It feels good to do a traditional American vacation. The ones where you stay at modern, clean hotels, visit only the largest attractions and theme parks by day and enjoy extravagant dinners by night. These wonderful vacations are out of my budget normally and are definitely not sustainable for the long term. The knowledge that is some of my last days in the States and one of the last times with family for some time, loomed over the trip and added a bittersweet liner to the week.
We decided to make this worth remembering and my parents made this possible by acting as a benefactor for the large expenses on this trip. A few days in Orlando, a quick stop in Tampa Bay and a few nights stay in South Beach Miami to wrap things up.
I hardly have any new insight on Florida. My trip here is about as touristy as they go. Though I have come to the realization, that it’s truly nice to be a kid again. 17 years later, Disney and Universal Studios are as magical as I remember.
I will say you notice a lot more as an adult. When you’re a kid, Spiderman’s cool, buildings are big and rides are fast. All parks were the best and the greatest. As an adult however, you really begin to notice the finer details. In particular, I found Universal Studio’s Theme Parks lack the attention to detail that Disney excels at.
For example, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is built with the grandeur and scale that you would expect, but on closer inspection, easy immersive opportunities are missed. Shops are stuffed with repetitive merchandise, few actors are cosplaying as your favorite characters, and shows are un-immersive acapella groups that merely sing witchy themed songs.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom, arguably a glorified zoo, was a stark contrast to this. The carvings of the Tree of Life contains every minute detail, exotic birds and plants are scattered throughout the park and the food and shows, and have a noticeable level of inspiration to fit the theme. It was much easier to roam around the park and get lost in the safari atmosphere of the park.
I was able to go to the relatively new Pandora area or Avatar Land as everyone calls it. Walking through that area really captures the magical nature of Pandora that the movie showed so well. The floating island, the otherworldly fauna and the exotic meals added to the immersion. The Banshee Flight of Passage built upon this by taking you on an exhilarating flight through these wilds and ends with you starring at an epic horizon. This simple vision made this my favorite ride between both parks and achieved this with little more than a 3D screen and a fancy motorized seat.
Disney did all this with a mediocre movie and a tenth of the lore of Harry Potter. It almost makes me wish the mouse owned the Harry Potter franchise to see where they could take the park and series.
Tampa was a quick pit stop and South Beach Miami was unique to say the least. Miami’s flamboyant and laidback culture is a stark contrast to the Northwest’s more hip or formal atmosphere. Unless you were driving in South Beach. Then it was acceptable to pound wildly on the horn when the car in front of you delays you by two seconds and then gun past them in a fit of road rage.
As far as tourism goes, all their cuisine left me a few pounds heavier and my wallet a few pounds lighter due to the wonderful South Beach pricing.
Familial Bonds
I will say one of the funnier anecdotes on this trip came not from interactions with the locals but from the family. We all have taken those prolonged family trips where we’re all placed in unnecessarily close quarters, to the point of getting on each other’s nerves. That tension always simmers over several days, until it explodes in a needless argument. It’s the consequence of the family vacation that we endure and tolerate in order to enjoy the precious time with our loved ones.
Our stop in Miami marks the beginning of the end of our weeklong Florida vacation. It was here, I persuaded my dad to rent an apartment for a couple days on Airbnb. To me, Airbnb allows more freedom than standard hotels and is also fairly cheaper I wanted to show my parents how I enjoyed traveling and hoped they would understand my perspective.
After extensive research, my dad settled on a little Miami condo, nestled right between the busy Lincoln shopping malls and the beach itself. We were both excited, buoyed by a new venture as staying in a casual and laidback little apartment would break up the usual routine my parents were used to. Except we forgot one thing.
My mom.
My mother is truly the definition of an overbearing, nurturing mother, but this comes with being notoriously clean and picky. She keeps their house in Colorado immaculately clean to the point of sterile. Only my mother would look at a clean ward of a hospital with disdain. She’s also fairly stubborn, a trait she attributes to being born in the year of the tiger. When my mother has made up her mind, there’s no changing it.
She had already decided that there was no way, Airbnb, a vendor who rents out people’s homes, could ever compare with the security and cleanliness of a hotel. So as the fateful day arrived, and we rolled up to our apartment rental in Miami, I saw my mother’s eyes scan the building’s dated façade, I knew our fate was sealed.
“Look how close we are to everything! A hotel must have been so expensive in this part of town,” I exclaimed, attempting to draw attention away from the exterior of the building.
We unpacked and entered the little apartment on the second floor. Inside was a fairly clean and well-kempt but small apartment.
“The style of this apartment is so modern! Stainless steel appliances, and dark hardwood floors,” I again pointed out in vain, futilely trying to change the direction of the oncoming bullet train.
My dad certainly seemed content with the apartment. He had already wandered into the bedroom and laid on the bed. My mother, was not. She had found a few grains of sand on the floor and had somehow already found their vacuum cleaner.
“Ugh we should have rented the hotel. This building is so old, and dirty. There’s sand on the floor, the sheets have an odor to them, and there’s not even a door on the bedroom! I don’t even want to leave the luggage on the floor, it’ll get the luggage dirty!”
In all fairness, she wasn’t wrong about the sheets, they needed to be washed. A quick call to the landlord would have fetched us a fresh pair. I knew there was no changing her mind, so I let her continue her tirade. But her nitpicking and judgement continued on and off, even when we were out and exploring the town.
For the next six hours.
She had worked herself into such a frenzy, that she decided to sleep on the couch by herself that night to avoid any “odors” of the bedsheets. And with it being Miami, the neighbors were up and making some noise late into the night. So she laid there, complaining and pacing endlessly, keeping both me and my dad awake.
I laid there in the dark for hours, listening to the continuous murmurs of my mother. It was only then that I realized the true folly of my actions. I have always known that my mom was an excessively clean individual. I failed to realize that in her older years, she had changed and somehow became even more sanitary. She became more accustomed to life’s comforts now, and it was harder for her to adapt. Or perhaps to stubborn to try. I should realized sooner that she would not now nor ever, understand my joy of hostels or Airbnb, or the ruggedness of living out of a backpack. Enjoyment for her is room service, ample luggage and selfies over a fine dinner.
And that’s a fine way to enjoy your time but I knew we only had a couple remaining days together. I might not see my parents again for a month, six months or a year. I had to make the best of our time together instead of trying to selfishly show off my new lifestyle.
So in that darkness, I hatched a plan. We had originally planned to go to the beach tomorrow morning, and then visit a Vietnamese farm to pick some tropical fruits. Later it was a nice dinner, sleep and the next day, we would stay in a stylish hotel in Fort Lauderdale for our last evening in Florida. I decided that it would be best to extend our hotel reservation in Fort Lauderdale to two days and to eat the cost of the second night of the Airbnb. I didn’t mind footing the bill, as it was worth the money to salvage this trip.
Armed with this ingenious idea, I snuck into the bedroom, and found my dad laying on the bed, eyes wide open. I sat crisscross on the bed and whispered to my dad, “I have a plan”.
“Don’t worry about it, I got this”, he immediately replied.
We remained still, staring at each other through the gloom, saying not a word. And in that moment, we both immediately realized, we had been mulling over the same thing. We had comically even come to the same solution. In the darkness, we knew that we had grossly misunderstood my mother when booking the apartment. We also knew her so well that we knew exactly how to remedy the situation. That irony was not lost upon my dad and me.
We burst out into laughter as we pulled out our phones and laptops. In the middle of the night, illuminated by the glow of our computer screens, the complaints of my mother filling our ears, we made the necessary arrangements.
It was an oddly endearing moment.
