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After twelve hours spent in the airplane with overlanding in NewYork, you’re landing at Ft. Lauderdale International Airport. Ft. Lauderdale is located in Florida, approximately 30 miles North from Miami. When you see Fort Lauderdale from airplane, you realize that the city is built on the water. That’s why many people call it American Venice. There live about
1.2 million inhabitants in Ft. Lauderdale. You can find there vocation houses of many rich people such as president of Budwaiser, president of Oscar Maier and so on. This part of the city is built directly on the water and reminds as Venice. But all canals are wider and houses are modern and expensive. The price of those houses vary from two till ten million dollars.
But there is one exemption. House of „Carbage man“ costs 625 million dollars and it’s regular size house.
Rest of Fort Lauderdale looks like typical American city. You find there downtown with several tall buildings (not skyscrapers) and beaches with sand. The temperature of ocean reaches 33 degrees during the summer. If you pay attention, you can see many different kinds of fishes, sea turtles, ray sting or even shark. About 50 meters from coast coral reef is located.
At this reef, 1 meter long turtles and over one meter long sharks can be found. Even Michelle
Jacque Rousseau (I’m not sure if it’s spelled right) comes there every year. By the beach, many restaurants, bars, discos and shops are located. Everybody wants to visit the Hooter’s, a famous bar with waitress dressed just in tiny swimsuit. Another great place for visitors is the
Baja Beach Club, a very strange discos. Many of those Europeans, who visit this disco, are
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surprised how Americans can behave. Tourists also want to visit Planet Hollywood at Ft..
Lauderdale and buy a T-shirt.
If you have enough time, there are many places to visit in Florida. The most popular are parks located near Orlando, approximately 5 hours of driving from Ft. Lauderdale. You should visit Disneyworld, which consists of four different parks. You would need whole week to visit all of them. Many people choose just one, because they have just one day. The best ones are Magic Kingdom with night parade and fireworks and MGM Studios. Universal
Studios is another great attraction. It’s the right choice for those, who love movies and movie stars. The last one is Sea World, park with many shows, including dolphin show and whale show. By the way, the biggest McDonnald’s is located in Orlando.
If you love rollercosters, don’t forget to visit Bush Gardens in Tampa. You will have chance to ride the fastest rollercoster in the world, which reaches the speed of 140 km/h, you will be 3 seconds weightless and you will find yourself twenty times up side down. This theme park is just for people in good heath condition with good stomach. The park is combination of rollercosters and ZOO, so if you don’t like rollercoster, you can’t shorten waiting for your friends by walking trough ZOO. While is Tampa, you should visit downtown of Tampa and the University of Tampa, which looks like old style British building. This style is common for Europe, but very rare for America.
Another great place to visit in Florida is Kennedy Space Center. If you take bus tour through the Kennedy Space Center, you’ll see the second largest building in the world, in which rockets are completed. The largest painted US flag can be seen on the wall of this building. Then bus takes you to the place from where you can see all launch pads. People comes here to see space shuttle launch. Beside this, they show you building, where Alfa station is being completed, space museum, space shop, rocket park and you can also visit
Imax cinema. There live more than 6,000 alligators at Cape Canaveral and over 300 different
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kinds of other animals. That’s why Cape Canaveral is also a national park. Good idea is to find out rocket and space shuttle schedule and come to see real launch. I’ve done it and it was the greatest moment of my staying in Florida. Especially, when the rocket exploded 33 seconds after the launch. It was the most expensive fireworks I’ve ever seen.
Do you like islands? Do you want to see town, where pirates use to live? Do you want to see the most beautiful sun set in the world? So don’t forget to visit Key West. It takes you to get there four hours by bus from Ft. Lauderdale. You’ll go through many islands of Florida
Keys and cross 43 bridges. One of them is 7 miles long. Movie True Lies with Arnold
Schwarzeneger was made partially at this bridge and Florida Keys. At the Key West, you can find the longest street in the world connecting Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, or
Hamingway house. He lived there for eight years. Don’t forget to take picture at the
Southernmost Point of the USA sign. Those, who like nature, have great opportunity to see a little peace of the third largest coral reef in the world. Glass-bottom ship takes you to the coral reef. You wouldn’t believe what you can see. That’s something you know just from
TV. I don’t recommend you to stay over night at Key West, because prices of hotels are incredible high and moreover, Key West is the capital of gays.
Another place I would recommend you to visit covers almost whole south Florida. I’m talking about the Everglades. It’s basically one to three feet deep water with up to two meters high grass and other plants. Only way of transportation there is airboat. It can ride quite fast.
There live more than one and half million of alligators in Everglades. You can even touch them from airboat if you want to. Everglades is exactly what you can see in many movies.
Are you going from Miami to Tampa? Take an Alligator Hayway which goes through
Everglades.
The last place I’m going to write about is worldwide famous city. Everybody who goes to Florida wants to visit it. Yes, the city is Miami. I had chance to visit it during the
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night and see Coco Walk, market place, which is considered to be the most „in“ place in whole world. My opinion is quite different. Bay Side is another mall with many restaurants including Hard Rock cafe, discos and bars. It’s so colorful that it might remind you casino.
Next to the Bay Side, downtown of Miami is located. We finish our quick trip on South
Beach, where Versage was killed. It’s real center of night life. The street is so crowded that you can’t even walk. Many bars, discos and nightclubs can be found there. South Beach is built in special style named Coco, which is very specific for this part of Miami.
I couldn’t describe whole Florida, but I tried to mention the most important places, attractions and sightseeing of Florida. I mentioned especially those places which I visited during my staying in Florida.
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