Rest Of The Florida Trip

    After the Bahamas cruise we spent a day touring the Coral Gables area of Miami. We visited the Deering Estate which was built by one of the founders of International Harvestor. There is a historic inn that he bought (along with the town) and used as a residence until he built his European-style stone mansion in the 1920s. He was an avid art collector and used the stone house to display his art collection. As he was afraid of fire in the stone house, he did not install a kitchen there and still used the inn for cooking and dining.

Deering was also a naturalist interested in preserving Florida's native plants. The beautiful grounds contain nature trails that wind through a mangrove swamp, groves of palm trees and gardens. There was also a large number of Golden Orb Weaver Spiders that were as big as your hand. Their webs stretched alongside and sometimes over the walkways. The sign said they were not dangerous to humans but eeewww!

    After touring the estate we ate lunch at Macita's, an authentic Columbian restaurant and then headed over to the Venetian Pool. The pool was built in the 1920's in the old world Italian style used in a lot of theaters of the era. Now it is a community pool for the city of Coral Gables and only costs $5 a day for non-residents (and $1 to tour).
    We ended the day at Coco Walk, a shopping and entertainment area in Coconut Grove. We ate dinner al fresco on the top floor overlooking the street.

    On Saturday we headed up to Palm Coast, Florida to spend a week in our friends' timeshare condo at the Celebrity Resort. Palm Coast is located midway between St. Augustine and Daytona. The resort is just under the bridge that crosses the intracoastal waterway to the barrier island of St. Augustine Beach. The resort was very nice with lots of ponds, a pool, mini-golf, shuffleboard and tennis courts. Each of the rooms had a balcony overlooking the ponds and we had a sea eagle who hung out in a tree just off of our balcony.

    We split the week between touring the area and relaxing at the condo. On Monday, we toured St. Augustine, walking around the historic city, eating lunch at the A1A Brewery, and touring the beautiful old hotels built by Henry Flagler. Flagler is credited with opened up Flordia by building the Florida East Coast railroad (which is still operating to this day). Along the way he built magnificent hotels to lure tourists to the area. Many of them ended up buying land and building their own homes in the area. One of the St. Augustine hotels, the Ponce de Leon, is now Flagler College. We took a tour of the building which has the largest collection of Tiffany stained glass windows in the world.

   Across the street is the old Alcazar hotel which now houses city offices, a museum, shops and restaurants. The old indoor swimming pool now holds a cafe and antique shops. Next to the Alcazar is the Casa Monica. Ironically the Casa Monica was built as a private home but is now a hotel, the only hotel in the three buildings.

  On Thursday our friends went golfing so my husband and I took the opportunity to drive down the coast to tour the Daytona International Speedway. This is the home of the NASCAR Daytona 500 which is the premier race in the stock car racing associations' year. We toured the museum and rode the tram around the infield (the track was being resurfaced so we could not drive on it) and saw an exciting 3D IMAX movie about NASCAR. My husband's favorite part was driving the simulators. One was a video simulator and the other you sat in a car and could feel the car moving as you ran up the banked turns.
He came within 20/1000 second of setting the lap record on the video simulator (50.398 vs 50.373).

    On Friday, our last day in Florida, we visited the PGA's World of Golf in St. Augustine. This is a whole city including residential areas, golf courses, shopping, restaurants (including the Murray Bros. Caddyshack restaurant) and the PGA Golf Hall of Fame and Museum.

The museum had a special exhibit on Bob Hope who was an avid golfer and is credited with greatly increasing the popularity of golf. The exhibit followed his life and career, his interest in golf and his dedication to entertaining the troops around the world over the course of 7 decades. One of the video clips on display was from an old Mike Douglas show where Bob Hope and Jimmy Stewart were the guests when a 2-year old golf phenomenon made an appearance. The 2-year's old name was Tiger Woods.
    We couldn't leave the World of Golf without playing a round. I can now say that I shot a 54 on a PGA 18-hole golf course! Ok, ok, it was only a par 36 putting course but still...