Florida!

We’ve arrived in West Palm Beach Florida for Vikram’s niece’s wedding.  

It was quite a journey although as we put the bags down outside this little air b’nb we noted (as one often does after a long journey) how far we’d come in a day and how simple it was compared to 100 years ago!   

The flight was longer than I’m used to going to the East Coast because of course Florida is so far south, in fact watching the flight map was embarrassingly instructive about how much it hangs below the rest of America.  Key West where we’re going after the wedding barely shows in outline.  I watched the winner of the Best Oscar for animation Flow, beautiful and appealing.  I also finished my book, The Coast Road and started one for work.  

Miami airport is sprawling and the journey to the rental cars complicated and long. I used the new MPC (mobile passport control) app to get into the country.   It was considerably quicker than the huge general line but not as quick as the empty Global Entry line which V spent some time complaining he could have gone through.  

The line at Hertz rental was hideous and it took almost an hour to get a car (notes to future self don’t use Hertz, other rentals seem to have automated check ins) and as we went and found our vehicle I got swiftly bitten by mosquito or something.  Welcome to Florida!

We got caught in a lot of traffic coming out of Miami and Rory, who I’d been texting said he could see me on his ‘find my’ system stuck in traffic!  It’s lovely to be in the same time zone as him for a bit. 

We stopped at Whole Foods before going to find the house as we’d decided it wasn’t worth checking in and going back out to find a restaurant and we were so hungry.  Flying to the US means you always have at least four meals on the extended day and we were ready to eat.  Whole Foods is expensive but they do very good salads and cooked meats or Tofu and cold drinks.  We were quite shocked how many gaps there were on the shelves and a woman walking past was shouting down her phone ‘ the shelves are bare, is this the start of the Trump food shortages?’

So this is the house, it’s one of a pair opposite each other - the owners are the other side of the pool in the second house but we didn’t see them.  Huge blast of mock orange scent as we opened the gate and little lizards scurrying off the path to the door. 

The house is small, two bedrooms (Hannah and Alexander are joining us) but clean and well appointed.  There is also a train track near by and we fell asleep to the soulful sound of an American train whistle.