The reason that we picked Hollywood Beach in Florida for our vacation is that I used to live there, and more importantly this is where my daughters live with their Mom, and returning toFlorida is the only way that I can see them.

On Arriving

We arrived on the Friday evening, rather later than expected due to the hold up in immigration, and although we were tired, we decided to head off to the beach and take a walk instead of going straight to bed.

Of course by the time we unpacked our bags and changed ready for a walk along the beach it was 8pm, which was 1am by our body clocks, but we still wanted to unwind and to stretch our legs a bit before heading off to bed.

Hollywood Beach

For those who are not familiar with Hollywood Beach, it’s a long stretch of beach between Miami and Fort Lauderdale on the east coast of Florida, on a strip of land that is separated from the mainland by the intra-coastal waterway.

Hollywood Beach still consists of a number of older buildings, some of which date back to the art-deco period, as well as some newer high rise condominiums and hotels.  Many of the older buildings are apartments and motels that are rented out to tourists, and although some have been modernised, others definitely show their age.  Nevertheless,Hollywood Beach does provide a relatively cheap place for “snowbirds” to spend the winter, and during the winter season it’s heaving with French Canadians and New Yorkers.

However, the summer months, which are hot and humid, and often troubled by tropical storms, are the low season, where prices are cheaper, and if you are lucky it’s a fairly quiet place to spend a summer vacation.

As part of the modernisation program undertaken by the City of Hollywood, the whole stretch of the Broardwalk that runs along the beach has now been rebuilt, with a nice promenade for walking, a lane for cyclists and skaters, the beach on one side and restaurants and gift shops on the other side.

For our first evening we decided to take a fairly short stroll along the broadwalk, and the smells from one of the restaurants made Debbie feel peckish, so we stopped for a bite to eat, Debbie having a Philly Cheesesteak while I had a Meatball Sub.   Many of the restaurants cater to the New Yorkers who come to visit, and so you do find a number of them selling New Yorks tyle pizza and other Italian foods.

Having satisfied our food cravings, we headed back to the condo, and settled down for a good sleep, in what fortunately turned out to be a really comfortable bed.

Coming Up Next Time

CLICK HERE for Part Three, where we have a day to ourselves and go shopping and stock up on essentials ready for the arrival of my daughters the following evening.

The Outbound Journey

Since our flight left London Heathrow at 9:30am, we decided to stay overnight at one of the hotels close to the airport, and use their parking service, which worked out very reasonable as compared with the regular airport parking charges.

This allowed me to work the previous day, and to travel up to London in the evening, missing the horrendous rush hour traffic on the M25, and fortunately the traffic was fairly light on this occasion.

We had opted for a “Mystery Hotel”, since this was cheaper to book, and it turned out to be the Holiday Inn Ariel, which was well located, and serviced by the shuttle buses that take you to the terminals.

The hotel room was comfortable, and despite being on the north perimeter of the airport, we didn’t hear a single plane during the night, and managed to get a reasonable sleep, even though we still had to get up early to be on time for our flight.

Check in at the airport was fairly straightforward, and having passed through the scanners we headed off to find somewhere to eat breakfast.  Places to eat at Heathrow Terminal 4 were sadly fairly limited, and everything was horribly overpriced.  However we did manage to find somewhere that did a Full English Breakfast, and that set us up for our flight.

The flight with Delta left on time, and as usual the cabin crew were friendly and helpful.  We have usually tried to fly with American Airlines before, but since our air miles have now expired (due to cancelling our previous trip) and their prices were far more expensive this time, we opted for Delta, which had the best prices as well as the best flight options.  The other great thing with Delta is that unlike many other airlines, your air miles do NOT expire, so all the miles that I have built up with Northwest Airlines in the last 10 years are now carried forward and I won’t lose them.

The flight to Miami was fairly smooth, other than some moderate turbulence in mid-Atlantic, and we arrived early, however as usual for us, things do not always go smoothly on arrival.

Held Up In Immigration Again

Since I now have US Citizenship we opted to both enter through the US Citizen lane, and thought we were all clear, until the agent directed us to the holding area, where we sat for two hours before being allowed in.  It seems that Debbie is likely to get pulled aside every time she enters the USA now, even though she has a 10 year visa in her passport.  It’s a long story, one that you can read HERE if you wish, and it seems that her problems getting a visa are going to continue to trouble us, especially if we enter the USA via Miami.

So two hours later than expected, we picked up our baggage, took the shuttle to the car rental centre, a new centralised multi-level facility that will soon be connected to the airport terminals by monorail, picked up our car, and were off on our way.

If you are travelling to the USA I highly recommend using Car Hire 3000, since the rental rates are less than half what I would have paid if I tried to rent directly in the USA.  The only condition is that you must have a non-US drivers licence and passport.  The rental company is a mystery until you purchase, but they use the main car rental companies, and in our case it was Dollar, who I have used a number of times in the past.

Since they were short of mid-sized cars we got a free upgrade to a Jeep Patriot, which I didn’t really want since it uses more fuel, however in the end it did turn out to be handy.

Off To Hollywood Beach

So off we set for Hollywood Beach and the condo that we had rented, several hours later than expected and in the middle of the Miami rush hour, which I had hoped to avoid.

Fortunately, having lived in South Florida for 4 years, I know the highways pretty well, which helped a lot, and it took us less than an hour to reach our destination.

Finding a place to rent in Hollywood is not easy, especially if you are on a tight budget.  There are always hotels and motels away from the beach, but some can be in bad neighbourhoods and not that well located for what we wanted.

Debbie is an expert at finding great places to stay however, and she found a condo for us that was not only a reasonable price, but it had a pool and was also only 100 yards from Hollywood Beach.   Luckily the summer months are actually low season in South Florida, so not only were we able to find a good place to rent, many of the other condos were empty, so much of the time it was quiet and we had the pool to ourselves.

The pool was only 10 feet from the condo entrance, as you can see in the photo, and ours was only one of four condos that faced the pool, and these also had the only four parking spaces on the road as well.  Debbie really did find us a great place to stay.

Next Time

CLICK HERE for Part Two to see how things went with our vacation in Hollywood Beach.

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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…

The problem with going to Florida over Christmas though is that this is high season, the time when flights and accommodation are at their highest prices, and also at their scarcest.

In the wintertime, South Florida is full of people from the East Coast of the USA and Canada, the “snowbirds” as they are known.   Some snowbirds spend a good three months in Florida to escape the bitterly cold winters up north, while others just visit for one or two weeks.  If you go to the beaches in South Florida over the Christmas period and look at the licence plates of the cars, at least 2/3rds of them if not more are from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and in the Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale area too from Quebec and Toronto.   Just listen to the conversations on the people on the beach too, and the all too familiar Hispanic voices are replaced by New York twangs and even more so by Canadian French.

Last week after much searching for a decent route at a decent price, we bit the bullet and purchased our flights.  The price was high, but not as much as we could have ended up paying.  It was actually cheaper than it cost to get Debbie over to Florida for Christmas two years ago, but we also don’t have direct flights, which I hope is not going to be a problem.   When taking a multi-leg flight, you need to allow for delays in schedule, and inbound to the USA as well for delays in immigration, where Debbie has already had issues, her last trip to Miami resulting in her being stuck in immigration for 15 hours!   But hopefully we will be ok this time, since we have a 3 hour layover in Raleigh/Durham before catching our flight down to Miami, and I also now have my USA Passport, which ought to help.

Last night we also bit the bullet and booked a place to stay.  It’s not a luxurious hotel or resort, it’s a typical family owned motel on Hollywood Beach, and although it cost a lot it will hopefully work out best for us.   The few reviews that we managed to find for the motel sounded more good than bad.  There is no pool or hot tub, it’s above several restaurants so it could be noisy at night, but it is right on the boardwalk and we will be able to eat and walk along the beach at night, instead of being stuck in a hotel away from the beach in the evenings.

There really were not many choices for hotels unfortunately, since prices are sky high, and most places are already fully booked.  Left are the hotels close to the airport in Fort Lauderdale, those on the interstate, and some high and low end places that are either too expensive or in a bad neighborhood.  Of the three places on the beach, one was $250 a night, way out of our price range, a second was $100 a night but in the middle of being renovated and with some horrible reviews.  The place we picked was about the only choice.

My biggest fear is that because we don’t land in Miami until 9:30pm on Christmas Eve, is that everything will be closed, and it will be 11pm at the earliest before we get to where we are staying.  Since few places open in Florida on Christmas Day, we could end up without any essentials like bread, milk, juice etc for a day.  However staying right on the beach, there ought to be some shops and restaurants open at least.  It’s going to be a different Christmas with no turkey and trimmings I am sure, but hopefully a good one.   Getting up on Christmas Day is going to be tough, since by the time we get to bed it will already be 5am UK time or later!  Probably a good day to just spend relaxing on the beach or the terrace.

Now we need to find a good deal on a rental car, which I hope is easier to sort out.  There appear to be plenty of choices at least from all the car rental companies, but even that is expensive.  I must remember to use my AAA (equivalent of AA/RAC in the UK) discount to save some money, but since we will be taking the girls out we need to have transport.  

I doubt that we will be spending many days on the beach, but at least we will be right there in the evenings, plenty of opportunities for walking, either on the boardwalk (promenade) or along the waters edge.

So wish us luck!  Hopefully the flights, immigration process, accommodation and weather all work in our favour.  Will post updates and photos later, also a video or two maybe…