Florida trip

We went to Florida for the Thanksgiving weekend which was from Thursday to Sunday.

Our trip to Florida was awesome.

We left on Thursday morning and came back on sun afternoon. We actually got just two days in Miami. So tried to pack in as much as we could look around.

We stayed at a place called Fort Lauder dale which is about half an hour's drive from Miami.

On Friday, we went for a long drive to a place called Keywest. Am gonna write in sum info about Keywest before i go further.

There are a group of islands called the Florida Keys at the southern most tip of Florida. In all the Island is nearly 120 miles long. Along the island there are various places, Key largo, Lower keys, Upper keys, etc. Keywest the place i mentioned above is the southern most place of the island. Another importance of Keywest is that it's the southern most tip of the US. That's why it's a very popular place.One interesting fact about the Florida Keys is that, there is just one main road called the US 1 ( thats highway # 1), which runs along the length of the island. This is one of the highlights of the Keys. It's just a two lane highway. On either side of the US 1, the view is really scenic. U drive through the Atlantic ocean, its beautiful! At some places they have these bridges that are 7 to 8 miles in length, and all around you, you can see the blue ocean water. The view's really awesome.The drive to Keywest takes about 4 and a half hours from Miami. This is majorly coz of the two lane highway. It's like driving in India.

Keywest is a small tourist town. The look and feel of the place is quite different.We reached Keywest around afternoon. They have loads of activities out there such as snorkeling, scuba diving, etc. But you need to spend at least an entire day to do all the stuff out there. We took a boat ride which takes you a Little deep into the atlantic ocean where they have the coral reefs. The boat has a glass bottom viewing room. The reefs were quite beautiful. It was my first experience to see a coral reef. I quite liked it. However, Abhi's seen coral reefs in Andaman, and was not very impressed with these ones! all in all it was a good experience.

We spent the next day in Miami City. It's a huge city. The weather was very good. We drove around a lot of the city to get a feel of how it is. The apartment buildings in some places, the residential towers etc, look like the ones we have back in India. So there was quite a bit of resemblance.

In Miami, we went to this place called the Bayside marketplace. It's basically a mall. But they have designed the mall to give it a bit of a rustic feel. So it's not like all the modern malls we see all around the place. It was very nice. The have all the possible designer brands out there.

Another activity at the Bay is that they have these small boat rides. They take you round the small islands around the Miami bay area. Now one of these island's is very interesting. This is an exclusive island, where many celebrities have their mansions! What awesome mansions! They are huge, and beautiful.... Celebrities include Gloria Estefan, Sylveter Stallone, Elizabeth Taylor, Enrique Iglesias, etc. One of the biggest mansions however was that of the CEO of the Pharmaceutical company called IVAX .

Now here's a funny thing that happened on the boat ride. One of the mansions on the island belongs to a Basketball SUPERSTAR called Shaquille O'Neal from the Miami Heats team. And we actually saw him outside his mansion! U shud have seen how excited Abhi was! Everyone in the boat was excited.. waving to him clicking pics, etc. And I had no clue about who he was! It was just some huge black guy for me! I was busy taking some other mansion's pics! But judging from Abhi's excitement, I did manage to take a couple of his pics! Else my husband would've disowned me i think!


So all in all the trip was great fun. Look forward to visit Florida again... maybe this time we can go to Orlando and say hullo to Winnie the pooh and gang!