Florida, Bimini, and the Conch Republic -- November 29 - December 12, 2006

^{This trip is rated 5 little globes out of 5 on the Globe-Trotting Globe-o-meter.}

^{Part the First - In which we alliteratively swap a snowy Seattle for a somewhat sunny South Beach.}

A full-scale mock-up of the Voyager is hanging in the new Terminal A at the Sea-Tac Airport, and we enjoyed keeping it company for a couple of hours while waiting for our flight.

A real good time to head out of town.

The Detroit Airport was quite impressive.  For us, the highlight was the light rail system that runs around inside the new terminal building.

Let's see, what do we really need for a great trip?  This store seemed to have it all.

The famous A1A.  We finally made it!

After our wild night, Sue decided to take it easy and just hung around in our room at the Royal Hotel,

while the other guy just couldn't get enough of the art deco buildings,

and headed out for some more sightseeing and picture taking.

The iconic South Beach lifeguard 'shacks' were brightly painted and meticulously maintained.   

And Florida certainly lived up to its reputation as a bird-watcher's paradise.  Here we see a rare indigenous South Beach florescent flamingo resting contentedly on the beach just a block from the A1A.  The birds generally seem to be unafraid of people, and casually go about their birdly business.  

We were scheduled to pick up our first rental car at noon, plus we needed to get checked out by 11:00, so there was just time for one more quick pass by all the wonderful buildings, and of course a few more pictures...  

We got packed up and headed down to the lobby to get checked out.  Here we see Sue sitting in one of the Royal's unique chair/lounge things.

Sue stands at the reception desk settling the account.  The 2 multi-colored square things on the back wall (to the left of the stairs) were actually each made up of 4 glass blocks, and each glass block had a light inside that would periodically change color.  It was almost hypnotic in a nauseous sort of way, but we broke out of the trance and headed out into traffic to flag down a taxi and be on our way to the Miami Airport to pick up our rental car and journey deep into the Everglades.