Adventure of the month

For the past six years, figuring out New Year's Eve plans has been pretty simple. Seeing as I live in a mid-rise in the middle of downtown Miami with a view to most of the area's firework displays, it was a given that the party would be at my place. It's always worked out wonderfully. We don't have to pay exorbitant cover charges. I got to play hostess, which I love, and my friends always had a place to crash once the party was over. Problem is, after my latest run-in with the evil that is mold, my apt is a demolition zone and not in the cool fashion-shoot kind of way. It's an uncomfortable mess and definitely not suitable for entertaining, no matter how much champagne we pour into little plastic flutes. Therefore, we were in need of a plan B.  This where my friends, Ivon and Sylvia came up with an always wonderful idea. A road trip. We would move this shindig to St Augustine.

I'm not suggesting that there is anything irreparably wrong with Daytona, after all one of my coolest friends who might be reading this, is originally from there. I'm just saying that my recent experiences during a two day visit kind of made me go "hmmmmmm". First the 'good':  the famous boardwalk has an inherently charming old-timey look and feel to it.   Walking past the candy-colored shops and ice cream parlors feels like stepping back into a nostalgic 50's era movie set. The beach is expansive, clean and you can drive on it. The drinks are cheap and plentiful.  There is a roller coaster that appears to run on demand. If you are into black t-shirts featuring bikes, eagles, big-boobied women and/ or confederate flags, you don't have to look very far (although that last one really does not belong in the plus column).

I don't remember the exact date I learned that it was possible to swim with manatees in the wild but I do recall my reaction to this bombshell.  It believe it went something along the lines of "I WANNA GO!!  I WANNA GO NOW!!! MANATEEEEES!!!" At the time, it was summer, so while it is possible to swim with the full time residents of the Crystal River springs, it was not the best time for me to go.  There are fewer manatees, they tend to be in deeper, murkier water and I was living in Amsterdam.  All of these factors made me postpone this activity that was now in the top five of my must-do's, although to be fair, it was the third factor that held the most sway. Then winter came about.  This is the time that hundreds of gentle sea cows wisely choose to pack up and get out of the cold waters of the the Gulf of Mexico.  These aquatic snowbirds flock to the spring fed King's Bay, which remains 72 degrees year round.

1. Logic- specifically my logic- would dictate that two days before Xmas should be a great time to go to a theme park. People are traveling to get to family; they are baking and decorating dead foliage; they are wandering shopping mall parking lots trying desperately to remember where they left their cars. They are doing whatever it is that people that are into celebrating Xmas do. They are not dragging their families to Orlando to go on kiddie rides and roller coasters. Unless they are. My reasoning, which even with the benefit of hindsight still seems sound to me, was way off. I don't know who these people are or how they normally celebrate their holidays but there certainly were a lot of them. I don't think you could have fit one more person into either Universal Studios or Islands of Adventure. Not even a skinny one. Or a midget. Or a skinny midget. Both parks were at peak capacity.  There were lines for the rides.  There were lines for the restaurants.  ...

This past Thursday, I did something I had not done in close to twenty years. I went to a theme park. More specifically, I went to Busch Gardens in Tampa, FL. The reasons for this suddenly renewed interest were pretty simple: I had a day off in Lakeland, FL, a place where there is absolutely nothing to do, and I found discounted passes for FL residents online. And the roller coasters. Let's not forget the roller coasters. But to be fair, they have always had those.  That is what I remember most from my long ago visits.  The down side is that everyone else wants onto those coasters, too, meaning that in order to go on a one minute long ride, you have to invest an hour or more waiting in line, usually while being forced to listen to some hyperactive, overly chatty child. In the cost/ benefit analysis that goes into making such choices, Lakeland's Lakeland-ness, its over-saturation of strip malls and retirees, tipped the scales. We were doing the 30 minute road trip...

Hi.  My name is Berti and I am a Groupon/ Couptessa/ Living Social addict.  In the past week, I have used vouchers to eat out, bar-hop, workout, get my hair done and, the crowning achievement, to finally- once and for all- visit the Everglades. I will admit that it has been a source of shame for me that these wetlands that sit less than an hour from my front door, this national park that I would have visited had it been anywhere else, had heretofore gone unexplored.  So imagine my delight when I opened my email and found the following offer: $27 for a three hour Everglades tour ($55 value).  And best of all, I did not even have to undertake the one hour drive since the package included transportation from Bayside Marketplace, just a few blocks from home.

My friend TeaJay (also if you look carefully, her husband, Clay and myself). Tony Landa enjoying a mid-river lunch break. It seems like a lifetime ago, but there was a time when I was not able to travel for a living. During those dark, dull days, I had to rely on cheap, accessible ways to feed my ever-hungrier travel monkey. One frequently relied upon solution was camping. I would gather a group of friends, pack a cooler, grab a tent and be practically assured of a great time. Or if I was really lucky, I would have the chance to join the annual pilgrimage of South Florida’s artists, musicians and assorted creative types who, led by the lovable Cuban imp, Conga Rey, would spend a weekend joyfully destroying the tranquility implied in the name, Peace River. These legendary outings would generally involve groups of 50 or more people driving up to the small western Florida town of Arcadia to rent canoes, pitch tents and ingest enough substances to put down a medium-sized mammal. Throug...

In January of this year, I resolved to start a blog where I would document my travels or my adventures, as I prefer to think of them. With much encouragement from my friends and family (Roland, Julie, Laura and Susie, I'm looking at you), I actually stuck to that resolution and amazingly, the blog will soon be entering its second year. It has been great fun and I want thank all of those who have stopped by the site and especially Shawn, who although a reluctant commenter has been an essential part of most of my adventures. Now what better way of ending '07 than with some photos from yesterday's King Mango Strut , Coconut Grove's light-hearted look at the year's most newsworthy events (not that the stilt-walkers were actually offering any timely political commentary, per se, but they were just really, really good and I liked the way the photo turned out). I wish you all a fan-fricking-tastic New Year's Eve and nothing but joyous times in 2008...

At least, they are almost over. So instead of short-circuiting at the mall, I have opted for posting some tranquility-inducing photos from our recent visit to Coral Spring's Butterfly World . Hope they make you feel better, too. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Here you have Shawn looking quite handsome as a beer bottle and me modeling the latest in asylum-wear. Can you guess what we are?

I just returned from Key West, where the annual Fantasy Fest celebration is in full swing. During the week-long festival, there are a series of theme nights (ie. red night, plaid night, toga night), but somehow they all amount to one thing, people running around in various states of undress. This in principle may sound like a good thing, but trust me, it is not. When you see a man in a loin cloth or a woman wearing nothing but body paint, and your first thought is "Where are his/ her grandchildren and why did they not stop him/her?", or when you find yourselves searching for a sharp stick with which to poke out your eyes to make the vision of the wrinkly woman in the thong go away, it's a bit of a problem. Yet despite all this, it is still Key West and it can still be counted upon to provide awe-inspiring sunsets, wonderfully off-kilter locals and crystalline waters. Visiting only makes me want to go there more often. Only I think I will wait until the body pa...

One of my secret shames is how little sightseeing I have done in my own backyard. Occasionally, I will be in some far-away place and a local or fellow traveler will learn that I'm from Miami. This will inevitably prompt them to tell me all about a long list of attractions in South Florida that they have been to and I, invariably, have not. The closer the attraction to my home, the more I hate to own up to it. Towards the top of this long list is Coral Castle, which is located in Homestead, about 40 minutes away. Coral Castle is one of those great, bizarro roadside attractions erected by an eccentric genius/ madman that I normally flock to whenever given half the chance. Yesterday, thanks to a slow work week and its resulting over-abundance of free time, I realized that perhaps, this was my half a chance (chance and a half?), so I grabbed Shawn, my mother and a camera and headed down to Homestead. The eccentric in question was a tiny Latvian named Ed Leedskaln...