OCTOBER 2019
Miami is a location I have always wanted to visit. It made sense to do a road trip to Miami from Savannah, so I did some research regarding other activities we could do in the so-called Sunshine State! We decided on visiting St. Augustine, Crystal River (manatees!!), Palm Beach, Delray Beach and the Florida Keys, before we would return our rental car in Miami. We loved the Caribbean vibes and relaxedness in Florida, though we were a little bit surprised that the towns were more country than we expected. And luckily there was a surprising amount of pastel-colored houses 🙂 Read about our experiences in Florida in this blogpost.
St. Augustine
The first stop on our road trip was St. Augustine, this city is located in the North-East of Florida and has a bit of Spanish history. St. Augustine is the oldest, still existing European settlement in Florida, so it has historic significance and lots of Spanish influences. This is also why it has historic “trains” riding through it which you can join on a tour. We decided to just walk around St. Augustine, as it is a part of history which doesn’t mean a lot to us. The historic city center of St. Augustine is super clean and renovated nicely. We almost felt like we arrived in a theme park, especially in St. George street, which is a pedestrian area with lots of touristy shops and restaurants. It is a nice lunchstop and we enjoyed wandering through the colorful outskirts of the city, but we wouldn’t recommend spending more than three hours here.
Crystal River
Next up was Crystal River, which we visited for the opportunity to swim with manatees (zeekoeien). We stayed in a western-style B&B, where we would wake up with horses standing right beside our little cabin and we could shoot pool in a Tiki-decorated-bar. This B&B definitely added much value to our all-American-experience!
We booked our Manatee tour with Gulf Coast expeditions and would absolutely recommend going with this company. As it is off-season in Florida, we were the only ones who booked with this tour company and we received a private tour for the price of a group tour (€ 55 per person)! This meant that when we approached the manatees, we would be the only ones swimming with them. We did see other tour companies who had around fifteen people surrounding two manatees, so we really lucked out. Swimming with the manatees was super special, we swam with a mother and her calf and we were allowed to get super close when the mother was nursing her baby. The manatees were super relaxed, just swimming around, so it was really easy to keep up with them and just enjoy!
Another thing you can do in Crystal River is visit the Three Sisters Spring, which is a really beautiful nature reserve with crystal clear water. In Florida’s wintertime the manatees come here to stay warm and you are not allowed to enter the waters as you would disrupt the manatees. You can only swim in the Three Sisters Spring if you enter with a tour boat or a kajak. Our Manatee tour also took us for a swim in Three Sisters Spring, which we were really happy about.
Palm Beach
We stayed the night in Palm Beach for my birthday! Some time ago I discovered The Colony Hotel: a hotel of which the outside is completely pink and the inside is decorated with tropical leaves and preppy details. I was talking to my mother that I would really like to stay there and she decided to gift us with a stay in The Colony Hotel! How amazing of a present is that?
We made sure to arrive in Palm Beach early and stay until check-out to fully enjoy all the amazing facilities of the hotel (I think to some amusement of the staff ;)). Our room was completely in art-deco style, we were greeted with champagne, we parked our car with valet parking, we had breakfast in the restaurant next to the pool, the complete package.. The hotel is located in the heart of Palm Beach, we borrowed the hotel’s bicycles and cycled through the town. During this day I received a lot of sweet congratulations on WhatsApp 🙂
Palm Beach is called Palm Beach for a reason and they have many streets completely lined with Palms. My favorite streets being Worth Avenue and Royal Palm Way. Again, we were being lucky with it being off-season, as we were able to freely roam around all streets and cycle in the middle of all streets to take some pictures!
The hotel also has a super cute, pink shuttle service to the beach. They also provide you with retro beach chairs and a parasol, so we also made sure to make use of that.
Concluding, Hielke treated me to a delicious birthday-dinner in Avocado Grill, where we had pink Frosé to keep the theme going!
Delray Beach
We did a quick stop in Delray Beach to visit Pineapple Grove for lunch, an art-district with much streetart, design shops and cool restaurants. Delray Beach is a nice alternative if you want to visit Palm Beach, but do not want to pay for the upscale and expensive lodging! Pineapple Grove reminded us a little bit of the outskirts of Nashville.
Key West
I had been doubting whether to visit the Florida Keys or not.. It is quite a drive and I didn’t know exactly what we were supposed to do there. I did hear that it would be the spot with the most Caribbean vibes of all Florida. The Florida Keys stretch over a length of 125 miles and consist of many small Islands, which are connected via bridges. As I often have major FOMO when it comes to traveling, I decided that we would visit Key West as I heard this Key had the best atmosphere and most sights to visit. Lodging on Key West is really expensive, so I booked a 10-bed mixed dorm for € 55 per person. I have no idea why this hostel was so expensive, besides location, as it was pretty run down, but I do know we had the cheapest beds available that night in Key West 😉 It was quite a transition from The Colony Hotel in Palm Beach…
Little did I know that Key West is a real party town and when we got into Duval street at night there were Honky-Tonks everywhere (refer to Nashville blog) and we noticed lots of body-painted naked girls.. and old men dressed up in nothing but thongs. Of course we did enjoy ourselves drinking beer and watching drunk people pass by, but this was not exactly what we expected from Key West.
The next morning, when all the party-people were still sleeping, we took our bike rentals out and cycled through town. In this way you can fully enjoy the Caribbean architecture and with an hour of cycling you can see pretty much all of Key West.
We had breakfast with Key Lime Pie, the traditional pie of the Keys and we enjoyed the views up from the Lighthouse which is situated across Ernest Hemingway’s home. In the end, we did like that we visited the Keys, even though it was a little different then expected. I would highly recommend hiring a bike and go cycling on this island. In a lot of place in the US I found cycling to be really scary, but it is really relaxed on the Keys as all traffic is slow.
Our next destination is Miami, and I will dedicate a separate blog to Miami.
Ga zo door! Het is geweldig gr.xxxx