Staying in Florida
The neighborhood: each State is broken up into Counties. Our County is Pinellas County. The red block is more or less where our apartment is. Last year we stayed in Madeira Beach, this year it is Clearwater which was a 500% improvement. The "blue" block is where we work. It takes us about 30 minutes to get there, but peak traffic is hardly any traffic. The city life is over the water in Tampa, on our side of the bay everything is done in a slow small town pace.
Telavilla - Our Web Home
August 1, 1999
This is Planet Earth
This is the USA, also considered as earth by some people
This is Florida:
The Sunshine State
Tampa Bay Region
Population: 3 million
The entrance to our complex
Our apartment block, there are 12 of them in the entire complex.
Next question, what do you drive, right?
We bought an Isuzu Amigo awhile ago. Buying a car here is a totally different experience. We went in one Saturday just to have a look at what's the deal and pricing and so one. That afternoon, about 5 hours later, we drove off as owners of a brand new vehicle. The guy at the dealership checked our credit history and put in an loan application. We never spoke to anybody from the bank. The bank was closed anyway, so if the loan was not approved we would have had to give the car back. We were surprised by this, the salesmen even made a joke about it and said it is a way of getting a free rental car for the week-end. We also got a temporary number plate and the real ones arrived in the mail two weeks later.
The Amigo has of course an air conditioner, they don't sell cars without it in Florida. Although it has a 4X4 chassis, we don't have the 4X4 capability. You only get it on special order, Florida is too flat to justify it. It has a 3.2L engine identical to the Isuzu Rodeo.
Just to be a little bit patriotic we have a sticker of the South African flag on the back.
Viva Mandela!
We live on the top floor and that is the view of our bedroom window and balcony. The tree pretty much spoils our view of the water, but the squirrels living in the tree give us hours of entertainment. Our neighbor on the ground floor has a bird feeder hanging in the tree and I have stopped counting all the different species visiting. The bluejays are the loudest and the squirrels always try to chase them away.
