A good night’s sleep was ended around 6.30am. Rebecca phoned us around 7am to let us know Dougie and Tom had spent the night in A&E, as Dougie was having some serious breathing issues. At the risk of getting political, they left after five hours still not having seen a doctor and there was no realistic chance they would at any point. Go vote on July 4th! Someone else needs a go now.
We got up and had breakfast in our room and then I made the seven-step journey to the pool to “secure” some beds.
Being the only person at the pool, that was not too hard.
We spent most of the day in the shade due to being burned to a crisp from yesterday on the beach. We moved to different beds three times throughout the day to follow the shade!
We spent a good amount of time in the pool, cooling off and chatting. At some point, I made the long seven-step journey back to the room to get our sandwiches and crisps for lunch.
Mid-afternoon, I captured my impressive exercise stats for the day so far.
You know it’s hot when the locals can’t place all their feet on the hot floor.
At around 3.30 we decided to go for a drive to nowhere in particular. We were hot and if I’m honest I just fancied taking our lovely car out for a spin.
We got dressed and pointed the Jeep south on the A1A. Within a minute or so, as we left the area around Atlantic Avenue we started to see some of the most incredible houses we had ever laid eyes on. Louise, frankly, did a poor job of capturing them.
Delray has some proper wealth in and around it for sure. We drove south for about an hour, just soaking in the sights and at that point made the decision to drive on down to Hollywood, outside of Miami. Why?
Well, back in 1980 when all this Florida madness started for me, we stayed in Hollywood. As most of you will know, the story is that we went to AT Mays Travel Agents in Bolton, as we usually did to book our Spanish holiday and due to a dollar rate of around $2.20 to the pound, they told us we could go to Miami for less money than Spain. The rest is, as they say, history.
It felt silly to be staying so close this time without going to have a look, not that I had any real memories of the trip, which was now 43 years ago! But having lost my Dad recently, I felt the need to go and see where it all started I suppose.
With only 25 miles left on the Sat Nav to get to Hollywood, I wondered why it said we wouldn’t be there for 50 minutes. Well, the bobbins traffic in and around Fort Lauderdale soon explained that. It took all of those 50 minutes, but we were definitely in the “we’ve come too far to not complete this” territory now.
I had no clue where we stayed in 1980, and earlier in the pool when talking to Louise about it, from nowhere the name The Diplomat came to me. I was very spooked when I later looked at Google maps before setting off to see a hotel with that name in Hollywood literally be the first thing I saw when I zoomed in. This was weird.
Now, as we were finally driving along the “front” looking at all the hotels, not too surprisingly nothing really rang a bell. We did go past The Diplomat but it looked huge and it didn’t feel like the place we were at, but in 43 years they could have rebuilt the whole town of course.
When I messaged my Mum and Brother later that evening he seemed to think it was called Hotel Miami and there was one called that too, but it was closed now.
Louise needed the loo before we set off for home, so we stopped off at the nearest place likely to have one so that she could release her very own Whopper.
Whilst she did that I got us both an iced coffee to go and as I sat and waited my phone buzzed with a news alert that Donald Trump had been found guilty in his trial. This was also a bit weird as when we walked back to the car we saw that we were directly across from this.
Today felt a bit surreal all round.
We set the Sat Nav for home, this time using the I-95 rather than the A1A so the time was roughly halved. We found CNN on Sirius Radio and listened to the fallout from the Trump trial as we drove back. Again, the I-95 was busy and stressful.
Thankfully we eventually pulled off it onto the A1A again and tried to snap some more fancy houses on the way back into Delray.
We showered and got ready with a Lyft picking us up at around 9pm
and we headed for Vic & Angelos, an Italian.
We ordered a bottle of Montepulciano and some starters.
Mine was an Eggplant Lasagne thing.
Louise’s Meatball obsession continued.
We both had the same Entree. Nonna’s Sunday Gravy.
You may notice it involved another huge Meatball.
We were defeated and could not finish as of course we had also devoured the bread service.
As we were eating outside on the pavement, we were entertained by a lady pulling up and then reversing straight into a very fancy Range Rover parked behind her. She jumped out and we both thought she’d been drinking. A passerby took some photos of her and her car and they exchanged some strong words. She ended up not leaving a note and driving away. I don’t think there was any damage to be fair.
I didn’t note the price of the meal but I’d wager at $150ish due to the wine.
We strolled up Atlantic Avenue looking for somewhere to get a drink. At our age we want somewhere with something going on, but that’s not too busy and noisy. It’s tragic I know.
Right at the far end of Atlantic Avenue is the Yacht Club, a small bar that tonight had some Karaoke on. As there were no more bars if we walked any further, we decided to go in and to be fair it was good fun.
We had a couple of drinks and watched some “mixed” performances. These included an out-of-time Elvis, a crooner who may have been over 100 years old and a yacht rock guy.
We left at 12 and took a Lyft home where bed was immediate.
Till the next time…..
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