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The morning start to Gatwick for our trip to Tampa Airport proved to be a start at 2.15.pm in the afternoon which gave us plenty of time to look round this busy airport. It was four years since I had started a holiday from there, and over twenty five years since I flew across the Atlantic Ocean. Then I flew alone and found the situation very frightening. However with a little Dutch courage followed by a lunch, and a most attentive hostess, who organised earphones so I could hear the film which was then shown on a single screen to all, I survived. It was "Cabaret" and I got so immersed in the film I forgot all about the rolling waves below where I saw a liner of those days crossing to England in what looked to be a rolling sea. So then and there I lost all fear of flying in this huge new Jumbo Jet, so I had no fears at all this time and enjoyed every bit of the journey, also having Jane and Tony for company. They were going to stay a few days with our friends before making their way to New York to join the Portsmouth Choral Union choir for their USA tour. We landed at 7.15.pm and were met by our friends and with great excitement and were soon on our way to Largo and the Condominium Complex, "Condo" for short, where they now live. There was a certain amount of cloud that evening but it was very warm. We had flown above the clouds all the way from Gatwick so had no idea what the weather was like until we burst upon Tampa Airport and found a very blue sky. After nearly an hour on these very straight wide roads where the traffic was busy but controlled by road crossings and lights of the grid system, we turned off into the complex of buildings which made up the Condominium. I found it very strange when getting out of the car which was air conditioned, so cool, to meet the heat of somewhere about 90 degrees outside. There's something wrong here I thought, but it was always the same as everywhere inside there was air conditioning, also all the windows one could see out but no-one could see in. The whole complex was built on the grip system which makes everywhere look alike, and once when I wandered off on my own I got lost but fortunately came across the swimming pool of which I knew its location. The front door opened into a lobby and small sitting room, there followed a lounge with television, also large sofa that could be a spare bed, and then on to the dining area with lovely wooden round table in a dining space quite close to a bar looking into a very modern kitchen. Running along the side of all this, were two lovely en-suite bedrooms. Now where did I sleep these first few days? The sofa bed was let down at night and a beautiful trellis screen was fixed around to give some privacy and I slept peacefully except the first night when I dreamed that I was sleeping on the veranda of our old seaside beach hut in Sussex, where the sea was coming up the steps, after I found no sea near I soon was asleep again. Afterwards I always called it my veranda, and was very comfortable. Up the next morning about 9 o'clock - "Jet Lag" what was that? We were off for a swim on one of the main beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. The sky was blue, the sun was hot and the sea was like swimming in your bath water, and the waves were just right for surfing if you caught them at the right moment. When young we used to surfboard on the Newquay coast in Cornwall, getting very cold, and bruised by the surfboards, but here you could stay in as long as you wished before coming out to dry off in the sun which was really hot. Utter bliss, I could have stayed all day, but now it was time to visit the Bird Sanctuary where birds who had lost a wing, mainly Pelicans, and other birds that had been injured, either flew in on their own or were taken there when found, and were nursed and cared for until they could fly again in the wild. It was an enormous aviary with hundreds of birds of different species, kept going by voluntary funds from people who loved birds. From here we went to see one of the American new Malls, pronounced Mauls. Shops of every kind were to be found on both sides of these large covered in areas with stalls down the middle and selling any and everything you could think of, after this it was home for a shower and a rest before we set out to see a baseball match at a town called St Petersburg on the other coast of this peninsular. After getting to know the rules of this game it became quite interesting otherwise to me the players seemed to spend their time running off the pitch and back again. After a very full day I was glad of my bed on the veranda. Ruby Bullock |
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page last updated 1 JULY 2000 |
