Florida Vacations by Ruth Paget
When I was pregnant with my daughter Florence in Paris (France), I went to a cocktail party for the new American Consul General and sipped orange juice, which was available at an American cocktail party.
While I was chatting, there was a tombola (US East Coast-speak for a raffle) for a pair of airplane tickets to Florida. The Consul General called my name, and I was the giddy recipient of the tickets.
I was thrilled at the idea of leaving cold, rainy Paris in December for warm Miami.
My husband Laurent could not believe I won the tickets when I returned home. We decided to spend New Year’s in the U.S. and asked our bosses for vacation time. Our bosses duly noted that prize winnings have to be reported on taxes and gave us leave.
Terrorism briefly crossed my mind as the U.S. was to aid Kuwait in its fight against Iraq and was building an international alliance to do just that. Sunshine and orange juice, though, chased any negative thoughts from my mine. I could hardly wait to go.
The trip from Paris seemed endless. Once we had taken off, the captain announced that one of the engine’s generators was not working. The plane, therefore, had to be rerouted in order to be sixty minutes away from an airport at any one time.
The new route took us over Northern Scotland, Iceland, Greenland, and Canada’s Arctic North. The clear skies over Greenland made it possible to see icebergs.
I spent two hours glued to my window while looking at the white scene below with pointy islands of ice floating in the water. I remembered a book I had read in high school called Kabloona by Gontran de Poncins, who had lived with the Inuit of Northern Canada. He wrote about how he began to distinguish different kinds of snow and the color white just as the Inuit did among his many observations of life in Arctic Canada.
I had plenty of time to think, because we arrived late in Atlanta. We missed our connecting flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
We arrived at our hotel by 9 pm after sleeping from Atlanta to Miami in first class on the plane. We were starved the next day and ate one of the hugest breakfasts I had ever eaten – two eggs, two sausage links, two pieces of bacon, a buttermilk biscuit with gravy for me, and home fries. Next, I ate three buttermilk pancakes and drank half a carafe of orange juice.
We waddled out of the restaurant and drove up along the coast to Palm Beach in our rental car. As we passed George Bush Boulevard and mansions with palm trees in the front yard, I thought the American Dream had worked well for these homeowners. The warm sun felt great. We drove with the windows down and let the warm, sultry breeze flow through the car.
We returned to the hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping off jetlag. We ate dinner at Bennigan’s and talked about eating brunch at Bennigan’s in Chicago when we lived there and watching football as we ate.
The next day, we went to Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. I was not expecting much out of the trip except long lines. I was pleasantly surprised. We went to Tom Sawyer’s Island, rode on the Thunder Mountain Roller Coaster, and all sorts of other non-jarring rides for the pregnant lady, including the world famous spinning teacups in Fantasyland.
My favorite ride was through the Haunted Mansion. Disney made interesting use of holography in this ride, but I will not reveal the surprise on this blog.
To celebrate 1991, we ate another huge breakfast and came back to the room to watch the Cotton Bowl (Texas versus Miami – winner) and the Orange Bowl (Colorado – winner versus Notre Dame). We slept some more and went to see the movie Havana. It felt so good to feel the night breeze as we left the film.
Finally, we had a non-holiday to visit Miami. We visited the Vizcaya Estate built by industrialist James Deering in the nineteenth century.
Vizcaya looks much older than the nineteenth century period it was built in, though. Deering had the mansion built around a gate and a room he had purchased in Europe. The mansion’s location on the oceanfront is what makes the place spectacular. The ship-shaped breakfront on the oceans adds to the charm.
The lush, waterfront gardens invited touring.
You could no longer take a gondola ride through them and there was trash in the canals.
We went to the Seaquarium after that. I bought a book of games to play with children in the car in the gift shop.
I wanted to try Cuban food, so we ate at Don Pepe near our hotel on Commercial Road. I like the beans, rice, and fried plantains. I forgot what my main dish was, but I could make a meal out of fried plantains.
The next day at Epcot Center, we ate at the restaurant and sat right next to the aquarium window. We ate and watched swordfish, turtles, stingrays, and schools of fish go by.
The country pavilions at Epcot were most interesting for shopping, but I did like the Chinese one for a film about the Guiling Mountains and the gondola ride through the Mexican one that summed up Mexican history.
After Epcot day, we went back to Miami for a trolley car tour that lasted 90 minutes. The tour took us back to Vizcaya and the Seaquarium to start and, then, went through Coconut Grove and Coral Gables. We learned that in Coral Gables you have only sixteen minutes to keep your garage door open and that they have neighborhood controls to maintain community standards.
We drove by the outdoor domino park in Little Havana and learned that the players never lose concentration even for a honking trolley.
The day before we left, we went to Miami Beach. Laurent swam and I read. When Laurent got out of the water, we went to a bar and played pool before going back to Don Pepe’s for dinner.
Years later, I was able to see the devastation that hurricanes can wreak on beautiful Florida as Laurent and I went through Panama City on Florida’s panhandle after Hurricane Michael had come through and sheared off the tops of the palm trees.
Destin, a richer community just a few miles down the road, had escaped the hurricane unscathed.
I am not sure if I will travel to Florida again, but I am thankful for the tombola tickets for a youthful adventure.
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks (Japan) and Marrying France
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| Ruth Paget Photo |
