The Brits in Florida and the Old South

While we were in Baton Rouge, we got a call from Jean and Gordon- they had a few weeks and wanted to meet us in the States! So, we beat feet back to Titusville and TGO to get ready for a British adventure!

Jean and Gordon arrived and we got them settled into their “guest suite” at TGO. The house actually worked quite well with guests – quite a change from the close quarters in Boston. We did face the challenge of how to make this trip memorable. After all, their first two visits to the States had been NYC, Boston and New Orleans. Here we were in Florida- home to Mickey and Minnie – with explicit instructions that Disney was not to be a part of our itinerary! No worries- we managed to pack the two weeks with Florida sights and a road trip. While we didn’t make the Mickey pilgrimage, we did spend a day at Universal Studios in Orlando. We had to make the Brits experience at least one theme park in Florida.

We explored the Titusville area- having some up-close and personal looks at the manatees and a day at the Kennedy Space Center.

We headed north to take in October’s Bike Week in Daytona Beach. We found a few great biker bars where the people watching was astounding and the beers very large!

Florida was not going to hold our attention for the entire time- although Jean did enjoy the sun and got her daily dose of Florida sunshine. So, we decided to try a road-trip in the motorhome. 40 feet and 4 adults was close quarters- but we managed to make it work. We headed north to Charleston to give them a flavor of the historic and elegant south. We did the traditional walking tour of the historic district with a wonderfully proper Southern lady who explained the history and architecture of this gorgeous city. Then- we got on board with the “Black Tour” of Charleston. As we walked onto the packed bus, the 4 white folks were asked to “move to the back of the bus” accompanied by hoots of laughter from everyone. We knew it was going to be a great tour. We learned a whole other side of the city from this tour- hearing the stories of slave labor, slave uprisings, as well as a host of other things we didn’t know about the black culture. We were quite taken with the old wives tales that everyone contributed…especially the one about putting menstrual blood into dirty rice and serving it to your man to assure that he would be yours forever! Gordon’s going to think twice if Jean serves him dirty rice at home.

We finished off our tour with a stop at Martha Lou’s and had some of her famous fried chicken, cornbread and collard greens.

We ate our way through Charleston – from Martha Lou’s to Bowen’s Island to Poogan’s Porch to The Wreck…..shrimp and oysters and fried food with lots of wine and beer!

We got up on Sunday morning ready to head to Savannah….until we tried to pull the slide in- and it didn’t move. Fortunately, John the handy man and Gordon the engineer managed to figure out how to pull the slide in and we were on our way. Savannah really captured the beauty of the south and it got a slightly higher grade on sheer beauty by the Brits. We did the standard trolley tour and the mandatory viewing of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”

The time flew by- and we were saying goodbye to the Brits. The house seemed pretty empty without them!