Last month Melanie and I took a weeklong trip to south Florida for Mel’s spring break. After flying into Fort Lauderdale, we stayed in Boca Raton at the Renaissance Hotel the first night. Tired from traveling all day, we started to settle into our room, but we were disturbed by an odd buzzing noise. We searched all over the room for the source before finally concluding it must be coming from an adjacent room. After a while we decided the buzzing was too much to bear, so we went back to the front desk and complained. They very politely gave us a new room, but on the way there we still heard the noise! Fearful that we were going crazy, it finally donned on me that the noise was coming from my suitcase. Immediately I knew what it was; my electric toothbrush had turned on and was making a racket in my bag. Oops.

The next day we hopped in our bright yellow Pontiac G5 coupe (which seemed appropriate for Florida and was actually a pretty nice car, if a little gutless… RIP Pontiac) and headed for the Florida Keys. It’s a fascinating drive. First there’s Miami, filled with huge condo high-rises and crazy traffic, then the suburbs, then open land, then marshes, then the bridges start. Some are short, some are long, and one is seven miles long. They string together the keys all the way to Key West. As is typical with Florida, there are some really beautiful parts to the keys and some really trashy parts, but overall the experience is totally unique. We drove about halfway down the chain and stayed a couple of nights at the Continental Inn, which was a little dated but nice and in a great location. While there we visited the Bahia Honda State Park, which is a beautiful place, and also went to Key West for a sailboat snorkel/kayak tour. The snorkeling wasn’t great, especially with Portuguese Man o’ War in the water, but the kayak trip around a mangrove island was a lot of fun. Key West itself is a huge tourist trap and we didn’t stay long.

After our stay in the keys we headed up to the Everglades National Park. Like most national parks, this was an amazing place. There are many diverse ecosystems, from marsh to swamp to river to lake to hardwood hammocks (islands in the marsh basically), and so much wildlife to see. I’ve seriously seen less animals at a zoo than I did in the everglades: osprey, huge fish, turtles, herons, anhinga, alligators, oh my! Just an amazing place.

After our visit to the Everglades we stayed in a Travelodge in nearby Florida City. It was the quintessential cheap motel experience, but to their credit it was clean. That’s about all than can be said.

For our last night we went 180 degrees from Florida City and stayed at the Highland Beach Holiday Inn, which is in very fancy area near Boca Raton. There we met up with some friends of Melanie’s and spent some time relaxing at the beach and checking out the area. The next day we played some mini-golf and ate PF Chang’s with our friends then headed back home. All in all a great trip!

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