Aussie Expats Update – Our Big Southern USA Roadtrip, Part 2!

We’re back again for the week 2 update of our epic US road trip!

We arrived in the Keys last Friday via Key Largo, where we impulsively decided to book in for a jetskiing adventure on Saturday and followed it up with feasting on an incredible lunch of steak sandwich and fish and chips. If you haven’t had fish for eight months—because how the hell can you trust ‘fresh’ fish in landlocked and rustic Oklahoma?—then believe me when I say, you’re happy to have fish. And this Mahi Mahi was juicy and delicious (and also deep-fried). We gorged ourselves and then gorged a little more with some Key Lime pie and a white chocolate creme brûlée.

Just thinking about it makes me hungry. Luckily we stocked up our stomachs though, because the drive from Key Largo to our accommodation on the Naval base at the very end of Key West took a verrrrrry long time. We’d been on the road since just after 5 am, so the afternoon drive was a bit of a kick in the teeth: we were intensely relieved to finally check into the Naval Garden Inn & Suites in Key West! Even better, once we’d gotten our bearings a little, we were able to take a leisurely stroll to the on-base beach and swim in the cool, clear waters of the Atlantic Ocean: the sunset we witnessed on that beach was breathtaking. If nothing else could bring me back to the Keys, the promise of another sunset like that could!

I can tell you right now, we were only in the Keys for a few hours before we wished that we’d booked in for two nights down there. Or maybe more, but since we were due in Miami on Saturday night, we had to saddle up again the following morning. Theoretically, we were booked in for 10 o’clock at Tropic Water Sports, so we hit the road just after 7:30… and we were probably half an hour down the road when we realised we’d left James’s watch behind. His $400 GPS/HR monitor fancy bells & whistles training watch. So we turned around, beetled on back to the hotel—which, fortunately, we’d accidentally kept a keycard to—and retrieved said watch before heading back up to Key Largo. It was good luck for us that Tropic Water Sports aren’t anally attached to proposed booking times! Sonny, Gwen and Tyler fit us in for our boating license test (that awkward moment when you find out that you were meant to study for it and just weren’t told about it)… and we passed!

JetSkiing is epic. The water clarity, colour and temperature, the sunshine, the yawning bright clearness of the day and the thrill of throttling the engine, opening us up into the wideness of the world… Brilliant.

We had a quick rinse after we got back in, then changed and saddled back up, with no real idea of where we wanted to head for lunch, and then we saw a sign… I’m only human, everyone: how could I possible resist having lunch at a place called Hobo’s Cafe? Thank god that I’m susceptible to clever advertising: the food was amazing. ‘Amazing’ as an adjective actually may not be strong enough. I mean, look at it!

We drove up to Miami afterward and checked into our cosy little Airbnb accommodation before strolling down to Midtown Mall and getting takeaway pizza (and truly delicious cookies) from Harry’s just down the road to eat on the bed while watching TV. We’re simple folk.

On Day 9, we managed to bestir ourselves, despite the heat, to get the bus to Mid Beach. It was scorching under the sun, but we then walked down to SOBE–with some ankle-deep detours into the surf, and on my part, bemoaning not bringing along swimmers–for some photos and gelato, which I may or may not have spilled on myself (it was hot, gelato is drippy, I got distracted and then I was gelato-ed).

Having seen SOBE, however, we’d had our fill of the crowds, and headed south to the Vizcaya museum and gardens on Biscayne Bay. The only word I can think of to describe this palatial estate is decadent. It’s absolutely gigantic, filled to the brim with priceless treasures and artefacts, every inch of it speaking to a single man’s wealth and desire for opulence. I mean… The ‘banquet hall’ tapestries once belong to Elizabeth Barrett Browning (as an English major, this called to me!), and there were numerous pieces that were there for little other reason that they were expensive and rumoured to have interesting or unique historical value (as in they were allegedly once the property of a Pope). We finished the day with Harry’s pizza again, fairly footsore from the long day of touristing.

Luckily we didn’t forget anything when we packed up to leave Miami on Monday morning, but we did manage to overlook the fact that we were running low on fuel until we were on the highway and the light was firmly on. Oops. And I also managed to screw up navigation duties, miss our turn off and add about another hour onto our drive. Double oops. Despite these minor (or not so minor) whoopsies, we made it to the Cocoa Beach Aerial Adventures before our booking time and proceeded to reach dizzying heights, quite literally, as we prowled our way through the differing levels of obstacles. No one will be shocked to hear that James was an utter beast at this whole business and I was alternately somewhat awesome and fairly klutzy, but we had a good time, despite James’s rope burn!

Sweaty and tired, and pretty hungry because we hadn’t yet had lunch, we made our way to the Kennedy Space Centre. If you are ever in Orlando, I would like to wholeheartedly recommend it: they have an actual space shuttle there people. There was also a cool simulator which, despite the fact that other humans pushing and shoving to get in meant that we couldn’t sit together, was pretty intense. And funny (I might have been making silly noises).

We made our way to Bill Frederick Park on Turkey Lake, erected our magnificent borrowed tent before dark and hustled out again for some dine-in Indian at a local restaurant. We were relieved to fall onto our lung-inflated air mattress, and despite the proximity of our campsite to the freeway, get a decent night’s sleep in preparation for the wild day we had lined up on Tuesday.

Oh Tuesday! Day 11—the songs that will be written about Day 11, when we laced on our walking shoes and strolled blissfully into Orlando’s Universal Studios! Quite literally, since parking at Universal is TWENTY DOLLARS (for those of you who don’t understand my indignation, parking at Australian theme parks is free), we decided to park about 2 miles away and walk in. It’ll shock no one to hear that we had an absolutely brilliant day. We went on pretty much every ride, waved our wands in Hogsmeade, felt really sick in some of the 3D motion rides, took some fun (and ridiculous!) photos, ate a very late lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe and gorged ourselves (before foolishly trying to fit these milkshakes in as well) and basically had the best day in the world.

As some of you may have figured from last week’s post, I’m actually back at uni now and, not surprisingly, there’s a bit of work to do… Which I haven’t been doing at all, really. Thus, it’s probably for the best that the vast majority of Wednesday was spent studying—though we managed to fit in a pretty killer torsion bar workout (we’re still sore) and a lunchtime (brunchtime) trip to the Cheesecake Factory, where we pretty much gorged ourselves silly. That’s actually kind of standard for this trip. But since most of the day was also rainy, it worked out quite well; though on Wednesday night we were a little nervous about the pain of packing up. In fact, we set our alarm for 0630 in the hopes that we could precisely time our pack up to avoid the rain… And we got lucky! The tent was still soaking, but we weren’t being actively rained on as we farewelled Orlando yesterday morning and headed on north, out of Florida and into Savannah, Georgia!

We stopped at Denny’s for breakfast (really powering through the American fast food chain restaurants at the moment), just behind a family of five children out for breakfast with their mum. I know it’s not the point of doing good deeds, but I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t take this chance to to tell you that James paid for their meal before we headed off, and didn’t hang around for thanks.

I was, for some reason, pretty flogged by the time we got into Savannah and checked into our hotel—in and of itself a wonderful change from camping!—but we roused ourselves to do some looking around. We were staying fairly central to the historic district and walked through the nearby art gallery as well as stopping for some Savannah Square Pops.

As you can see from our photo, Savannah has a lot to offer, including the thrilling opportunity to participate in a pug meet up this weekend, which sadly we’ll miss (though, personally, I’d prefer a golden retriever or German Shepherd meet up!). Regardless, the central park, the beautiful array of small boutique shops and quiet leafy streets were lovely and I would warmly recommend Savannah based just on these… Let alone the epicurean delight we were immersed in for dinner.

‘The Grey’ in Savannah provided us with the best possible meal one could imagine. We worked our way through a couple of cocktails each, including some off-list delights (if anyone knows me, they know that due to my eldest brother’s cocktail prowess, I’m a bit of a cocktail snob and I always want to have ‘off-list’ drinks!) and then began a culinary adventure that is undoubtedly the finest we’ve been on in the US… Possibly anywhere. After half a dozen oysters, we devoured some succulent buffalo meatballs before feasting on the piece de resistance: a 37oz ribeye steak with sides, which was masterfully prepared, tender, rich and absolutely out-of-this-world. Some sweet and smooth chocolate panna cotta rounded out the meal before we were seen out the door with Cesare Florrido cream sherries. Holy wow.

We were lucky enough to have two incredible (and multitasking!) bartenders on when we visited The Grey, who not only prepared drinks, but performed serving roles as well, and were hospitable, welcoming and all-in-all wonderful! Plus, one of them looked kind of like iconic Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly.

I also promised Scott that “you’ll be an internet sensation!” so if you could all please oblige me by sharing this photo far and wide, and getting the wonderful Scott (a.k.a. Ned Kelly) the recognition he surely deserves, that would be excellent.

I found out on our way out of the hotel this morning, when I started mumbling “cows with guns,” that James has never seen/heard Cows with Guns: don’t worry, I’ve rectified that problem. For those of you who are similarly living half a life, check it out at the link above (you’re welcome). As for the roadtrip, today we’re heading to Charleston, South Carolina. We’ve officially passed the 3000 mile mark today (4800km in 2 weeks!) and we’re looking forward to the coming week in the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee.

For those of you who can’t stomach 2000 words of these travelling shenanigans:

D8: Key West – Miami

D9: Miami

D10: Miami – Orlando

D11: Universal Studios, Orlando

D12: Orlando

D13: Orlando – Savannah

Tune back in next week to hear how we’ve fared! Have a great weekend everyone.

— Ana.