Travelling Trio

USA – North Carolina – Charleston -Jacksonville – Hollywood Beach Florida – Weeks 10-13

• By Denise
• June 13, 2016
• No Comments

On our way from Washington DC we travelled through North and South Carolina taking in the little town of Charleston.  Golly it’s a beautiful little town.   A lot of history here and and most of the old end of town is retained in its original state, where possible.  We saw some homes being rejuvenated but always in the same style and colour.

Before heading into Bubba Gumps

The market in Charleston is held in the same location as it was hundreds of years ago and just opposite this is one of the famous Bubba Gump restaurants.  We, of course, had to go to Bubba Gumps.  The movie Forrest Gump was a real stand out for me so going to the restaurant was a ‘given’.  However, despite raving reports from many different people about the seafood – we were actually a little disappointed.  I’m sure it was just an off day and it is not always like that.  It was great of course to give it a go.

Can you believe it? We have just been working out some calculations. We have stayed in 71 different beds since leaving home on the 31st of July last year. Wow, we knew it was a lot but that is amazing and we are not finished yet. I have made a rough estimation and it seems we will be over at least 97 beds by the time we get home in September!!

That aside, we have just spent the most wonderfully relaxing week (counted as one bed!!) in Jacksonville with some ex-Cuban Airbnb hosts. Eva and Luis were amazing and we instantly felt at home with them. Our intention this week was to re-evaluate where we are going for the next few months and book accommodation in Europe as it will be summer with availability scarce and pricing high.

We ventured to the beach a couple of times and enjoyed that although the water was just a little cold for yours truly – not so for Carter and Dave. They both managed a dip in the sea at Jacksonville Beach. We noticed that the coastline around this area is full of large mansions built right on the waterfront – like the ones you see on TV with large pillars leading up to the two storeys and vast driveways and glass, lots of glass. But there are very few access points for the public hence the reason we only went to Jacksonville Beach.

Another day was spent looking around the historical town of St Augustine just south of Jacksonville. This was a quaint little place with the oldest wooden school house left in the US and original gates to the City with many other historical sites too.

Bean Boozled game – yuck

Nestled in among the many shops we found a little sweet shop selling the “Bean Boozled” game which Carter had seen doing the rounds on the internet….Hmmm if you want to try this at home – be warned….it is horrid. We sat around the table at our new home and laughed ourselves silly all the while tasting these horrific little beans. I was lucky enough to taste “off milk”, mouldy cheese, smelly socks, and much more…..Dave and Carter didn’t fear so well either and I think while this game is fun – it’s also blinky awful and leaves such a bad aftertaste for ages. Thanks Carter 🙂

Bean Boozled flavours – believe me they are true to their names…. :-(

Eva cooked us a Spanish dish which was really tasty and then we found out she had included pigs feet in it – something we are really not used to eating. However we loved the food and so it goes to show – food is often mind over matter. Dave then gave them a taste of what we sometimes have at Christmas – mushroom and bacon croissants – yummy….

Eva’s special Cuban dish!

The rest of our time we planned, booked and paid for a lot of our up-coming accommodation and travels. So, in a nutshell this is where we will be going:

Cruise to Italy, Greece and the Greek Islands, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy again and then fly to Sri Lanka and onto Koh Samui, Thailand before arriving home in September!! If any of you feel inclined to join us in Koh Samui we would love to see you! It would be perfect timing for a winter holiday!!!

Our new extended family – Eva and Luis

After our wonderful week in Jacksonville we drove down the coast to our original starting point of Hollywood and stayed back with our original Airbnb hosts. We settled in very quickly and are just enjoying the familiarity of our surroundings again. It’s funny because we are thoroughly enjoying the extended stays we are now having – I guess moving from place to place every couple of days is tiring on the mind and body. It was off to Hollywood beach a few times and good long swims in the ocean for Carter. He took his rugby ball down there and found some friends to play catch with. Dave found the water a good temperature too but it’s still too cold for me yet!! I am such a wus. 🙂

Just starting out on our Airboat Tour

Another adventure while in Florida was to take in an airboat tour. We did this through Coopertown Airboats and had a great time. I have always wanted have a ride on one of these boats so this was awesome as the day was beautiful and with the wind blowing past as we flew through the Everglades it was exhilarating. However, we were a bit spooked at the beginning when unbeknown to the guide, we disturbed a wild snake who was napping in the rafters of the shelter and suddenly dropped from the top landing right in front of the first row of seats. This gave everyone a fright and the guide too who had to coax it out of the area. Eeek, glad I wasn’t sitting on the front seat when that happened!!!

Did anyone tell you how loud those boats are!!! Hence the white ball of fluff in Carter’s ears! (Alligators in the background)

While on the tour we saw loads of alligators living in their own habitat and they were so close Carter could have touched a couple of them as they swam passed the boat. We were told that the Everglades have loads of therapeutic trees growing such as the sawgrass it is famous for which helps if you cut yourself – peel back one side – wrap the inside of the other around the wound and it will dry up and act like a bandage; the toothache tree where you boil up two cups of leaves and drink the water – acts like a panadol – or put the leaves directly on your tooth and the pain will go away.

Carter’s wish was to do another round of ten pin bowling and we were lucky enough to find a Groupon Voucher allowing a two hour stint and where we could play four games. Dave managed to win three of the four games – wahoo for him but I managed the highest score of the day with 144!!! (A personal triumph!)

Angie, Gus and their kids and us took a drive to Dania Beach with a standard drive time of about 20minutes but on a hot, sunny Sunday it took two hours and then we still had to find a park!!! We almost gave up and headed home but just then we both found parks…The water was warm here so I was able to enjoy a wonderful swim in the sea.  Ange and Gus and their children were great – we loved staying with them and felt sad to be leaving. The kids have become quite attached to Carter and we can see progression with their language in the short time we were there.

It was time to re-pack our backs before heading off on the cruise and we found over the three months in the States we had obviously purchased a few things as we had too much gear.  BUT, finding a cheap place to send the gear is impossible.  For two medium boxes (about 14inches cubed) it cost us $482 which is just highway robbery but no other way we could do it. We had to reduce our weight for our travels through Europe as we will be taking public transport and need to be able to watch over our gear.

It was also time for Carter’s second top-up vaccination for Hep A which cost us another $250.  Organising this top-up was not an easy thing to do either.  The paperwork required in the US for a visitor to get this done was immense and the time taken to organise – most frustrating. Unfortunately we could not avoid this but thankfully we had time on our hands to organise it.  These kinds of things are expensive here so we would hate to think what an unplanned hospital visit would cost – we have travel insurance for that so thank goodness we do!!

A few more days were spent at Hollywood Beach soaking up the sun and wonderfully warm sea.  The sand at times became so hot to touch you always had to make sure you had your jandals handy.

More of Hollywood Beach

Hollywood Beach – beautiful…

We are not going to have easy access to the Internet while on the cruise so I have had to plan ahead downloading maps and travel information so that I can research our first two weeks in Italy while off-line. We are especially excited about our 15 night cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Italy and Carter has been planning his days around rock-climbing, swimming, the games room and eating and drinking! Sounds good ay!!! Me, well I’m just hoping I don’t suffer from motion sickness and looking forward to reading all my books I have downloaded, taking a swim and enjoying the theatre and movies they will have on board. Dave’s plan is to get some exercise in and do loads of swimming so the cruise will appeal to all of us in our different ways.