Day seven - 22nd October

It was time to get on our way and leave the Florida Keys for the next destination, St. Petersburg.

We packed early and were on our way, bidding a sad farewell to Key West. We both loved the place, and reflected fondly on our short time there. It has a really pleasant vibe to it, and it’s a superb location for live acts, as almost every bar & restaurant had someone going from 10am. In fact even the night we went to photograph the Bahia Honda bridge, there was a country & western trio doing a small concert at the campsite.

In an effort to try & reduce eating out costs and not eat something fried every day for breakfast, we went to the local supermarket the previous night to get some breakfast supplies consisting on UHT milk and some packet rolled oats.  Alas this didn’t turn out to be particularly appetising so we may have to revisit this plan.  In fact it was down-right disgusting and a review of the ingredients in plain old quaker rolled oats was alarming, shudder to think what they have done to the milk.

The washing we had done the previous night was not yet fully dry, so showing a bit of lateral thinking, t-shirts got put against the back seat, undies on the back seat pan and socks on the dashboard. Probably the first time a Ford Mustang has been used as a mobile dryer. Duly configured, off we set.

The drive was going to be a long one, into Miami skirting the city and then up and across the pan handle on US 75 (Alligator Alley) to arrive at St. Pete’s – about 6 hours’ drive in total. Fortunately we had great weather and once we had got out of the Keys, we could get up to 70mph on the Interstate which saved us quite a bit of time. With an appropriate sense of dread we re-negotiated the Miami interstate system, but this time we were able to come out unscathed and on the right track. The sheer amount of road works going on around Miami is staggering, from what we saw it seems to be a significant rework of the whole freeway network around the city. 

Once on US75, we were basically cruising for most of the day at a good clip. The stretch of US75 that crosses the Panhandle is called Alligator Alley, and crosses a big chunk of the Everglades system.  I once again appreciated how huge and vast this country is (I think our Airboat guide said the Everglades was about 4 million acres in size) because in a full 360 degree view the land was flat all around as far as the eye could see. As we went further the landscape changed though and eventually gave way to other reserves and protected areas, including one for the Florida Panther. I think the impression of the U.S freeway system is one of a concrete jungle covered in gas fumes, but the reality couldn’t be more different. The country driving was really good with lots of vegetation and trees lining the road ways providing some pleasant

We stopped for lunch at a fairly standard roadside fuel & food place, and filled ourselves with chips and the car with premium, and then got on the way again. They have a stupid system where you have to pre-pay at the bowser, but they make you type in a post code.  Of course we don’t have one, so if you want to fill up you have to leave your credit card with the cashier.  We’ve since googled this and apparently if you enter post code 5 0’s it will accept at 80% of places.  We’ll try that next time.

The plan was, as we were making good time, to head into the Dali museum first and then find a place to stay, and our GPS guided us unerringly to target, she has redeemed herself! Entering St Petersburg, the traveller from the south is guided in over a huge and spectacular bridge which provides a grand entrance to the city.

We arrived at our destination (co-incidentally next to a small urban airport!) and went in.

The Dali Museum is housed in a spectacular building with a circular staircase leading up to the exhibits. It houses a collection of original Dali works from his early years, through his surrealist period into the later post-surrealism works. You can get an audio tour that allows you to view a painting in any particular order and hear more about it which was a pretty good way of appreciating a painting more, and the paintings can be viewed in any order you like.

We left the display and I went across to the airport (surprise) to take some pictures of the aircraft there, and then we headed into town to our Hotel. We are using mobile data to view & book hotels online and it’s been very handy.

However arriving at the Hotel, we were greeted by a Valet system for parking the car (either that or try to park somewhere on the street), so we frantically cleared the socks and undies from the seats and dashboard while the valet waited patiently for us to finish and took the car away. We schlepped our bags up to our room and after doing a bit of research, headed into town for dinner, after a brief freshen up.

The place we chose to go was on the waterfront, and it’s a really lively area, with lots of places to eat, some design stores and attractions like horse & buggy rides. We had picked what was classified as ‘English’ but really offered a mix of English ( eg fish & chips, shepherd’s pie) and Indian ( Tikka Masala).  We both went for the Tikka Masala and I washed mine down with a nice U.S IPS, Smuttynose. Afterwards we treated ourselves to a scotch to round off the day and that was that. The weather’s a bit chillier here and after the heat of Miami and the Keys is taking a bit of getting used to.