What happens when you take two friends who meet in college, add 25 years and 9 kids, then subtract the partners and kids for a week? H, my dear longtime friend, and I thought we’d find out.
First, where to go? She’s in Akron, Ohio, and I’m in Philly. We considered Mexico, the western and southwestern US, and Puerto Rico. Then we took another look at the budget and went with Florida.
Florida? I have had personal dread about the whole state, but that is based on the Disney industrial complex, which really isn’t fair. There is a lot more to the peninsula, notably the Everglades national park, 1.5 million acres of the southern part of the state. Then there’s the oldest city in the US, St. Augustine. We decided to road trip throughout SoFlo, as H began to refer to southern Florida.
Getting there, as I was escaping my children and my job in the ER, I found myself surrounded by kids (headed to Disneyland) and emergency personnel (aiding an ill passenger a few rows in front of me). Ok! The plane left the runway to get the sick guy off the flight- he was able to walk off the plane so he seemed alright- and eventually we got going and made our way southward. H, coming from Cleveland, had challenges of her own driving through a snowstorm. She missed her flight, was routed through Chicago, and landed in Orlando a few hours late. She had also encountered the Disney-bound younger generation.
And then we were there! Not just in the warm, bright weather, but out, on our own, starting a new travel adventure. We sketched out the major attractions and route. Not too much, though, we wanted plenty of room for spontaneity. We rented a car, loosely planned a few nights with H’s friends, and decided on last-minute apartment rentals for the other nights. As in, we found one for the first night and that was that.
We decided to go west to Tampa, down the Gulf Coast to the Everglades, up the Atlantic Coast to St. Augustine, and then back to Orlando and our return flights. Looking back, we covered a lot of ground and saw all the places we had hoped to see, and then some. Only the manatees let us down, and that’s really not too bad.
Dali museum
We had excellent pho in Orlando, found a very nice budget place to stay, showered, and proceeded to sleep for 12 hours. Refreshed, we headed towards St. Petersburg and the Dali Museum. This museum had been recommended to me by several unrelated parties and I was thrilled to be able to get there. The building draws the eye as soon as it is visible in the distance. It has a strange, wavy structure appropriate for the artist it represents. Inside, a centerpiece is the spiral staircase coiling up and up until it ends in a skylight above the top floor. We looked around at the paintings from the artist’s early work and into the more well known pieces. A tour group was forming, so we joined and ogled the paintings large and small by Salvador Dali. After our tour we found another tour with a very animated guide who was pointing out some raunchy details in one of Mr. Dali’s paintings. Needless to say, we joined that group for the rest of its tour. Gentle readers, H and I have wracked our brains trying to remember the name of that second guide, alas to no avail. I even called the museum but couldn’t get through to speak with anyone. H remembers that the guide had been with the museum 20 years and has shoulder length blonde hair. It’s worth asking for her!
We headed to Tampa and a wonderful couple who are friends of H and locals for 7 years. One of them is an ardent fan of the Tampa Lightening, an ice hockey team of all things! That amused me. We heard about their experience with Tampa hurricanes and real estate, and about their travels. They were so welcoming and great conversationalists! I felt lucky to meet them through H. We stayed the night and headed south along the gulf coast the next day.
Tripping Fantastic 2 