Miami Little Habana/Havana

The final part of our trip to Florida, 2009 is visiting a downtown in Miami.
To tell the truth, I hadn't expected much for the Miami downtown, but Little Havana was a really wonderful town worth visiting.

Southwest 8th street or Calle Ochos is a Little Havana’s main street.

Once you go to Calle Ochos, you almost feel like you've been transported to a Hispanic and Caribbean culture island.

It is said that, since the Revolution, more than 300.000 Cubans have emigrated in Miami area.

You can hear Cuban music from colourful stores and restaurants. There are Cuban grocery stores where you can buy not only local foods and tropical drinks but also hand rolled cigars.

I drank a cup of coffee in a souvenir shop: the taste was strong and too sweet for my wife Kiyono, but it was very nice for me.

The Maximo Gomez Park (or Domino Park) is where the older generation of Cubans meets to play dominoes.

Local farmers opened a tropical fruits shop at the street.

Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum

I visited the Ernest Hemingway House with my family in Key West, Florida in early April this year.
The Hemingway Home & Museum is located near a prominent lighthouse close to the Southern coast of the island.
It's a wonderful crisp sunny day for both driving 129 miles (207 km) from Miami and visiting several tourists' spots there.

We joined a guide tour in the museum.

I've never met Ernest Hemingway before, of course, but my image of him was very close to the tour guide himself.

The way of his explanation of Ernest and the stories of the site were worth the admission fees.

Key West was one of the top priority places in my trip to Florida.
We enjoyed great views while driving and visiting the beautiful Key West island very much.

"Robert Is Here Fruit Stand" in Florida

For visiting the Everglades National Park, we stayed three nights in Homestead, Florida in early April.
It took a couple of hours from our hotel to Whitewater Bay area of the Everglades where wild dolphins were living.
On our way to the park, we found a cozy fruits shop called “Robert Is Here Fruit Stand.”

They offer various tropical fruits, vegetables and milkshakes made from their fruits. We had a cup of Canestel or egg fruit milkshake which was completely unfamiliar to us. The taste was very nice: I promise you can enjoy it!

They also featured a mini petting zoo where there were emus, donkeys, goats, parrots, ducks, chickens, geese, tortoises and more. Amazingly they lived in the same area together! The staff members were feeding animals with fresh tomatoes and watermelons there.

Everglades National Park

Leaving behind Thomas A. Edison Museum in Fort Myers, we headed for the Everglades National Park in south Florida.

Where is the best place to visit in Florida? It's very difficult to answer.

But, if you like the nature, the most I want to recommend you to visit is the Everglades National Park.

Disney Resorts, SeaWorld and Universal Studios are, of course, very nice and worth visiting.
But, to watch and feel the wildlife by yourself is quite different from those theme parks or museums.

I uploaded two videos taken in the Everglades National Park. One is featured with wild dolphins and the other is with wild birds and alligators on May 3 and April 26.

Today, I've uploaded pictures of alligators living just next to the route US41. Those alligators always hear the sound of traffic.

Thomas A. Edison Museum

We went to Fort Myers on our trip in Florida. We cooked waffle with honey by ourselves for breakfast at the hotel we stayed. Hot waffles were really delicious.

Do you know who invented an electric waffle iron?

...

Yes, Thomas A. Edison did in 1910.

We went to Edison Museum or “Edison and Ford Winter Estates” in Fort Myers after finishing our breakfast.

There are three tours. The lab tour is 15 minutes and the estate tour is an hour and a half, and the gardens ...

We took the lab tour. After the tour, we watched a video about Edison and looked exhibitions carefully in the museum.

The upper left picture shows an original electric waffle iron.

There was the first banyan tree in the U.S. planted by Edison. The tree, it is said, originally only 4 feet (1.2 m) tall, covers 400 feet (120 m) now.

Some say that it is an overpriced exhibition, 20$ per person but I really enjoyed staying at the Estates.

Take Me Out to the Tampa Bay Rays

We went to the Major League Baseball team Tampa Bay Rays' ballpark called Tropicana Field.
The ballpark is located in St. Petersburg, Florida.

For no baseball game was held on the day, we had nothing to do but walking around the stadium to see nearby area.
After walking about half around the ballpark, luckily we found one entrance gate was opening.

I asked one of the maintenance workers of the baseball field to let us come in to take a glance at the inside of the stadium.

The worker at first had said NO, but I asked again and again, then told us, “OK, come in but quick, very quick.”

We walked inside the playfield for a few minutes and took some pictures.

I thought I would someday watch a real major league baseball game in the States and sing a song 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame.'

"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is a song which is the unofficial anthem of baseball. The song is traditionally sung between the halves of the seventh inning of a baseball game.

My wife Kiyono loves the song.

'Take Me Out to the Ballgame'

Take me out to the ball game

Take me out to the crowd

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack

I don't care if I never get back

Let me root, root, root

for the home team

If they don't win, it's a shame

For it's one, two, three strikes

You're out

At the old ball game.

WAL*MART and Panda Express

Visiting tourist spots and eating at luxurious restaurants must be fun to most tourists. Of course they are also great fun to me.

But, sometimes I want to go to local supermarkets or franchised food shops where I buy food and drink to eat at hotel.

Do you know why?

One of the reasons is that I’m the only driver in my family while traveling. So, I can’t drink as much beer as I want when I eat at a restaurant in the States. On the other hand, I feel very relaxed drinking beer at a hotel.

Another reason is that it’s fun for me to find differences of size of food and prices comparing to those in Japanese supermarkets.

No need to say, everything is cheaper and bigger in the States than in Japan.

Who eats that big size ice cream, and how?

Melons are far far cheaper in the States than in Japan. I guess that one melon costs approximately one tenth!

I’m a fun of Panda Express fast food shop. They sell delicious foods at low prices with lovely free fortune cookies. The Fortune Cookie is a thin, crisp cookie baked around a piece of paper with words of wisdom.

St. Petersburg in Florida

The next morning, leaving behind Disney Resort Orlando, we went to St. Petersburg. It took us about four hours' driving.

One of my favorite pleasures of traveling foreign countries is seeing wild animals which we could see only in a zoo, in Japan.

There were lots of wild pelicans flying, swimming and walking in St. Petersburg.

Rina is looking carefully at a pelican awhile.

We visited Salvador Dalí Museum. I thought Dalí was really a genius.

St. Petersburg is a very beautiful city. We walked around the pier area and went to the library of University of South Florida to get some information of Florida.

Disney Resort Epcot in Orlando

There are four different Disney theme parks and two water parks in, Florida.
* Magic Kingdom Park
* Epcot
* Disney's Animal Kingdom Park
* Disney's Hollywood Studios
* Disney's Blizzard Beach
* Disney's Typhoon Lagoon
After visiting to the Seaworld, we went to Disney Resort Epoct. That was our third day in Orlando. We couldn't ask for better weather from the morning Spaceship Earth to the night fireworks.

Wherever you may go, you can find Mickey's face in Epcot. We are having lunch in a restaurant. Even on the milk pack, Mickey is printed.

Spaceship Earth is the iconic and symbolic structure of Epcot. (Up Right)

We went to the Morocco Pavilion, part of the World Showcase in Epcot and drunk a cup of mint tea.
IllumiNations is a 12-minute show featuring fireworks, laser light effects , fountain water and a soundtrack.