Florida

I started the new year by travelling to Florida to visit my best friend and see her new house. Little did we know everything that Sarasota has to offer....
The highlight of the week was our trip to the mineral springs not far from her house. Here is an excerpt from their brochure:

"Journey back in time to The Original Fountain of Youth sought by Ponce de Leon in 1513 & used for centuries for healing and relaxing. One of Nature's most unique treasures found on Florida's Gulf Coast".

This is not a lie. It is on the Gulf Coast and it is certainly unique. Populated by a large crowd of Eastern Europeans, all of the signs were in English as well as an eastern European language. Russian, maybe?

Mineral Water Analysis:
Magnesium....609 Silica.....6
Sulfate....1677 Chloride....9300
Sodium.....4937 Carbon Dioxide....6
Potassium....189 Bicarbonate....167
Calcium....512
Total (parts per million)....19,870

DO NOT drink the stuff. Nasty. They have a water cooler full of mineral water by the entrance, and you are only supposed to drink 2 oz a day. My crazy friend tried some.....ewww. She said it was gross.

We sat on the shore enjoying the fresh smell of sulfur and then ventured in the water to walk a lap around the pool. We noticed that everyone was walking in a clockwise direction around the pool and so we didn't want to walk the opposite way and mess with the system. As you can see in the above picture, the middle is divided from the outside ring of the pool by a rope. Why, you might ask? Are there sharks in the middle? We had a "Drain Theory" that everyone was walking clockwise because that is the direction the drains run in FL. I refused to go to the middle of the pool because it was probably the middle of the drain and might suck us down. Come to find out, the middle is where "all of the good minerals are" and it is in fact 200 ft deep. So, we stuck to the outside, swimming with the small glowing fishes that populated the pool. (They really did look like they were glowing....)


As you can see in this picture, the one thing we were lacking was our speedo....












Also went to Venice Beach one day, took a nap on the beach (we were exhausted from all of our mineral springs, massages and snacking...) and shopped in some of the little shops that are completely not our style.
















































Her neighbors built a Christmas float for the kids in the neighborhood so they can have their own Christmas parade.....








All in all a great start to the new year - always good to have a new adventure!