Tuesday, July 17, 2007

The Florida part of our trip

Yay, our power is back! There was a bad accident a little bit south of us where a guy ran into a utility pole. Unfortunately, the guy died. We were without power all last night. Luckily, we have a generator, so we were able to run the fridge and freezer. It was kind of a pleasant evening--a few games of backgammon and just nice and quiet. But wow, is it ever DARK at our place! I was holding the flashlight while Ken got the generator going, and it is creepy-dark. Yikes.

Okay, I've written about Haiti and Jamaica so far, so today I'll go back to the first week of our trip. We spent Week One at our timeshare in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. We were trying to figure out how many years we've been going there, and it's 8 for Ken and 7 for me (I think 4 for the kids, because we take them every other year), plus when I was a kid we used to go to New Smyrna a lot. New Smyrna Beach (known as NSB for the rest of this post) is about a half an hour south of Daytona Beach, and it's much quieter. Not a spring break or biker hangout, but more of a quiet, family place. They pretty much roll up the sidewalks at 10 or so during the week! Our timeshare is right on the beach, so it's just a matter of walking by the pool and down to the beach. We spend a lot of time reading out on the balcony, enjoying the ocean breeze. It's become our home-away-from-home! I look forward to it every year, because it's our chance to completely unwind and get away from the day-to-day grind. (Hey, that rhymed!)

It's a pretty beach, too. The sand is fine and white. There have been a few incidents with sharks there, but none of us has seen one, and we don't go out very far. This time, we took a bike ride along the beach, which was fun at first, but then it got a little too much! It's hard to ride a bike on sand, even when it's hard-packed, and by the time we got done, my legs were all rubbery. But it was still a gorgeous day for a ride!

One of our must-stops every time is this place:

It's called Breakers, and it may look like a little hole in the wall, but they serve the best hamburgers I've ever had. I know I have plenty more to try, but they're the winners so far. We can walk down the beach to it from our timeshare, and it's always fun to take a walk down there for a burger and a cool beverage. See ya next year, Breakers! Another favorite place to eat is J.B.'s Fish Camp. It's a favorite of the locals, too, which means it's really good. Last year I had a crab cake sandwich (YUM!), but this year I had fried shrimp. I rarely get deep-fried anything, so it tasted particularly good to me. We had to get a dozen raw oysters, too. We always try to load up on fresh seafood when we're there.

We also always make a stop at a nearby cove. Manatees hang out there. We were lucky this year and saw a baby manatee with his parents, as well as a dolphin. It's neat to see them out in the wild, rather than in a zoo.

Some of the prettiest sunsets I've seen have been at NSB.

What do you think? Sigh. Wishin' I were back there right now....

 

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