Travelling with Nick: Southern Florida's Atlantic Coast

Introduction - Originally this was going to be one post covering our late 2013 vacation to Bermuda and Southern Florida but as I completed the Bermuda section I realised that would be sufficient for one post. Now here is the second part: -

Southern Florida

Miami Beach

Although we have been many times to Florida we had never been as far south as Miami before. I had seen travelogues on TV about the Art Deco district of Miami Beach and decided that I would like to stay in one of many hotels there. We chose Marriott's

Winter Haven Hotel for a three night stay - many art deco features particularly in the reception and dining areas. The reception staff were very friendly and welcoming but there was an overall lack of attention to detail which causes me to only give it 6 marks out of 10.

Miami Beach itself is looking a little tired. There was a lot of building and road works taking place when we were there so hopefully in a few years time it will be looking its best again.

It is a very busy, vibrant and cosmopolitan area. The 'beautiful people' are much in evidence but so are those who have a somewhat tenuous hold on life. I would certainly go back for a similar amount of time.

Homestead

I had not done much research on the Homestead area before choosing this location. It was chosen on the basis of being a good base for visiting the 'Keys' and 'The Everglades' and not being too far away from traveling to our next destination on the Atlantic coast north of Fort Lauderdale.

This location met those criteria very well and the Hampton Inn hotel fulfilled all our needs to a more than satisfactory standard.

Downtown Homestead itself was what the name itself might conjure up, a little nondescript.Its ambiance was little care worn.

As I say, we weren't there to tour Downtown Homestead per se, we wanted to see the Keys and the Everglades and this location was perfect for those purposes.

If you are interested in the flora and fauna of the natural environment, as we are, then there are a number of excellent National Parks in the area. We visited a number of them as you can see from the photographs.

Deerfield Beach/Boca Raton

We had visited Downtown Boca Raton last year and my wife had been very impressed with the 'up market' shops and the general feeling of 'the good life' engendered by those emporiums. We liked that area of Florida in general so i booked the Hampton Inn at Deerfield Beach. When we first approached the hotel from the I95 we questioned whether we had done the right thing because the entrance from Hillsborough Avenue was quite difficult for a driver from the U.K. our return from our evening meal confirmed our fears; to get back to the hotel the GPS took us via the I95 again. What a nightmare. However the nest morning I took a walk around the hotel and discovered a back entrance. Voila! and concerns were immediately overcome. The hotel itself was excellent. I don't know if our room was a standard room, certainly that is the rate we paid but the facilities were that of a suite. Very comfortable indeed, so much so that we had originally only booked four nights but we enjoyed it so much that we stayed a further two nights!

A couple of small details - we actually liked the ocean front (we Brits would say sea front) at Pompano Beach better than at Deerfield Beach, it was more tranquil. That is just a personal choice of course.

We highly recommend the Gumbo Limbo Nature Park located between Deerfield Beach and Boca Raton, with its sea life aquariums and boardwalk trails etc. We loved it.

Now here are the photos. First a confession - I regret having not not taken my Pentax K100D camera, for reasons of reducing baggage bulk. This mistake was further compounded by not taking a battery charger for my Lumix FS40 camera. The capacity of the later was virtually exhausted at the end of the Bermuda leg of our holiday. So I had to revert to using the camera facility on my wife's Motorola MotoRazr 1 phone. What a silly Billy.