More thoughts on Florida

This is what I wrote to a gf at work about my trip to Florida.

Florida was alot like California in some respects. You need a car to get anywhere you want to go. Some areas are nice and some are not so nice. They have a Highway 1 like our PCH which sometimes goes near the ocean or the beach and is also called the Dixie Highway or A1A - which is free. They also have a toll road called the Florida Turnpike which works like the Fastpass here and which I think is bigger than the regular freeway called the I-95 that goes north and south the entire length of the state. Going to Miami is like going to LA for us. Going to the Florida Keys is like going to Catalina for us, except you can drive or boat to the Keys. Going to Worth Avenue in Palm Beach is like the Rodeo Drive of south Florida. I stayed in West Palm Beach, which was nice and old and safe. The hotel I stayed at was actually located in the historical district which also had a sprinkling of art, restaurants, and antique shops.. The hotel was cute, clean and cheap and everyone was really nice to me. It had a sushi bar and a yarn shop across the street - how perfect was that? They have tons of bars and gambling everywhere. Down the street from where I stayed, there was the Palm Beach Kennel Club, aka greyhound racing nightly and they also have a huge poker room. They have legalized gambling on the indian land there like in California, too. I saw the 5 story Seminole Hard Rock Casino where Anna Nicole Smith died - that was off of the turnpike during the drive to the Key's on Thursday. I ate conch fritters (it's a local shellfish) when I went to the Holiday Isle on Islamorada. Oh, because it's so hot most the time, some bars stay open later than 2AM. I also located a Super Walmart . It was open 24 hours a day and included a full grocery store inside. (An amazing thing to people in Southern California where they have been just about banned everywhere they tried to open one.) I went to the Keys on Thursday (my friend drove), kept it local on Friday and picked-up guides of the Palm Beach Visitors Bureau and had dinner at a wonderful Cuban restaurant down the street from the hotel on Dixie Highway. On Saturday, OT got up real early, had breakfast at McDonalds, gassed up the rental car and I drove four hours north to St. Augustine. I really liked it there. Oh yeah, the one thing I do not like about Florida is the humidity. When I came out of the airport on Wednesday night to locate my rental car, I fest this big blast of hot air and then I began to sweat immediately and I did not stop until I got back into the airport to leave - it's that humid there. They have these kidney disease billboards all over the place, so I bought water to drink which I rarely ever do here in fear of becoming sick and dehydrated. It was a nice trip. If I get to go again, I'll stay in St. Augustine though. I don't know what it is about that city that draws me to it, but it feels like home.