Don't Stop - the Florida road trip section UPDATED 3/16 - Page 24 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
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I visited Miami during my college years to assist with some dolphin research in Biscayne Bay and I have to say it is a very beautiful city...you captured it perfectly
You love the guy in this shot?? Yeah. I can see that.
Another fantastic update. I tell you what. Mark has a knack for getting great sky shots with that point and shoot of his(I'm talking about your CAMERA Mark! )
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Those are great shots of the art-deco hotels. Very nice! I love that you guys eat out from the grocery stores. My DH and I do that too!! It saves money and the food is usually pretty good.
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Thursday 17 December – part one: beginning to fear the worst about our tour...
We were awake just before 7.00 and the first thing I thought of was heading to the pool to see how busy it was. Mark reckoned that it would be mad down there, but I figured we’d be OK and I was right. We had the whole place to ourselves and swam a few lengths before going in what I’d describe as a warm bath. It was like a Jacuzzi, but we couldn’t see any buttons to operate it, even though there appeared to be jets in there, so we settled on it being a warm bath instead.
It was already about 70 degrees outside and very pleasant. Certainly you could easily get out of the pool and not feel too cold. I guessed that later on, it would probably be hot and humid again.
After a while, we headed back to the room for breakfast, which consisted of the cinnamon rolls that we had bought at Publix last night, the orange juice and, of course, some tea. With the glasses and mugs that came with the room, it was all very civilised. This is the life.
After breakfast, it was out on to the balcony to get some photos:
We were due to be picked up for our city and Everglades tour at 9.30, so we headed downstairs at about 9.25. We stood there like lemons for the next half hour and eventually got the hotel front desk to find the number and call them, as I was getting worried that perhaps they weren’t planning on picking us up. It was an answerphone and she left a message and off we went to wait again at the front of the hotel.
Somewhere over the rainbow...
I was just about to give up all hope and thinking that we should just go out on our own, when two guys showed up on Segways and told us that they were from the tour company. Apparently the bus driver didn’t know where our hotel was, which didn’t bode well, but they did say that they had sorted him out with directions.
While we were waiting, Mark asked one of the guys what he thought of his Segway and the guy let Mark try it out, which was a nice bonus for him, especially as we had been planning to do the Segway tour at Fort Wilderness, but I felt that it would be too much standing for me.
Someone looks a little worried in this shot...
The bus arrived a couple of minutes later and I think we both did a bit of a double take, as it was perhaps one of the oldest buses that we had ever taken for a tour. We paid our remaining $100 and got on, hoping that things would get better from here on in.
We had another couple of pick-ups to make on the way along Ocean Drive, which gave me the chance to get some more photos of the architecture along here.
Then it was over the bridge back to the mainland. Our driver, who pointed out that he wasn’t a guide, showed us Star Island, where all the stars live, like Gloria Estefan and I managed to get a photo of the white house where Julio Iglesis used to live. He told us that Madonna had lived here, but had sold up and that Al Capone had come here and literally died not long after he got here.
As we went along the bridge, we could see the port of Miami and the skyline of Miami behind it, with some darkened and threatening clouds behind. We knew those would open up sooner or later. Soon enough, it did, as we got to downtown and Bayside, where we picked up a few more passengers for our tour.
It was pretty hard to get any photos of downtown after that, as the windows were coated in rain, but I did my bet. As our driver rightly predicted, if you wait 10 minutes, then the sun will be out and, sure enough, it was. I was amazed to see how quickly all the rain on the windows of the bus dried off. Soon you’d never have known that it had been raining.
Miami’s light transit system
We headed out through the suburb and saw the monorail system that they have here and the new basketball stadium that they’re building here.
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Disney Magic - Oct 2015
We had the whole place to ourselves and swam a few lengths before going in what I’d describe as a warm bath. It was like a Jacuzzi, but we couldn’t see any buttons to operate it, even though there appeared to be jets in there, so we settled on it being a warm bath instead. 
. But someone didnt speak to me afterwards, saying it's unfair that i got the shot 
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