A trip to Florida

Recently my wife, my daughter and I went on a 5 day trip to Florida State in the United States. Unlike my earlier travel related posts, I decided not write about this trip in multiple posts because there is less to explain and more to experience when we visit this state. Florida is all about enjoying God’s nature and man’s creation. Here are the top tourist places that we visited in Florida. Although there are many other places to visit (list can be found in the internet), these are the must see places that a visitor should keep in mind before planning the visit. 

• Florida Keys and Key West
• Miami – city and the beach
•  Orlando – Various entertainment parks (Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World)
• Kennedy space centre
• Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa
• Islands around Florida
• Everglades National Park

Can we cover all these in 5 days? NO. You have to spend at least 15 days to cover each and every aspect in detail. However, my visit didn’t include few places in the above list. I will explain them below.

Day 0, we travelled from Houston to Ft. Lauderdale the previous day and reached our cousin’s place; who stay near to Ft. Lauderdale city. The city of Ft. Lauderdale had some road extension constructions going on and luckily, they did not stop us anywhere in the travel. We, along with my cousin’s family travelled together and visited various places.

Day 1, we went on a guided ferry trip in Ft. Lauderdale city. It was a 45 min trip in the back waters of Ft. Lauderdale sea side city. By the way, Ft. Lauderdale is called Venice of the America because of these back waters, just like Alleppey in India. The guide on the ferry explained various places on the trip and mostly, we had seen various costliest houses of the United States that were constructed on banks of back waters. The average prices were in multiples of millions of dollars. Also we happened to see the ‘Oasis Of The Seas’ cruise which is largest cruise ship in the world. After the ferry trip, we went to the city of Miami. Miami is around 40 minutes away from Ft. Lauderdale. We went straight to the Miami Beach which is one of the most famous beaches around the world. There are a many places of interest around the Miami Beach and the beach is famous for various reasons. As a family, there are few places to exclude in that beach but in general, the beach is sandy and water is clear. The water in the beach gives an introduction to how the water is going to be in rest of beaches and Florida Keys. Especially after seeing the beach in Houston, TX (Galveston) and other places, it was a very pleasant experience. The shore looks greenish blue and the water was so clear that we could see our feet when we stood waist depth in the water. We drove back home, had dinner and it was a nice day.

Day 2, we started little late in the morning on the Sunday to Key West. When we saw the map initially, it was given that we have to travel straight on US 1 highway which starts in Key West. That makes sense because Key West is the southernmost point of the country of United States. The sad part is US 1 is not like other highways at least from Miami. It has lot of traffic signals and later is a single lane road. This made driving a little boring for us. After travelling around miles from Ft. Lauderdale, we started crossing the keys, which were basically islands in the form of a chain, Key West being the last island in that chain. There are bridges connecting each key and one of the most important of such bridges is the seven mile bridge which connects Key West to its previous island and is constructed on the sea. Travelling on it is a wonderful experience with blue-greenish water around and white colour sandy shores. Key West is

famous for sunset ride, water sports, parties and liquor. We reached around 2 PM in Key West. We initially planned to do parasailing and snorkelling in our trip. I was very interested in snorkelling and my wife was interested in parasailing. Out of 3 trips that happen every day for snorkelling in Key West, we had reserved for the last trip at 5 PM. Meanwhile, we visited the Key West beach which was again a wonderful beach. That reminded of all the songs of Indian movies that were made in foreign beaches. Then we went on to see the southernmost point buoy in Key West, took some pics. We were left with very less time to reach the point to board the cruise for snorkelling trip. And when I reached the point that we thought we should take the cruise, we came to know that the cruise should be boarded from a different point that is 10 min away. We searched a lot and reached that place finally but were already late as the cruise left. That was how I missed the snorkelling adventure. However,

there was a glass bottomed boat trip to see the corral reeves of the sea. These corral reeves are the second biggest in the world. The tour also included sunset watch which was an awesome experience too. We drove back to home and it was midnight when we reached home.

Day 3 & 4, we travelled to Orlando from Ft. Lauderdale. It was a 3 hour drive on toll way. We went straight to Universal Studios, Orlando. There were 2 parks in Universal Studios; the first one was actual Universal Studios and the second one was ‘The Island of Adventures’. The first one is full of shows/rides and the second one full of rides. We are not physically capable enough to enjoy the rides, so we confined only to park 1. This park had various shows and rides with various movies as their themes. To mention the important ones, the Shrek 4D

show, the Mummy ride, the E.T ride and the Men in Black show were attractive. I did wall climbing as well in Universal Studios. We covered Universal Studio Park pretty much in day because of less rush as we went there on Monday. We left to Hotel and had dinner in the evening. It was a tiring day. The next day we left to Disney World in Orlando. As the name goes, it is a world of its own. It has in total 6 parks with various themes and each park can take a minimum of 1 day to cover. So the Disney world can take up to 6 days if you are interested. We went to the main park, the Magical Kingdom, which was a big park with lot of shows and activities for Kids. There was a castle which the main logo of Disney animations and productions and it was an attraction by itself. Initially, I was bored from morning till evening and we were completely drained out walking in the park. But the

last 3 events in the night: the electrical parade, the projections show on the castle and the fireworks on the castle were the top events one should never miss. Kids might enjoy a lot all throughout the day though. When these 3 shows were over, every visitor leaves this park at the same time. Believe me, you would be under the impression that the entire world was in front of you in the crowd. Disney management had made pretty good arrangements to handle the crowd and made sure they leave the palace with in decent amount of time and less pain. We had come back to Ft. Lauderdale the same night and it was almost 3 AM when we reached home.

Day 5, we had the small disappointment that we couldn’t complete snorkelling and parasailing. So

we did parasailing in Ft. Lauderdale that day. It was an experience that cannot be explained in words. One should feel it when you are tied with belts to a parachute which in turned was tied to a boat going at a regulated speed in the sea. We would be sent slowly from the running boat (sea level) to the parachute (400ft from sea level). Those few minutes make an exciting journey when we the corrals from that height beneath the ocean and birds would be flying under your feet catching the fish. That was a wonderful experience and completely safe to do. This was the same day we returned back to Houston and the trip ended. Overall, it was a nice experience. The one line that came into my mind, when we went to see the sea shores, was from a keerthana by Shree Annamayya.

                చిత్తములో భావమెల్లా శ్రీవేంకటేశుడే హత్తినప్రకృతి యెల్లా నాతనిమాయే

Which means All the feelings in the mind is the Lord Venkateswara and the entire nature that attracts your mind is His magic.

I know I could not cover much but we had a list of to-cover items and we managed to cover them all in 5 days.