I am moving from Indiana, where I have lived all of my life except for 1 year in Japan (which we won't discuss right now), to Florida. The land of sunshine, palm trees, palmetto bugs (ie. roaches the size of cats...or so I hear), Cubans, tar balls, and hurricanes...that is pretty well the extent of my knowledge of Florida.
I have traveled to Florida a total of 4 times (1 time I was too young to remember, but the family says I was there and there are pictures so I must have been there). The time I don't remember, we went to Daytona Beach...where it was decided that my first lesson of Florida would be learned...don't drink large amounts of ocean water...results: DISASTER...and a really long night. Fortunately, I do not remember this time in my life but the lesson is understood.
Second trip to Florida was Key West. It was beautiful in Key West. I really liked the pirate stuff everywhere and you get to embrace the pirate mentality for a little bit. Key experiences in Key West include: the Duval Crawl, the original Sloppy Joe (the Sloppy Joe pizza was excellent...highly recommend) which I do not usually enjoy but the atmosphere of the bar was interesting, and watching the sunsets (I want to go at least one time to the Sunset Celebration that occurs daily at Mallory Square Dock...maybe sometime soon).
Third trip was to St. Augustine. Excellent history, and you learn about someone I had never heard of but is famous throughout Florida apparently is Henry Flagler. Great place to visit and walk around. There also a trolley that you can get a 3 day pass for and it will take you to all the highlights of St Augustine, I would highly recommend the trolley and just ride it all the way around one time to get the layout of the area and some great history lessons. St Augustine is, of course, a great ghost town where everywhere is supposedly haunted...although, other than the awesome Ghost Hunters episode about the lighthouse, I doubt most of the claims. A great restaurant is the Conch House (you have to drive to get there, but it is worth the drive), the food is okay, but they have "tree houses" that are tables that are elevated and view out to the harbor. We saw dolphins and flying fish. Great place for a meal and nature watching.
Fourth trip was to my-soon-to-be new home around the West Palm Beach area. We were apartment hunting and trying to get the lay of the land. With the viewpoint of "I'm going to live here," you start seeing thing a little differently...you notice that U-turns are expected and almost encouraged, where as in Indiana it is rarely done. I realized that in Florida, apparently there is not a "good" or "bad" side of town. It really seems random, like the city just kept expanding out from the beach in waves and never really developed a "good" or "bad" side of town and just had it randomly placed. Great finds in the West Palm Beach to Boca Raton area were, Hurricane Alley, a restaurant, in Boynton Beach that has a Key West atmosphere with hurricane information all over the walls and some really good, affordable food. There was a great public beach in Boca Raton that has an inlet to the Intercoastal Waterway where you can sit in the shade and watch the boats come in and fish for tiny fish, apparently to be used as bait out in the ocean...my mom and I kind of had to figure it out on our own, so that might not be fact and just a story we made up to explain the reason why everyone wanted to fish for tiny fish.
That is all I know about Florida from my past experience, but this blog is about my future experiences that I will have with Florida. I am sure there will be days that I love Florida and want to have a map of Florida tattooed somewhere on my person and there will be days that I curse the day Henry Flagler decided to develop the Florida area and wish it would fall into the ocean...So Florida is my latest rabbit hole. I am excited to see where this takes me and you can read all about my strange adventures in Florida in this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment