In July 2000 I was invited to speak on the subject of Web Design & Hosting at the Shareware Industry Conference, in Tampa, Florida, USA.  I was pleased to accept the invitation and since I had never been to America before I thought I’d make it into a bit of an adventure and, starting in Miami, tour around Florida for a week before the conference.

 

I booked my flights with Virgin Atlantic and flew into Miami airport.  The flight was 9 hours but I had sat in the aircraft for 8 hours prior to leaving Gatwick! Why they didn’t disembark us I don’t know, and I’m sure that wouldn’t happen now with all the fuss about deep vein thrombosis.

When I eventually got to Miami airport it was 10.30pm at night. So I was faced with navigating myself, alone, from the airport to my hotel on Ocean drive, in the dark, in a left hand drive car on the wrong side of the road. It was, err, interesting.

I had splashed out and booked a suite at The Bentley hotel on the sea front at Ocean Drive in Miami. It was only a small hotel but very pleasant indeed.  Thanks to a healthy dose of jet lag, the next morning I was wide awake at 5am, so I got up and went for a walk along the beach until the seafront cafes started servicing breakfast.

The car I had hired for the duration of my trip was a Chrysler LHS – a 3.5 litre V6 allegedly producing 253 bhp, but I don’t know where those 253 bhp were, I think it left at least half of them back at the airport car park!  It was very comfy though and with an automatic gearbox and cruise control, an ideal way to cruise around Florida.

The next week was spent driving around; I drove all the way through the Florida Keys to Key West, up the coast to the Kennedy Space Centre (which was by far the highlight of the whole trip) and eventually all the way round the southern tip of Florida, through the Everglades and up the west coast to Tampa.

The Shareware Industry Conference was great fun.  I got to meet in person a lot of people I had been doing business electronically with for a few years prior, and my session on Web Design & Hosting was well received by the delegates.

I left Florida via Orlando airport, but I never bothered visiting the theme parks. They just don’t interest me.  It was a really enjoyable trip overall, and I’d like to see some more of the USA another time.