The following morning the weather was again beautiful, about 30 degrees, so we had a look round the shops before heading to the beach for a few hours. South Beach is really nice but the sand is not soft like at Bournemouth. It is very wide though and there were still lots of people about, even though it was a weekday.
Ocean Drive and Washington Avenue is full of little boutique shops as well as the normal high street stores. Shaun managed to find a T-shirt for a real bargain, and we thought that Florida would be the start of our little spending spree that we had promised ourselves ( a sort of pat-on-the-back to ourselves for working so hard on the flat).
After hiring a car on the 3rd day we headed of to Florida City and then onto Key Largo. There wasn't much to see around here so we decided to head on to the Everglades to do a sunset tour on the air boats. This was meant to be the best time to spot the alligators. We saw about 10 in total and they come right up to the boat to see what food is about. That night we went to St Myers and the following day went to Lovers Beach which is famous for collecting sea shells washed up on the shore. (see Shaun sitting on the beach eating his breakfast).
That night we made our way to St. Petersburg where we stayed in the worst budget motel in America! It cost $30 a night and we could see why. It smelt of petrol and had cockroaches running around. That's it for budget accommodation for us, especially now the flat is going through. The picture of Jo holding the towel below is in this motel and was one of the towels they provided for our use.
The following day we headed for Tampa to hit the shops, or should we say malls.
