We started off with a visit in Coral Gables, a Miami neighbourhood which is most notably the location of the legendary Biltmore hotel. When it was built in 1927, it was the tallest building in Miami. In its heyday, it played host to royalty, movie stars and gangsters (in fact, one gangster, Thomas Walsh, was shot here, and his spirit is said to haunt the place!). Johnny Weissmuller was also a swimming instructor here. We weren't staying here, and tempting as it was, decided not to lunch here either, but we did have a look around the premises. Saying the place is impressive would be an understatement!

Next stop was Coconut Grove - a rather old Miami neighbourhood. It's also kind of famous as this is where Dexter Morgan's (you know, the most famous Florida-based mass-murderer with a conscience!) apartment is supposed to be located. I say "supposed to", since the series were almost entirely shot in California, mostly L.A. I suppose it was cheaper than to haul the entire crew down to Miami... Anyway, it was a nice enough spot for a short walk.

Next stop was Wynwood district, located near downtown Miami. It's what used to be a pretty run-down neighbourhood, but it's recently become one of the trendiest & coolest places in Miami. It all started with a few alternative artists painting wall murals there (think Mission district, San Francisco), and since then, the area has attracted loads of shops, trendy bars & restaurants and of course art galleries.

We really loved the place. The murals are really cool and diverse, ranging from pure pop art, to political messages (let's say that local residents didn't seem to be very keen on a certain Republican presidential candidate named Trump) to advertisements for local businesses. We had a really good time strolling around the place. Plenty of trendy restaurants and bars about as well. And what's best is that the neighbourhood still retains a bit of an edge. We had lunch in a cool cafe called the Lunch Box. Yummie.

The coolest place in Wynwood is a kind of outdoors exhibition called Wynwood Walls, a place dreamed up by the famous property developer and arts fan Tony Goldman in 2009. It's basically a place where street artists from all over the world can come and display their art. An extremely cool place!

Then, it was time to head off to Miami beach, to drop off our car, and to check into our Airnbn apartment. Finding the renal office where to drop off the car turned out to be a bit of a challenge, but we eventually found it in a fancy Collins Avenue hotel. We decided to walk back to the travel agency where we were supposed to pick up our flat keys.

As you may be aware, Miami is famous for its Art Deco architecture, dating from the early 1900's to 1940's. The hotels in particular are very famous. And some of the most famous ones are located on Collins Avenue. We were pretty stunned, to be honest. We love art deco architecture, and were looking forward to seeing this aspect of Miami, but to be honest, our expectations were exceeded. For fans of modern architecture, Miami Beach is a must, that's for sure.

We also walked down the famous Miami Beach broadwalk, which follows the legendary Beach. A great place to go for a run, for people-watching, or just to go for a stroll in the sunshine.

Our apartment, located near busy Espanola way (one of the busiest streets in Miami Beach, lined up with bars and restaurants) was what one could call "functional" at best. It was pretty cheap, though, and cheap accommodation and Miami beach aren't really compatible. So we couldn't really complain. And the location was excellent.

To finish off a busy day, I had an evening swim, and we then had dinner at a Cuban restaurant. I guess everybody knows about the Cuban influence in Miami. Havana is only 360 km from Miami, and the greater Miami area houses 1.2 million Cubans - the vast majority obviously migrated after the Cuban revolution...

The Cubans, who for obvious reasons are very anti-Castro, are a pretty influential and political bunch in Florida. Interestingly, two of the Republican presidential candidates (Rubio and Cruz) have Cuban roots (didn't prevent Trump from winning in Florida, though!). Excellent food, and that Mojito was pretty wicked too!

We started the next day by walking along Ocean Drive. Ocean Drive is THE place to check out the Art Deco architecture. It's a pretty beautiful road, that's for sure, with pastel-coloured Art Deco hotels (The hotels were actually almost exclusively painted white originally, so the new colour scheme which was introduced in the 80's was somewhat controversial...) on one side of the road, and the beach on the other side of the road.

The most famous building on Ocean Drive is possibly Casa Casuarina, which used to be belong to  fashion designer Gianni Versace (where he was shot, in 1997, as he got back from his morning walk). Not our favourite building on Ocean Drive, actually.

Having checked out "the pearl of the Art Deco district), we continued exploring Miami beach kind of randomly. We checked out Lincoln Avenue, which is the most famous shopping street in Miami Beach. It at least didn't impress me very much (then again, I'm not what one could call a great fan of shopping...). We did stop for a ridiculously overpriced cake & coffee at a Nescafe cafe (mind you, the cake was delicious). We also visited out the poignant and rather depressing Holocaust memorial.

We arrived in South Pointe Park just in time for sunset. South Pointe park is the southernmost bit of Miami Beach, from where there are some pretty amazing views towards downtown. So we spent an hour or so, braving the strong winds, checking out one of those legendary Floridan sunsets - it was the perfect spot for it, that's for sure!

We walked back towards our apartment along Ocean Drive (needed to check it out with the neon lights switched on, of course!). Beautiful, but we struggled to enjoy it due to the winds, which were reaching hurricane-levels of intensity, here. So we decided to find refuge in a cozy-looking 11th Street diner, where we dined. After all, a visit to the US of A is not complete without trying out at least one proper diner, right? This one was a bit of a disappointment as far as the food was concerned, even if the decor was very authentic indeed.

That, sadly, brought an end to our visit in Florida. Well, almost, the next morning, we still had the time for a morning run, before heading off to the airport. And what better place for a morning run than the Miami Beach Boardwalk and Ocean drive ?

All in all, we felt very sad indeed to leave. I have to admit I wasn't expecting to like Florida quite as much as I did. I was expecting it to be a bit of a glammed up version of the Costa del Sol. When in fact there's plenty more to Florida than just beaches and concrete hotels (mind you, that's true for the Costa del Sol too!). Pretty small towns, beautiful nature and of course Miami. We could even imagine coming back one day!

Exploring the Everglades

Of course, no visit to Florida is complete without a visit to the Everglades. It's the largest tropical wetlands region in the US, a pretty huge area covering a lot of Southern Florida (the National Park covers only about 20% of the Everglades).

We entered the Everglades by the rather inappropriately named Alligator Alley. Alligator Alley is the section of Interstate 75 that connects the East and West coasts of Florida, running just North of the National Park. Inappropriately in the sense that we didn't see any 'gators there, and I suspect they would have a hard time getting across the steel fence that separates the Interstate from the Everglades. Cool name, anyway ;-)

Anyway, we wanted to see some of those famous alligators, and the place to see them is Shark Alley, so that's where we headed. Not quite sure why the place is called Shark Alley, as it's more famous for its alligators than any fish ? Anyway, alligators we came to see, and alligators we saw. Loads of them. Most of them just lazing along the road, enjoying the sun. Some of them lazily swimming in the river running next to the footpath.

The fact that the alligators are lying on the ground just by the footpath is a bit disconcerting in the beginning, but one quickly gets the impression alligators are some of the laziest animals on earth. One better bear in mind though, that a big alligator would rather easily finish off a human if it put its mind to it. Actually, at one point, one of those 'gators opened its mouth and growled - which certainly caught our attention (the sound reminded me a bit of the 'raptor sounds from Jurassic Park!).

Apart from the main attraction, the gators, there were loads of birds about. Florida in general, and the Everglades in particular, seems to be very popular with birds of various kinds. Great place for ornithologists, that's for sure! And not a bad place for a keen amateur photographer like myself either!

We decided to head off before it got dark - after all, not spotting an alligator lying on the road and stepping on it is probably a pretty bad idea...! We drove on to Homestead, where we had a motel booked for the night. A pretty decent one, at that, the best one we'd stayed at so far in Florida. For dinner, we headed to a place called the Farmer's Market - a canteen type place where they served pretty decent food made from local produce.

The next day, the plan was to head off to the final destination on our trip, Miami. But before that, we wanted to explore the Everglades a bit further. So we decided to head to Anhinga Trail. Anhinga Trail is kind of the perfect introduction to the Everglades. It's a pretty short footpath (takes less than an hour to walk around in total), a boardwalk footpath crossing a typical sawgrass swamp.

It's a beautiful walk, it's just a pity we didn't see that much of the abundant wildlife the place is famous for. The walk is more pleasant than Shark Alley, but we saw less wildlife, for sure. There were a few birds about, and we did finally spot an alligator towards the end of the walk. Tick in the box, then ;-).

All in all, we loved our little introduction of the Everglades. Obviously the place merits a much longer visit, but oh well, I guess that'll have to be for the next time we visit! Direction, Miami, then!

The West Coast

Our drive from Cape Canaveral took us past Orlando (we resisted the temptation to check out Universal Studios/Disney World or the other mega parks Orlando is known for), past Tampa, to St. Petersburgh, where we were staying the night. This time we were Airbnb'ing,our little studio flat was located in a pretty nice residential neighbourhood, not far from the seaside. After getting settled in, we decided to head off to grab something for dinner. I felt rather under-dressed - tonight was after all Valentine's day! We did eventually find a nice restaurant by the seaside, where we had a very nice little romantic dinner.

The next day, we wanted to head off early. But before that, we decided to go for a "sightseeing run". What better way to check out a bit of what St. Petersburgh has to offer than having a run by the seaside ? It was a very nice little morning run indeed, even if the sky was a little bit grey. St. Petersburgh seems like a pretty pleasant town to live in, with an artistic touch. Indeed, there is a Salvador Dali museum in town - which we check out during our little tour. 

And then, alas, it was time to head off. The final destination for the night was Sanibel island. We decided to do a stopover at Sarasota. Sarasota town centre was quite unremarkable - so we didn't hang around there for very long. We did have a delicious lunch there, though - the turkey burger I had is one of the best burgers I've had for a long time... Lunch out of the way, we decided to head off to check out the main attraction at Sarasota, the Ringling museum and the Ca d'Zan mansion.

As today was Monday, we could actually visit the Ringling museum for free! This vast "cultural complex" (which composes of the musem and the Ca d'Zan, and plenty of other stuff too, and some pretty impressive gardens) was built by John Ringling, a rather prolific businessman. His main passion & business was circus - but apart from that he was also involved in railroads, the oil business and real estate.

Mister Ringling clearly had a passion for all things Italian. The gardens have a very Italian look to them, and Ca d'Zan means "the house of John" in Venetian. Indeed, it rather resembles a modern version of a Venetian palace (it was built in the 1920's).

We arrived at the Ringling museum by the magnificent gardens - again the passion for Italy is well on display, with the U-shaped garden being a true homage to Reneissance Italy. After all, Michelangelo's David overlooks the other statues in the garden, watching over them, so to speak. The museum itself has a pretty impressive collection of art (it's the premier art museum of Florida) - unfortunately we only had time to spend an hour or so walking around. There was an exhibition on samurais on, so I suppose you can imagine where I spend most of my time.

And then, destination Sanibel island. The reason for us going there is kind of cool, really. Just a week before our trip to Florida, we met a very friendly American called Billy, who was visiting the Cote d'Azur. We got along extremely well with Billy, and we were very touched when we proposed we go see his parents, who actually happened to be staying in Sanibel island (in fact, we just missed Billy and his family by about 2 days).

So, we ended up spending a wonderful evening with Billy's parents Harry and Sally, who are really cool. They cooked some delicious surf and turf for us, followed by some equally delicious profiteroles. Harry and Sally have travelled around Europe for quite a bit, so it was really interesting hanging out with them. Harry also had an excellent bottle of Aberlour whisky, which acts as a great social lubricant!

After a great night's sleep, we got up for a bit of Sanibel exploration. Sanibel is a pretty unique place in Florida, in that they actually make quite a big effort in keeping the place as natural as possible. There are houses, yes, but they are quite discretely tucked away off the main road. The island is criss-crossed by cycle paths, so the best means of transport really is the bike. Plenty of wildlife about too - apparently Harry and Sally even ran into an alligator there...

I decided to have my first swim in Florida (about d**n time!), the water was pleasantly warm (certainly warmer than here on the Cote d'Azur). Apparently too cold for the Floridian's, though, I was the only person braving the sea this morning. And the beach was, in a word, magnificent.



We also checked out Captiva island, which is kind of like a more exclusive version of Sanibel island. Plenty of fancy houses to be seen... Actually, they have this thing called "open house viewings" in the states, where basically anybody can visit houses on sale - I suppose it's a good idea to pretend to be somewhat interested in buying. Anyway, Harry and Sally took us to one - which was pretty cool. The house itself was pretty amazing - swimming pool, garden, view over the sea, 4 or 5 on-suite bedrooms, you get the picture. "Only" 4.5 million dollars. Maybe next time.

After a lunch by the beach, it was time for us to say our good-byes, and head off towards the Everglades. Thank you so much, Harry and Sally, for your hospitality, should you ever read this!

St. Augustine and Cape Canaveral

Arriving in Jacksonville was almost like re-entering the modern world. What we'd seen so far of Florida was quite rural (even Tallahassee had the feel of a small town). Jacksonville had the skyscraper skyline one would expect from a "proper American city". It was getting pretty late, so we checked into our "wonderful motel", called, if memory serves me Economy Inn. I suppose with a name like that, one should expect something optimized for price rather than quality. Correct - the place was a bit of a dump. But hey, it was cheap ;-)

For dinner, we were somewhat uninspired, as we were nackered, so just decided to sort of pick the best restaurant the internet could recommend us in the vicinity - which turned out to be an Italian restaurant called Sorrento. Excellent choice! The food was great - I especially loved the cannolis I had for desert. Yummie.

The next day, we want to push on to St. Augustine as early as possible, so we didn't actually get to visit Jacksonville at all. About an hours drive took us to St. Augustine. St. Augustine is proud to call itself the oldest town/city in the USA - it was founded in 1565 by the Spanish. It was Florida's capital until Tallahassee was made capital in 1824 (due to its more central location in Florida).

Thankfully, St. Augustine has done a pretty good job at keeping its historic heritage intact - not the case in all American cities. The historic centre is quite a few blocks in size, and the architecture has been kept pretty harmonious. It is a bit of a tourist trap though - pretty much all the houses in the old town are either tourist trinket shops, bars, restaurants or hotels. Unavoidable, I suppose.... We started off by wandering around the historic district, checking out the cathedral and the old town hall.

Just outside the old town, there are a couple of architectural follies, dreamed up by Henry Morrison Flagler, the industrialist, oil magnate and railroad pioneer (he built the railroad that connected Miami to the rest of the eastern coast). The first of his "follies" is Flagler College, formerly the Pone de Leon Hotel. In its heyday, it was one of the most luxurious hotels in the world, and yes, we confirm, it's an impressive building, built in the Spanish Renaissance Revival style (ahem, please refer to Wikipedia for more details about this particular style of architecture). We opted against taking the guided tour, but were able to check out the impressive entrance hall anyway.

Across the road stands another architectural folly, the Lightner Museum. This used to be a hotel as well (called Hotel Alcazar), and yes, it was also dreamt up by Flagler. Seems that one luxury hotel wasn't enough. We decided to visit the Lightner museum, which was a good idea. First of all, it allowed us to check out the impressive interior. The museum itself is a bit weird - it's a bit like a collection of odd objects sort of randomly put up on display. It's a bit like I imagine the Smithsonian museum, but here of course on a much smaller scale.

Of course, when one visits St. Augustine, one must also check out the famous fort Castillo de San Marcos - the oldest stone fort in the USA - construction began in 1672. It looks like your average Vauban-style fortification that you find a lot of here in France. It's rather dramatically and strategically located by the Matanzas Bay. It looked pretty stunning, with the late-afternoon sun lighting up the fort... Too late to visit, unfortunately!

It was getting dark, so time to start thinking about dinner! We decided to have an apero at a place called Scarlett O'Hara's (we surely are in the South, eh...?). We ended up selecting a place called Gas Full Service Restaurant. A bit of an odd name for a restaurant - but it was great. The retro interior decoration is very American indeed (in a positive way!), but what's most important is that the food was excellent too. And what a great collection of craft beers ;-).

We stayed at another motel, called Daily Inn this time. It was a bit better than the place where we stayed the night before, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it either. I suppose you get what you pay for...

The next day, it was time for me to fulfil a bit of a lifetime dream. Well, kind of. Of course, when I was a kid, I wanted to go to the moon. So I wasn't going to the moon, but at least I was going to Cape Canaveral (the next best thing?). Cape Canaveral is the place where NASA does all their space launches. Mathilde wasn't all that interested in astronauts and stuff, so decided to drop me off and then head off to a nearby town.

Cape Canaveral is actually a rather big island, and totally deserted, apart from the NASA installations and the visitor centre. Getting in turned out a bit challenging, as there was quite a queue for getting in, and Mathilde dropped me off before the main parking. And when I tried to enter by food, a rather stern guard told me I was only allowed to enter by car. OK, fair enough... Thankfully, a friendly Chinese family were happy to drive me to the parking lot ;-)

I was going to have to be picky with what to see, since the visitor centre is HUGE, and I only had about 3-4 hours to spend. Queuing up for the tickets etc. already took me nearly an hour, so I was starting to wonder whether it was worth it ? I'll kill the suspense straight away, it was worth it...

I started off by taking the bus tour - which took us past several alligators (told you, it's a natural reserve!) to the VAB a.k.a. the Vehicle Assembly Building. That's the place where they assemble all those huge rockets and other vehicles going into space. Needless to say, it's absolutely massive - it measures 160x218x158 meters - I think it's something like the 6th biggest building in the world by volume. So this where the Saturn V rocket was assembled (the one that was used for the Apollo program) - and it's also where the rocket for going to Mars will be assembled (yep, a manned journey is planned for the 2030's, apparently).

The highlight of the bus tour is, without a doubt, the Apollo/Saturn V Center. This is where it actually all happened, this is where the journeys to the moon were controlled (as anybody who's seen Apollo 13 would know, the mission control is located in Houston, Texas - so once the launch is complete, control is handled over to Houston). There were a couple of rooms with interactive videos talking visitors through the Key missions (Apollo 8 mission, when the first successful moon orbit was accomplished by NASA, and of course Apollo 11, when man finally walked on the moon).

But the coolest thing is of course the Saturn V rocket itself. The size of it just beggars belief. What an incredible piece of engineering! Amazing that it worked - and so reliably, too! (mind you, the fact that Apollo 8 was the first flight that established a lunar orbit does sort of tell you there were a few failures too in the early days...)

Back at the visitor centre, I checked out the rocket garden (had to do that!), and also the exhibition about Mars exploration, which was pretty cool too. They managed to get me all excited about going to Mars, at least! 20 years to go...

And then, it was time to go. Was it worth the detour? YES!

Through the Florida Panhandle

Our exploration of Florida began at the Panhandle, which is the unofficial name of the Northwestern part of Florida. We started our exploration in Pensacola, a nice smallish town, the sort of American small town one could imagine from a movie. There's a small historic district we decided to walk around, with some nice old wooden houses. We also checked out the rather imposing T. T. Wentworth, Jr. Florida State Museum (even the name is imposing)! The building, which used to be the city hall, dates back to the early 20th century.

Evening was approaching, so we decided to press on to Navarre Beach, where we were staying the night. So no time to visit the famous Naval Airplane museum, which Pensacola is famous for. The drive to Navarre beach was pretty spectacular - Navarre beach is located on the Island of Santa Rosa, and our drive took us through the stunning Gulf Islands national sea shore. We had to stop and check out the amazing beach, with its white sands. Just beautiful.

We loved our little holiday cottage at Navarre Beach, located just by the beach. So after settling in, we went for a nice little walk on the beach, taking in one of those famous Florida sunsets. Our stay in Florida was certainly starting well!

The next morning, before pushing on, we decided to have a bit of a run along the beach. What better way to visit a place than a jog - that way one gets to burn off a few calories while taking in the views ?

The destination for this day was Carrabelle. We had quite a drive a head of us, so we decided to head off pretty early. (jet lag was still stubbornly keeping us in its grasp, which meant we got up pretty early, a good thing, I suppose!). The drive along the Floridan coastline was a pretty scenic one! Somewhat to our surprise, at least this part of Florida isn't all that built up, there are plenty of natural reserves and parks all over the state. We decided to stop at one of them - Grayton Beach. We started at the beach, another wonderful place, where we had some sandwiches we'd picked up at a cafe on the way to the beach. We then had a short walk in the sand dunes, next to a lake just by the sea.

We drove on, deciding to briefly stop for a coffee break at Panama City - another pleasent little Florida town, with beautiful wooden houses lining up the roads. Panama City is very famous for its beaches, and they did indeed look rather nice. But we had a tight schedule, so after having a coffee at a nice little coffee shop, we pushed on.

We arrived in Carrabelle just as the sun was setting (which meant I could get some nice sunset shots down by the harbour), after which we checked into our hotel. The hotel was, in a word, just great. (OK, that's two words). Skip, the owner, was a very friendly guy (he even spoke a bit of French!), and he put as at ease straight away. The hotel itself is almost like a historic home, so one almost has the impression of staying at a friend's place. Our room was nicely decorated, with a naval theme. We had dinner at a place called the Fisherman's Wife - seems that Carabelle is all about the sea.

The next morning, we decided to head off early in the morning again, as there isn't exactly a lot to see in Carrabelle. There is one quirky attraction we simply had to check out - the world's smallest police station. Skip was kind enough to show us where it was and take the mandatory photo. Actually, it seems to be little more than a phone booth, but well, there you go, world's smallest police station ticket off the list ;-)

Again, we had a long drive a head of us (the plan was to sleep in Jacksonville, all the way on the East Coast of Florida). But, based on a recommendation from Skip, we decided to stop by at a natural reserve called Wakulla Springs. Wakulla spring is so strong that it actually forms the Wakulla river (in other words, the spring is under the starting point of the river).

The real thing to see here is the Wakulla River, so we went on a boat tour. And it was great indeed - we saw plenty of cool wildlife. Mostly birds, but yes, we did finally spot our first Alligator. Well, actually, we saw loads of them. Most of them just lazing around in the sun. Wakulla Springs is also famous as the place where some of those Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller were shot. The "famous" Creature from the Black Lagoon was also shot here.

The road then took us to Tallahassee, which is, as you probably don't know, the state capitol of Florida. We started off by visiting Mission San Luis. The original mission, which dates back all the way to 1633 (that's ancient history as far as the USA are concerned!). It was built by the Spanish to colonize the region, and also to convert the local Appalachee indians to Christianity. Not much remains of the original structures, so the mission has been faithfully restored.

It's a very interesting place to visit, as it gives a lot of insight into Florida's history. I also liked how the place described the interactions between the colonists and the Native Americans. We were also shown how to clean an 18th century rifle by a guy in period dress. Pretty cool stuff!

Since we were in Tallahassee, we decided to check out the State Capitol (the old state capitol, that is, there is also a new one). It dates back to 1845, and is built in the Greek Revival style. An impressive building - it's a good thing they decided to keep it when the new (rather ugly) capitol was built in 1970's (as the old capitol was originally planned to be demolished upon completion of the new capitol building).

We then headed on starting our drive towards Jacksonville. However, on the way out of town, we were attracted by a sign indicating the John G. Riley museum, which we decided to check out. It's a rather interesting little museum (the place was actually closed when we arrived, but the nice lady custodian of the museum showed us around anyway). The place recounts a part of American history that the country still seems to be rather uncomfortable with - the history of Black Americans and the segregation they had to endure for more than a century even after slavery had ended (recent events I think prove that the wound is still open and bleeding). John G. Riley was a local black business man, who was active in the Civil Rights movement. I'm glad we made the detour!

And then, on towards Jacksonville!