Bucko's World

Monday 10th

I may have mentioned how large, and gut busting, our breakfast was yesterday.  So it will come as no surprise that for breakfast today the most we could manage was a bagel with cheese and ham, and a glass of orange juice.  Seriously, that's all we had, dinner having seemingly expanded in our stomachs overnight.  I'm not sure the last time I didn't have the full works when it was on offer, free, and included even....

Our plans for today are pretty straightforward.  Check out, hit the mall, cross the state to the gulf coast, eat food.  Simples.  Oh dear......

Our original plan for the day was rather straight forward.  Check out, hit the mall, spend lots of cash, and head off to the Gulf Coast and our next stop in Fort Myers beach via the brilliantly named Alligator Alley.  To be honest, things were going quite well to start with.  We found Aventura Mall, parked up and headed in for some major retail therapy.  Abercrombie & Fitch  done.  Oakley custom building sunnies for us, done.  Hollister for T-Shirts not quite big enough, for sure.

We browse around for a bit and then decide we need some tucker before our long trip across State.  And the place we end up in is the pretty badly named Cheesecake Factory.  Yes, of course it does do the best looking cheesecake I've ever seen, but it does so much more, as is evidenced by the 20 page menu they had us when we sit down.  Guess what?  It isn't all cheesecake...

There's every pasta you can imagine, every type of sandwich, salad, every entree you could conceive.  For us though, we're trying to avoid carbs and such stuff due to my reactive hypoglycemia, so for us it's a Turkey Club for me and a "lunch sized" BBQ ranch chicken salad for Lisa.  When the salad arrives, it's so big, we have to call the waiter over to check he's brought over the correct order.  Apparently he has, as he indicates that the "normal" sized salad plate is a couple of inches bigger all round.  Fuck....this is going to take some work.

Two hours later, and having done our best our best to plough through a six inch deep turkey sandwich and a salad that probably has more calories than a Maccy D's quarter pounder and large chips, we are ready to head off on our cross state journey.  We locate our Hyundia Tucson in the car park and head off out into the Miami afternoon traffic.  Which, due to roadworks is horrific.  Two slip roads onto the the road we need are closed so no matter which way we try to turn form the Mall, we are pretty much fucked.  Left or right, east or west, jammed solid.  Even with a Sat Nav and traffic announcements we are buggered.  Which, to a degree, is good, because as Lisa turns it on, it pulls a grumpy face and decides its had enough.  Yep, 5,000 miles from home and hardly ever having been used our Sat Nav decided to commit Hari Kari in the middle of rush hour traffic in Miami.  Terrific.

So, what to do?  Most of our trip is, as is the modern thing, based on us being able to navigate around Florida using electronic means as opposed to paper based options.  Which as you will be well aware, causes nothing but arguments.  So we sit there, with no Sat Nav, no map, and no AA Routemaster available wondering what our options are, which turns out to be, despite the time it will cause us on our trip across to the Gulf Coast, going back to the Mall to buy a replacement Sat Nav as otherwise we will be fucked for the rest of our holiday.  Fortunately Sears has a top notch Sat Nav selection  meaning we end up with a top-end Tom Tom with all the gadgets for the princely sum of $150, or about half the price that our 8 year old Garmin originally cost us.  Oh, how times change!

An hour behind schedule, and much more stressed than earlier, we eventually end up on the I-75, which crosses the 100 odd miles between Atlantic and Gulf coasts of Florida.  This road proves to be an amazing experience.  It is arrow straight for its whole length with the solitary exception of a 90 degree turn 60 miles in, probably for no other reason than to keep drivers on their toes and stop them from falling asleep.

It's an unbelievably unremitting journey, it's so fucking straight.  There's no turn ons or turn offs for literally 97 miles.  Luckily for me and the missus we'd found an XM Sirius radio station called Classic Rewind, whose whole programming strategy is based on "the cassette tape you found buried at the back of your drawer".   You might as well call it Van Halen, Rush and the best of Eighties English as the two hours it takes to cross the Everglades passes in a flash of massive rock choruses and completely over the top guitar solos.  It's an awesome sing along couple of hours as The Police, Foreigner, Journey, Queen, Hootie and then Blowfish, Chicago and loads of others get an airing by DJ Derek St Hubbins who is on top form this pre-recorded couple of hours.  Ok, quite a lot of those aren't English, but you get my drift.

When we eventually come to the end of the longest straight road on the world we are greeted by Fort Myers Beach, and it is beyond lovely.  The whitest sand I've ever seen and packed firm enough to cycle on, with a small pier and several great bars and restaurants accessible right from the beach, it actually feels more Greek/European than American.  Obviously the Pterodactyl sized birds gliding over the ocean may be a giveaway that this is Florida, but the feel is really European.  This has been a good choice :-)

Due to the delay earlier, we don't have much time to explore tonight, so we head straight for Chloe's, the restaurant in our hotel.  And we are the only people in there.  Oh God, it's obviously going to be awful.  Not a bit of it.  I have their 12oz rib eye with a jacket potato and it is beyond fantastic.  Lisa has some fish casserole which tbh, come up looking like a fish pie, but to be fair, even the waiter is surprised and has to check he's been given the right dish.  He has, so we all shrug and chow down.  It's so good I've no idea how we'll top it during the rest of the trip let alone in Ft M.   It's a challenge I look forward to taking....