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The Journey

We left Southampton the day before Christmas Eve, a very icy day in the South of England, and headed up to Heathrow Airport where we spent the night.  We had decided that it was better to drive up earlier, rather than risk bad weather, traffic jams and breakdowns, especially as we were flying out to Florida on Christmas Eve.   Debbie managed to get us a good deal for a night in a hotel plus parking for the duration of our trip – she is amazing at finding good deals online.

We  hadn’t been able to get direct flights to Miami from London, since Christmas is a very busy time, and the flights were almost all fully booked, and if not the remaining seats were horribly expensive.  With my only having got a job a month earlier after 3 months out of work, we had to make do with a cheaper option, and we managed to find a good connection with American Airlines changing planes in Raleigh/Durham in North Carolina, which worked out well.

Debbie was really stressed about travelling to the USA, since the last time she came into Miami she got held up for 15 hours in Immigration, but this time all went well, with the immigration officers in Raleigh waiting for her and having read her file before we arrived.    On then to Miami, which had worried us, since we wouldn’t be landing until about 9:30pm at night, then had to pick up our rental car and drive 15 miles up to Hollywood Beach where we were staying.

The flight landed on time however, and since we had already gone through immigration, we just had to pick up our bags and get a shuttle to the car rental location.  It was nice to get an upgrade to an SUV, however we did have problems with it later, but that’s another story, and we got to the motel about 11pm.

I had called the owner a few days before to tell them that we would be a little late arriving, and they left the room unlocked with the key inside.   More about the Motel later, but by now I am sure you are desperate for some pictures, so I will begin with a walk early Christmas Morning on Hollywood Beach.

Christmas Day On Hollywood Beach

The beach had quite a lot of seaweed on it from the storms of the previous day, the sky was rather ominous, and there were some good waves coming in, as we took a much needed walk along the beach after having sat on airplanes so much the day before.

There were also a lot of jellyfish washed up from the storm, which look like plastic bags.  I am not sure if they can still sting you when dead, but we weren’t about to touch them and risk it.

 This is the Motel that we were staying at, and as you can see it’s right by the beach.  It’s one of the older style Hollywood Motels, with a number of rooms above a row of shops.  No p0ol, but a great terrace where you can sit out and watch the world go by.

You can get an indication of just how many people go to the beach on Christmas Day, even when it’s cloudy, by looking at these pictures below.  You also see some rather strange sights!  I’m not sure whether all of these people were living or not, some looked remarkably like Zombies…

This is the view from the terrace at the Motel.  You couldn’t really ask for a place that is closer to the beach.  People even took Christmas Trees to the beach and sat around eating and drinking, and even the Lifeguard had a Santa hat on!

After a fairly quiet day of recovering after the long flight – we didn’t get to sleep until the equivalent of 5am UK time, we went out for a nice Italian meal in the evening at a restaurant on the boardwalk.

Much more to follow in the next installment of our trip to Florida.  We hope you enjoy the photos, and next it’s Boxing Day and we get to see the girls…

Fortunately I was allowed to go and see my daughters (4 and 8), so I took them out to eat at Einstein Bagels, which is where my eldest daughter likes to go for breakfast.  They are usually pretty good when I take them out to eat, and after breakfast we headed down to Topeekeegee-Yugnee Park (popularly known as T-Y Park), which is only a couple of miles up the road from where they live.  T-Y Park is pretty large, 150 acres, and they enjoy not only the playground, but also walking around the large lake, feeding the Squirrels, and especially petting each and every dog that passes or comes close to them.

Today it was pretty hot and sticky, close to 90 degrees and not much of a breeze at first, so I took them to the playground, where they had a good time, and then we wandered across to the lake.  It has been raining so much the last couple of weeks, that the level of the lake is close to 2 feet higher than normal, so it’s larger, deeper, and the fish seemed to be having a good time, as well as the dogs that were swimming in there.  Walking around the far side of the lake we found someone who had 2 large black dogs that enjoyed swimming, and they would race each other to get to every stick that the girls threw into the water.  They had a great time.

We also fed the Squirrels, or at least I did.  Someone had left a pile of peanuts on one of the picnic tables, so I grabbed a few and had the Squirrels eating out of my hand.  Unfortunately the first Squirrel who I tried to feed wasn’t too sure, so instead of reaching out for the peanut, he clawed my finger and then bit it, his claw drawing blood, but so far I don’t seem to have suffered any infection.

Being a Friday there were fewer people there than usual, and subsequently there were more Squirrels, Birds and Iguanas out.  We usually see quite a lot of Squirrels, and birds too, but today I managed to get some good photos of a Blue Jay, almost got decent ones of a Kingfisher, and I got excellent ones of a couple of the larger Iguanas that were out sunning themselves on the grass.

Their Mom wanted them back by 12:30pm, so after the park we headed to Wendys, usually easy to get a quick bite for lunch, but today it was packed, and since this must be about the slowest Wendys in the country (service is always horribly slow, pathetic, and they take an hour to clean up and mess or restock too), we headed to McDonalds instead.  Now this isn’t the best either, but today it was practically empty and at least the service was quick.

Back to the house, dropped them off, got my usual myriad of hugs from my eldest, much to the disgust of her Mother, who usually just wants me out of there as quickly as possible, and back home, via my local Walmart to do my weekly grocery shop.  Now for the last 2 months they have been completely revamping the food section, and it’s a nightmare trying to find anything.  So since today was chaotic in there, I just got most of the essentials and then headed to the Farmers Market down the road for the rest.  The service here is really good, friendly, and the prices are good too.