FLORIDA: It’s time to say goodbye to the Sunshine State
It’s the last day of the trip and Bev Fearis has time to reflect on her time in Florida.
"We’re going home today," I said to Freddie over breakfast at Maxine’s. "We’re getting the plane back to England." Silence. "You know, the plane with the TVs in the seats." Silence. "With all the cartoons?". Nothing. "Don’t you want to go home?" Mouthful of scrambled eggs. "Yes, Mummy….but I like America." And who can blame him.
We’d gone from a dreary, wet winter in the UK to three weeks in the Sunshine State, where every day but one had been sunny with blue skies. We’d met Buzz Lightyear, Spiderman, Peter Pan, eaten French fries, sweet potato fries, yucca fries, ice creams in every flavour, seen alligators, watched dolphins, held parrots, paddled, swam, built sandcastles, sat on the beach and watched the sun set…none of us wanted to go home.
When I was a child, at the end of our family holidays my Dad used to point his video camera in our faces and ask us what we had liked best. If he has asked me about this holiday, I would have said, in no particular order:
Seeing Freddie’s face when he met Buzz Lightyear at the Magic Kingdom
The Spiderman ride at Universal
Watching the sun set at Aunt Kate’s North Beach, St Augustine
Bowman’s Beach at Sanibel Island
Running along the beach at Siesta Key
Frenchy’s Rockaway Grill at Clearwater Beach
The Butterfly Conservatory at Key West
Feeding the tarpon at Robbie’s Marina, Islamorada
The rooftop pool at the Catalina, South Beach
The sunshine
The food
The margaritas
The softness of the sand
The glasses of ice-cold water brought to your table
Being in a place where people love my accent
If I was pushed to say what I didn’t like, it would be:
The tipping
Driving in Miami
Having a son with an American accent
Our three weeks in Florida had been truly memorable and I would definitely recommend it to friends and family. In fact, I already have. It’s a shame that Freddie is too young to remember much of it, but we’ve got hundreds of photos and a good few hours of video footage to make sure he knows what a lucky boy he was. Poor boy. I might even make him read this blog!
Freddie makes the most of the Virgin in-flight amenity kit
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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