A Day At Miami Metro Zoo

Although I had lived in South Florida for 4 years before returning to the UK, I had never been to Miami Metro Zoo, and despite living in Hollywood all their lives, neither had my daughters, so this seemed to be a good choice of location for a day out as a treat for their upcoming birthdays.

Much of southern Miami Dade County has been rebuilt since Hurricane Andrew hit the area in August 1992, the zoo being just one of the locations that suffered enormous damage.

Miami Metro Zoo lies well south and west of downtown Miami, over 40 miles from Hollywood, and if driving by car you do need to be aware that the toll sections of the Florida Turnpike in South Florida no longer accept cash, so you either have to have a Sunpass transponder, or face hefty fines.  We opted to take the old road, US1 from where I95 ends just south of downtown, and despite having to go through a number of red light intersections, the journey wasn’t too bad.

The first thing that is noticeable about the zoo is the sheer space that it occupies and the open layout.  The parking lot is enormous, and we were thankful that on the day we went there were few other visitors, since trying to walk around the zoo on a hot sticky day with 20,000 others is not my idea of a fun day out.

The other thing is that all the pathways and trails through the zoo are very wide, allowing for lots of visitors on foot, as well as for the 4-wheeled cycles that you can rent, albeit at a hefty price.  As well as walking around the zoo, you can take the road train, or the air-conditioned monorail.

On arriving at the zoo we could already see the dark storm clouds looming in the distance, and we knew that the storms had arrived early that day, and soon after going into the zoo we were almost certainly going to have to find shelter.

We were not wrong, as within 15 minutes of beginning out walk around the zoo, the rain began to fall, and it came down in torrents for a good hour, during which we sheltered at an excellent exhibit hall, which had a lot of hands-on items, as well as a children’s library that my youngest daughter took an interest in, reading several books while we waited in there for over an hour for the rain to stop.

Well the rain kept on coming down in torrents, and fortunately there was enough in the building to keep the girls occupied, my eldest spending time doing some puzzles, while my youngest sat and read, and Debbie sat and waited.

Finally the rain slowed to a light drizzle, and we decided to venture forth into the outside, which by this time was very wet, but we managed ok, being optimistic and upbeat, while the drizzle just continued.

By the time we got around what I estimate to be about 1/3 of the zoo, we decided that it would be a good idea to try and find somewhere to eat lunch, since we were now soaked through, having neither rain wear or an umbrella with us.  However, the main restaurant was closed for remodelling, a second grill was not cooking anything because the grill was in the open and therefore exposed to the rain.  There was a third facility by the children’s zoo, which just sold well overpriced burgers, so we decided to make the best of it, to wander around what we could, and then made our way back to the car.

It must have rained for most of the 4 ½ hours that we were there at the zoo, and looking at the guide just now there is a lot that we missed, so maybe next time we are in Florida we will return to Miami Metro Zoo.

It would have been nice to just have a rain shower, since it kept many of the visitors away, and it was actually nice not being surrounded by hordes of screaming kids, however not being able to see everything and with so many sections closed, it was a bad choice for us to go there on the day that we did.

The zoo is highly rated though, and with the animals having for the most part a lot of space and no cages, it would make a good family day out provided that the weather co-operated.   In the event that it’s extremely hot, the zoo does have places where you can get misted with a fine spray of water, which does help to cool you down.  Nobody seems to mind getting wet on a hot day in Florida, however there are limits, and walking around the zoo in a downpour is never any fun.

CLICK HERE for the Sixth and final part of our trip to Florida.

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.

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…

After many evenings of packing that frequently went beyond midnight, I finished packing about 1am on Wednesday, with the alarm set for 3:45am to give me enough time to get out and catch my flight in Miami at 8:30am.   I had a quick webcam chat with Debbie, showered and packed the last of my things, said goodbye to Tim my landlord with whom I have become very good friends, and drove down the highway to the train station in Hollywood where I had arranged to leave my car to be picked up.

I lugged my bags (2 to be checked in, my laptop bag and a backpack) up in the elevator, across the bridge, down the other side, and then realized the ticket machines were over the other side.  Fortunately the platform was almost empty, and the only person close to me asked if I was English – turns out he came over to Florida from Birmingham 10 years ago.  So I took a chance and left my 2 big bags where they were and legged it up the stairs, across the bridge, down across the other side, where I purchased my ticket.  Then it was back up across and down, by which time I was completely soaked in sweat.   Despite the fact that it was only 5:30am, the temperature was in the mid 80′s and it was extremely humid.  It took me most of the way to Miami before I cooled off.

The shuttle from the train station dropped me about 1/3 of the way along the terminals in the airport, but of course as luck would have it, United are in the new terminal at the far end, so I had to lug my bags well over 1/4 mile to check them in.  It was rather cool in the airport, and by this time I was desperate to go to the  bathroom, plus I was nervous in case my bags were overweight and I would have to repack or dump some things out.  However, I got checked in pretty quick, was within the weight limit, and got through the security without any problems either.

I had plenty of time to wait for the plane, managed to call Debbie to let her know I had checked in, called Tim as I had remembered I left a drawer of dirty laundry (the result of packing too late at night), and called my daughters before they went off to their swimming lessons.

Under normal circumstances I would have caught an evening flight direct to London, however direct flights at the end of July were about $1,000 and multiple legs weren’t much cheaper.  Debbie fortunately found a flight for $406 through Vayama, a company like Priceline, that offers discounted travel but you don’t find out the route until you purchase.  Fortunately with Vayama having purchased you have an hour to cancel, which swayed me over to trying this out.  I knew the flight left Miami at 8:30am and I didn’t get into London until 6:30am the following morning, but other than knowing it was 2 planes, I had no idea where my connection point would be.  The last thing I wanted was to fly to some place out west and have a short connection time, which might mean spending a day in some god-forsaken spot that I didn’t want to be.   I was lucky however, in that the flight from Miami went direct to Dulles (Washington DC) where I had a 7 hour layover before my flight to London.

The first flight went very smoothly, and there was plenty of legroom too.   In Washington I wandered around the terminals to try and find somewhere reasonable to eat, since by this time (midday) I was feeling a bit peckish.  The terminals are connected by shuttle buses, that look like lounges on wheels and drive all over the airport.    Having covered the rest of the terminals, I found out that the majority of the restaurants are in the terminal that I hadn’t covered.  Of course, the shuttle dropped me at gate 3, and the restaurant I wanted to eat at, Max & Erma’s was at gate 72, a good 1/4 mile hike at least!   I was hungry, but I also had a throbbing headache, which could be stress, tiredness and also the humidity.  I thought a good warm meal might help that.     I opted for a starter of Tortilla Soup, which wasn’t bad, then a Bacon Cheeseburger and Fries.  Not the healthiest item on the menu, but I really wanted something warming and filling, and it hit the spot.  That and 4 glasses of iced tea, which helped replenish the water I had sweat out so far.

I still had 5 more hours to kill in the airport before my next flight, and saw on one of the shuttles that I could take a bus to the Smithsonian Museum for 50cents, and there was free admission too.  On another day I would have jumped at this opportunity, but right then all I needed was to sit and try to relax before the next flight.    I found a seat close to the gate where my plane was due to depart from,  powered on the laptop, and settled down to watch a movie.  I selected “Miracle At Santa Ana” which turned out to be a WWII movie set in Italy with a company of Buffalo Soldiers.  Not a bad movie, but it helped kill 2 1/2 hours.   I had forgotten to copy any movies onto my flash drive before I packed my external hard drive away, so other than the movie all I had was a 1972 Genesis concert.  This got some strange looks from people sitting close, since back then the costumes and stage act from Peter Gabriel were rather odd to say the least.

I did get a lot of amusement from the fact that there was a small glass sided area set aside in the lounge for smokers with about 15 seats.  Not only were most of the seats taken most of the time, but often it was standing room only, with the occupants puffing and dragging away on their cigarettes like their life depended on it.  Really quite funny, but at the same time sad.

My 6pm flight to London Heathrow boarded on time, and I was very pleased to find that I had an Economy Plus seat with extra legroom.  All that for a bargain price, woo-hoo!   However, instead of landing 30 minutes early as we were supposed to, we ended up delayed an hour and a half due to bad weather in the Philadelphia area, which caused air traffic control to stop the take-off of any flights in the area for a while.   But eventually we got under way, and had a smooth flight.   Food wasn’t bad, with curried chicken to eat, and a quick snack for breakfast, and in between a few hours sleep while I listened to some of my favorite songs on my new MP3 player.  I also ended up sitting next to a lady from Fort Lauderdale who was originally from Devon and on her way back there for a visit, so we chatted for quite a while before we headed off to sleep.

Since I was supposed to arrive 30 minutes early and ended up landing over an hour late, Debbie was there to greet me, and I got the most wonderful hugs and kisses, two things that she excels at.  A little more than an hour later and we were home, where I had a much needed shower and cleaned up, then some yummy bacon rolls and off to bed.  We were both really tired, since I had hardly slept for two nights, and Debbie had to get up as well by 4am.

Well two days and lots of sleep later and I was feeling more human and also adjusting to the time difference in the UK.   I will update more on my adventures back in the UK in my future posts.  If you would like to be receive posts automatically, why not Register with us, we promise no spam and will keep your email addresses private.

I was shaking and felt my heart pumping when I found it sat waiting for me in my mail box. I quickly opened it, and here’s what it says;

‘Your application is subject to additional administrative processing and
is currently being reviewed by the Nonimmigrant Visa Chief. As soon as
we are able to proceed, you will be notified.’

GREAT!!! 3 months of waiting to hear it’s being reviewed. For goodness sake, don’t they think people have lives that they want to get on with? The works been done by immigration at Miami. I know because I sat all night watching them scour every known database in the world for information on me. They even showed me the 3 inch thick file of paperwork they’d completed. This was made up of printouts from the online file that’s also been produced.

In three weeks, there’s a week long school holiday over here. I would love to fly over to see Tony, but it’s not going to happen is it? Even if I receive a  reply before then, we’ll be pushing it to get my passport back to the Embassy and for them to process it and return it to me with my visa, oh, and we need to book flights.

I’ll keep you all updated.