Naples and Orlando, Florida

We left Key West and headed toward Orlando, driving up the west coast of Florida through the Everglades. Let me make this very clear....I will NEVER get into one of those air boats and go thru the swamps. To me, the only good alligator is a purse or a pair of shoes. Maybe a wallet. To me, that is the only reason I can find for these creatures to exist. I would never intentionally go somewhere to see one of them. The thought that all of Florida is a swamp, and that they can be anywhere, is really distressing to me. So we drove thru the Everglades very quickly.

We stopped in Naples to break up the trip and spent two nights at the Ritz Carlton. The first night we had dinner in the Grill Room at the hotel. It is their major restaurant, and it was great....but a LOT of food! So after touring Naples and discovering that it is a lovely golf resort town and nothing more, we decided to "stay in" the next night.

As I have said, the Ritz Carlton hotels are amazing, and the club floors as so worth the extra money. They have food presentations all day and each setting is better than the next. We found ourselves and well as six other couples having cocktails and eating there in the evening.

BTW, the Ritz in Naples has an amazing Nature Club for the children on property, and actually, as an adult, I enjoyed visiting it. It is not as big as the spa, which is amazing, but it is filled with animals and information about wildlife. It is great if you have the grandkids and you want something special for them to experience at the hotel. The Ritz staff have done a lot of wonderful things at this property, and this is certainly one of them.

On Friday, we headed into Orlando. Our timing was perfect since our adult children were off work for the week-end and the grandkids were out of school. We went directly to their new house and got a chance to see where they were now living. After 16 years in Raleigh-Durham, this was a big change for them. But it is an exciting time for all of them....and change can be a good thing.

We never knew there was a city in Orlando apart from Mickey's House, Universal Studios, and Cape Kennedy. It's nice to know that one does exist. As in our family there, some of the people in this city are doctors and some are lawyers. Some run cross country and some play the tuba. And some are program computers . So my friends, it is not all Universal and Disney World.

We stayed at the Grand Bohemian Hotel, which is a kick. It is a full-service hotel with a wonderful restaurant, and one of four oversized Bosendorfer Concert Grand pianos in the world.
The hotel is in downtown Orlando, and has quite an art collection. You need to see it to believe it!! We had an exciting time exploring Winter Park and Leu Gardens, the Science Center Museum and some new restaurants. This will be a fun city to get to know...and now when I skype my grandchildren, and I see them sitting in a room, I know where that room is!

Sadly, it quickly became Monday, and everyone had to return to their normal lives. I always hate saying "good-bye"...but I know all good things eventually have to come to an end...and I also know there will be more good times ahead.

Florida and the Keys

Having left our wonderful visit with our Chicago family, we flew to Miami, picked up a car, and made a 30 minute drive to South Beach. We had never been there, and our only Florida experiences were from the 80's at Miami Beach, so an overnight stay in South Beach seemed to make sense.

We checked into the Ritz Carlton hotel, a fabulous re-do of a 50's art deco hotel, and it was incredible. I would live in a Ritz Carlton if I could....FOREVER. The staff was so wonderful...and the club floor was amazing. This are what hotels are supposed to be....an escape from reality into something dreams are made of.

We took a long walk all over the pedestrian area surrounding our hotel, seeing properties that I had heard about forever. It a was a lot of fun. Then we went back to the hotel, changed for dinner and went to the main walking area along the water and sideled into Quinn's. It was a perfect choice, and although we couldn't get stone crabs (cause they weren't in season yet), we made do with a lot of other seafood!

After dinner, we took a walk around this area of South Beach, hearing the Cuban music drifting out onto the street and smelling the spices from the delicious food. It was really a lovely experience. We were only sorry that we just had one day and night...but we sure crammed a lot into that short time.
The next morning we got up and headed into the Keys with Key West as our ultimate destination.

The Keys extend for 170 miles southwest from the mainland, and for years I have wanted to experience them. You can swim with the dolphins, snorkel, deep sea fish, or just enjoy the beauty of these islands (which is what we did). We stopped in Key Largo,the first major Key out of Miami, and being a Bogie fan, we tried to find the "African Queen", the magical boat from the movie of the same name, which is mired there somewhere. With no success, and wanting to get to Key West early enough, we headed on.

Route 1 starts in Key West, and heads north to Miami. The mile markers along the road tell you how many miles from Key West you are. Key Largo was at marker 112. These markers were the original mile posts installed along the old railroad bed which you can still see running parallel to the highway. That railroad was a marvel in engineering. Mr. Flagler, the railroad builder, would have been proud.

The Keys were founded by the Indians heading south after the Ice Age, herding bison and elephant. Then came the pirates...the farmers...the fisherman... the railroad people...the salvagers, Ernest Hemingway...Harry Truman and Jimmy Buffett. And everyone left their mark on this unique place.

One island, called Marathon, got its name from the railroad people, who said building the railroad was a Marathon!!! There are 42 bridges that connect the Keys, but the longest is 7 miles, and it starts on the south side of Marathon and goes to Little Duck Key and Missouri Key. All of the islands have swimming with the dolphins and great sport fishing. But we wanted to get to Key West, and by 2 o'clock, we arrived....a really lovely ride.

Our hotel, the Ocean Key, sat at Zero Duval Street!! Isn't that a fabulous address? And what an exceptional hotel it is. It sits right on the water, and has so much flavor and history....and did I mention that the rooms are incredible? All with balconies and great views. We were lucky enough to have one overlooking the pier, and later I will tell you why that is so great.

As we always do, we got out onto the street and began to explore. What a great place! Many friends have described Key West as racy, touristy, bawdy and tacky....but no one has ever said it was boring. It was a mecca for drop-outs and drop-ins...millionaires who dock their boats and need to relax from a lot of hard work and people with no particular bent except to enjoy the weather and the scene itself. Whatever your likes, you can find something in Key West. The near perfect weather and the unbelievable coral reef make this a wonderful outdoor place for all kinds of sports people.

The art and architecture in this place abounds. The hotels are all either re-done homes or new resorts. The guest houses and small inns are just lovely and recall a time in history that needs saving. Some of the painstakingly restored historic houses were inhabited by the likes of Harry Truman (who had his Little House here), Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway and John Audubon. These homes are now museums and welcome visitors with great tours.

The waterfront attracted sea captains, pirates and salvagers. There is a museum filled with treasures as well as the Key West Aquarium, the Clinton Square Market and the Shipwreck Historeum. At the end of Duval street, where our hotel sits, is a pier where everyone comes to watch the sun set. As I said earlier, we had a view of this pier from our room, so if we couldn't get a seat at the always packed bar, we could "bid the day good-bye" from our private viewing balcony.

And the music plays on. A lot of people say that Key West is honky-tonk. Well, there are lots of t-shirt shops along Duval Street..as well as bars, restaurants, art galleries and TOURISTS!! But inbetween is a fabulous old movie theater (which is now a Walgreen's), amazing old homes and an opera house. Further along Duval is the house where Hemingway penned many of his books and nearby where Robert Frost came to visit and write.

Yes, it is a little like the French Quarter in New Orleans, but Key West is its own charming place to visit. I would do it again in a heartbeat. And I even had a margarita as per Jimmy Buffett!!!

Chicago

Our "children/grandchildren alarm bell went off, not with a murmur, but with a CLANG, so we made plans to visit the kids in Chicago and Orlando on our latest venture from Los Angeles.

Since all of the grandchildren are in school, we needed to be with each family over a weekend so we had to work around their timing.

We headed to Chicago first...and it was quickly becoming Fall. The "something in the air" was rain....but it was kind of fun to smell the wafts of autumn coming through. Zoe and Ben had soccer practice and a game (that got rained out)...and we even got to see some of a dance rehearsal. But the most fun was being able to take the kids alone on a double-decker tour bus that did a major loop through Chicago and the neighborhoods. The kids LOVED the bus...and the driver....and we loved seeing the new Trump Tower and hotel that is now larger than the Sears Tower!!! Millennium Park is great to walk through, as is Navy Pier, and we had a fun lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.

The Fairmont Hotel at Millennium Park was our home away from home for 4 nights and it was just perfect. It is on the other side of the river...which means a little longer walk down to the shopping area...but manageable. The rooms were large and wonderful. We loved having a coffee bar in the room for late night/early morning "wakeups". We even managed to sneak in an anniversary dinner with just the adults at Le Colonnial...and it was a lovely way to end our visit.

According to my mother, a very wise woman, "fish and relatives smell after 3 days"...so not wanting to take that chance, we kissed everyone goodbye on Sunday. We had 5 days to kill before arriving in Orlando to visit our North Carolina newly re-located transplant children/grandchildren, so off to our own Florida adventure we went.