Miami and Key West

16-04-25 Wednesday

Philip and I catch an Uber up to Fort Lauderdale Airport to pick up a hire car for the next couple of days. We don’t really have many plans but Philip wants to get some truck parts he can’t get at home and we did a bit of touristing, made some purchases to fill our cases and then back to our unit by mid afternoon. Then for a walk down to the beach and along the waterfront. A pleasant dinner sitting on our 10th floor deck watching the lights in the buildings along the waterfront.

17-04-25

Wednesday we are off in good time this morning heading south down through Miami and the Art Deco Area of the city. It’s a lovely drive and the traffic is not too bad. About an hour to reach this area but once there a very nice drive looking at the old Art Deco Buildings. From there we drive around past the Miami Cruise port where the cruise ships seems to be docked along the Highway. We stop at Coconut Grove Bayside Marina for a wander and a drink. The boats here are huge and expensive and some for sale. The boat storage racks are crammed with boats stacked 5 levels high. The money spent here on boats is unbelievable.

After drooling over the boats we head over to Key Biscayne, across a bridge and causeway to a lovely beach area and the “village” of Key Biscayne. This would be the most expensive village we have been to. Huge homes, beautiful gardens, shopping streets and flash restaurants. Again some of the homes here are well in the multiple tens of millions of dollars. After a drive around the “village” we head back north and find a Bahama Breeze restaurant for a late lunch then back to our unit to prepare dinner for the rest of the family when they arrive later this evening.

16-04-25

Mark – Amanda, the kids and myself left early to head towards Key West, the southern most point of the US Mainland. We had a good start with reasonable traffic and made it south of Miami before we stopped at the Famous Robert Is Here fruit stand, which started out as a small cucumber stand many years ago and grew from there, having a wide range of exotic fruit we had never heard of before, like Mamet Sapote which had the texture of a heavy cheese cake, takes 25 years for the tree to fruit and 18 months for the fruit to ripen. Red Chirimoya which tasted like raspberries and a very soft texture, we also tried Tropical Caimito which had a melon flavour with it. There were many other fruits all grown by Robert himself, he helped us and answered lots of questions and explained about all of the different fruits, they also had local grown sugar cane, mangoes, oranges etc and made smoothies with a myriad of flavors. Continuing south we stopped at a few scenic spots over bridges, spotting the large 100cm+ Tarpon, Sharks, Stingrays and other fish in the water. The crystal clear blue water, many mangrove islands and fancy boats made for a beautiful drive. We arrived to Key west mid afternoon, had a drive around and as expected it was very busy, lots of tourists and the beaches were very full especially by Tassie standards. After checking into our motel we went for some fresh Mexican for dinner then drove into Duval street to have a look a the centre of Key West at night. It’s a lively downtown area, lots of tourists, brightly lit shops, bars, clubs, cigar shops and eateries. Everyone selling the famous and best Key Lime Pie. The next morning we went for another walk around Key west, visited a beach where Amanda and Kaley went for a swim, enjoying warm ocean water one last time. We then started the long drive back to Miami. Approximately 300km, but this took us approximately 7 hours thanks to the traffic and roadworks laying 800mm diameter pipe under the road. Definitely somewhere we would love to visit again with more time.

18-04-25

Departure day

Unfortunately our time has come to pack our bags and head for home. Mark and Amanda and the girls leave us around 9am to head to the airport for a 1pm flight to Los Angeles then on to Melbourne. Everyone is a bit sad to say goodbye but Kaley tells me she will see us soon at home.

We have a full day around here today before our flight at 10.40pm to Santiago where we have an 18 hour layover before our flight to Sydney, Melbourne and finally Devonport arriving on Monday 21st.

We fill the day in by heading back to Haulover Inlet to watch some more boats head in and out of the canal. It’s not as calm today and makes watching more fun. It’s quite breezy on the beach and there is quite a swell but it hasn’t stopped the beach goers from having some fun in the sun. From here we head back down to the Miami Art Deco area for a walk along the foreshore and a late lunch. Crowds of people are enjoying the pleasant afternoon and there are thousands along the beach. Late afternoon we head to the airport early but ready for our flights home.