Summer Vacation Day 1 - Off to Florida!

Now that Southern Man is back home it's time for a batch of backdated posts (to which photos will be added when Southern Man's photo CDs are back from the developer and when gf gets around to downloading everything from her digital camera) describing what is probably the lengthiest, most adventurous, and most varied vacation he's ever taken. In short: Southern Man and gf flew to Orlando, drove to Ft. Lauderdale , got married on a cruise ship, spent a day in Nassau, and then drove back to Orlando via the scenic Florida coast highways - where we were joined a few days later by Southern Man's mother and youngest daughter to finish out the weekend at the Disney parks as part of Youngest Daugher's tenth birthday. So this was wedding, honeymoon, vacation, and birthday gift all rolled up into nine glorious (and expensive!) days. But although Southern Man will be years paying it off, it was worth every penny to see the smiles on their faces and he had a great time as well.

The roots of this vacation go back a couple of years to a time when Southern Man was newly divorced and eager to embrace anything that he could do to make his children happy. While in this vulnerable state of mind he purchased a six day - five night Florida vacation package from a telemarketer (yes, go ahead and laugh; of course it ended up as something of a rip-off but we did end up making the best of it) hoping to use it one day to take Youngest Daughter to the Magic Kingdom (the two teens made that trip when she was but an infant, and Southern Man didn't get to go then). Then when Southern Man and gf decided to make honest folk of one another we added a short cruise to the front end and another hotel day to the front of that to make a wedding - honeymoon - vacation nine-day week out of it.

Due to poor planning on Southern Man's part we flew into Orlando but had to be in Ft. Lauderdale early the next morning so this first day was consumed by travel. We departed Southern Man's home city in the early afternoon and didn't get into Orlando until late, late evening, and then spent three hours on Florida's Turnpike (yes, that's what they call it, but don't be fooled: toll roads are everywhere in Florida) and an hour wandering around northern Miami (but in our very sweet Nissan Altima rental car), finally arriving at our lodging at about three in the morning. Southern Man didn't sleep much - tomorrow will be a big day!