Florida—the Sunshine State

The final leg of our tour took us to Florida. It's such a lovely state and I think it's a bit sad that so many people only associate Florida with Disneyworld and Theme Parks.
We started in the north, in St Augustine, which is the oldest settlement in the US, a fact  they make much of. It's been occupied variously by the Spanish and English, depending no who was winning whatever war it was at the time, and the result is a unique town which
feels more Mediterranean than American.

We stayed in a lovely spa hotel down the road at Flagler Beach:

Our next stop was Ichetucknee Springs, near Gainesville. You hire tubes and then float down a stream which runs through a forest at about a mile an hour. The water is crystal clear and you can see fish and turtles as you go, and the forest is full of birds singing - it's all very peaceful and beautiful.

We then went to Cedar key on the West Coast, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. It has some fantastic seafood restaurants, one overlooking the sea and we watched Dolphins playing - awesome! It's a tiny, sleepy village although as in so many other places we visited it is becoming a bit of a tourist trap. It takes about 10 minutes to explore though, so not that much for the tourists to do! We stayed in the Island Hotel which is really charming and old fashioned with wooden floors and rather antiquated furniture, and a wrap around deck on the first floor. I chose the hotel because it is supposed to be
haunted, but try as I might I didn't see a ghost - or did we?!

We then travelled south to Orlando, and much as I don't like it when people think that Orlando is Florida and theme
parks are what Florida is all about, I still quite like the theme parks! We managed to fit in two, Blizzard Beach and Universal Studios. It was boiling hot when we went to Blizzard Beach and we got sunburnt, but when we went to Universal it rained all day, which was handy because it kept the crowds away and we hardly had to queue! We managed all the rides in about four hours, which was just about enough, before we set off to Naples to stop over on the way to the Keys.

We got the chance to swim in another natural spring nearby - this time accompanied by some unexpected wildlife!

Talking of wildlife, we drove from Naples to Key Largo along route 41 which goes slap bang through the Everglades.
We were hoping to see some alligators - we saw hundreds and stopped to take some photos. It wasn’t a zoo—they were wild, honest!

We then followed the rather tortuous Route 1 down to Key West, it's mostly single carriageway, the speed limit is 55 mph but you hardly get to go that fast what with the