Florida Trip - Saturday, 5 Feb 11

Yesterday turned out to be another pool day…which was fine with us. This condo complex has mostly older owners/renters who have been here forever so there are a lot of unwritten rules regarding what you should and shouldn’t do. Taking the cover off the pool, and letting that heat out, has a whole set of rules that only the oldies know.

I was really pissed off…the sun is shining, the pool is heated and I want to swim…and had made up my mind THE COVER WAS COMING OFF TODAY! I did do a quick walk around the condos looking for someone sitting out to ask first but didn’t see anyone. By the time I got back up to our place and started yakking at Wayne, two of the ‘regulars’, who just sit in the sun (by the covered pool) were staking out their territory. Back down I went…and they were having a conversation about why the cover was still on the pool. I added my ten cents worth, and off came the cover. It was amazing as within minutes 8 different people came down and commented on how nice it was to be using the pool???????? New blood rules!

Today we got in the car at 9 am to go to the local Saturday farmer’s market and pulled back in at the condo at 6:30 pm. After buying some wonderful fresh veggies, we saw a sign for ‘Pancake Breakfast’ being run by a local group so chowed down on waffles, eggs, ham, and all the trimmings. On the way back to the car, I made the mistake of going into a new children’s consignment shop and broke the ‘No more shopping for Grandchildren’ vow. Consignment shops are BIG business here as well as Thrift Shops…there seems to be one on every corner. This one was amazing! It was huge, well stocked, extraordinarily clean (she irons everything before putting it on hangers), and the prices were awesome. My girls are going to look so-o-o cute this summer!

Our next jaunt took us to North Port which is about 45 miles from here, between Ft Myers and Sarasota. We were looking at rentals on the internet and can clearly see that once you go inland, even a little, the rental prices drop significantly. There are beautiful homes in North Port that are renting for the same as what we are paying for a 1 bdrm….the cost to that is we are much closer to a beach. It’s a nice area and we took a side trip to Englewood. Wayne couldn’t understand why the listings for Englewood were so high but once we got there, we understood! There were miles and miles of gorgeous beach and million dollar (plus) mansions and condos all along the road. We are getting more attached to Cape Coral and will visit a couple of real estate places next week to see what listing they have before we commit to another area for next year.

The (pool) rumour mill says Cape Coral is #2 in Florida for foreclosures and I have to say that I’ve never seen so many vacant houses, many with foreclosure stickers on the front door. Others just look like the owners walked away from them. Even in Englewood, we saw so many ‘For Sale’ signs on those big houses and one which was started but clearly has been left unfinished for a couple of years. Canadians haven’t experienced the recession in the same way Americans have and you don’t see any new home construction here…at all.

We couldn’t go two days in a row without shopping and Bealls was having a big sale this weekend. Wayne stocked up on shorts/t-shirts and I hit the Bealls Outlet for 3 bathing suits…at less than the price I’d pay for one at home—assuming I could find one that fit in all the right places! We ended up at Rib City for a mondo feed of the best ribs in the world. Carol would have been disgusted at the plate of food that was put in front of us….and more so at the gusto with which we attacked it!

Tomorrow is Super Bowl. We’ll catch a few minutes of it just to say we turned it on and to catch up on the weather frustrations in Dallas. I suspect we’ll spend the afternoon around the pool. Until next time, hugs and kisses to all. xx