Sunday 22nd October 2006

Quite a slow start really, 9.30 am actually, and we had decided to go to St Armand’s Circle (roundabout to you Brits) to have a good American breakfast. It’s still early in the Florida season and so quite a few of the restaurants were closed but we found a place where we had to wait for 25 minutes, but it was worth the wait. The sun was shining and Noel was beginning to feel the effect of the late night and also seemed to be getting Jennifer’s cold. We did a slow walk around the circle and looked at the shops and then Adrian and Joyce headed home to complete their upgrading of their apartment.

We continued to look around the shops for a while but it was getting hot and when you are suffering from a cold the heat does not go well with it.

The Circle at Sarasota is a very nicely laid out area with some great shops selling everything from antiques to watches to some really good glassware and knick knacks. A nice place to visit, if only the breakfast had not been so large we would have hit the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream parlour. We took a slow drive back to the apartment as by this time Noel had a sore throat which was as good a sign that a cold was on the way.

We hope to visit the Antique car museum later this week and also several other attractions. However the single biggest attraction is the weather, it is very hot in summer but very nice in winter when the ‘snow birds’ arrive. Snow birds are people who live in Northern USA/Canada who come down to escape the harsh winters and they rent apartments for months or arrive down in their battleship size RV’s (recreational vehicles ) which is a good name as you could put Weybridge Recreation Park in to some of these vehicles.

It was a very nice weekend and so we spent a quiet evening in the apartment watching the television adverts which were continually interrupted by programmes.