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South Florida Day Trips

Spending a Day in Coral Gables and Coconut Grove

Let’s start by saying that this area isn’t anything like the cacophony of downtown Miami amongst its continual hustle and bustle. The quiet and serene feeling of these narrow streets lined with mature banyan trees almost makes you forget the glass towers and masses of tourists rushing between beaches and cruise ports and trendy restaurants. […]

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Trip Ideas

Tarpon Springs, Home of the Sponge Divers

Located on the Gulf Coast in Pinellas County, Tarpon Springs has a population of only about 25,000. While the region was first settled in 1876, it was named Tarpon Springs in 1882 because of the plentitude of jumping tarpons in the bay that were spotted by the settlers. With the arrival of the railroad in […]

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South Florida Day Trips

Exploring Fort De Soto Park

This lovely park is located in the Tampa Bay Area and makes for a delightful place to relax and chill out. For us this was the perfect spot to stop for lunch and stretch our legs as we made our way up the coast to Tarpon Springs from Miami.

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Trip Ideas

Visiting Florida’s Natural Springs in Crystal River, Homosassa, and Rainbow Springs

This post should be called swimming with manatees in Crystal River, but it turned out that an unseasonably warm February in Florida made for conditions that sent the manatees on their way back to the Gulf by the time we arrived. We still got to see a few manatees in Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park […]

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Scuba Diving

Diving the Ancient Mariner off Deerfield Beach

We finally got our chance to dive the Ancient Mariner wreck off Deerfield Beach. It was the perfect February day with lots of sunshine and flat seas. We love Florida winters, and even the 75-degree seas aren’t so bad with a 3mm suit and a hoodie 🙂 With 30-40 feet visibility and only a small […]

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Scuba Diving

Diving the Wrecks of Grenada’s South Coast

One of the things that drew us to Grenada was the Bianca C wreck. Being able to scuba dive on a sunken cruise ship is something you don’t get to do every day—unless you live in Grenada! In addition to wrecks, we found that there were some remarkable, healthy and colorful reefs, making for some […]

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Dive Vacations Scuba Diving

Scuba Diving Vacation at the True Blue Bay Resort in Grenada

As scuba divers, we have come to enjoy the idea of dive resorts; basically hotels that cater to divers by having a local dive operator, offer special rates that include diving, and are of course located at interesting dive destinations. To date we’ve tried three of these: Compass Point, Anthony’s Key and now True Blue […]

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Trip Ideas

Visiting St George’s, Grenada and Environs

We had an excellent guide, Mr. Edwin Frank who was a public relations officer for the Grenada Board of Tourism for many years before retiring to do his own tours. Starting with St. George’s, we got to visit the harbor area and go through many of the narrow streets learning the names, the history and […]

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South Florida Day Trips

Visiting the Everglades National Park

The Everglades cover a large area of southern Florida and are a unique ecosystem. Mostly made up of marshland and coastal mangroves, the environment attracts over 300 species of aquatic birds. Both alligators and crocodiles can also be found in the Everglades making it one of the only places in the world where these two […]

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Trip Ideas

Visiting Beijing, China

China was my first culture shock trip—nothing was like anything I had ever seen before. This was probably the first time I really felt like I was surrounded by strange language, different customs, and perhaps truly traveling. Twenty years ago locals got around by bicycle and bike lanes made up two thirds of the major roads. […]