I am lucky enough to be an owner here in Florida and have been here since September. My husband Alan joined me at the end of October, and we celebrated our 30th Wedding Anniversary with some friends and seem to have been busy from then on in.
This is the first trip report, as I thought it may be boring for you all reading about what I have been doing for 7 weeks, so I will try to bring you up to date as I go along.
Monday 22nd November 2010.
We set off from Windwood Bay around 0800 this morning to make our journey to Webster Market which is held every Monday morning. The actual number of miles is only forty five, but our Sat Nav told us it would take at least ninety minutes to get there. We had been recommended to go early and have breakfast at the Speckled Butterbean which is to be found on the outskirts of the market. So, with only a coffee in our bellies, we set off along SR27 North. We passed what is left of the Orange Groves and noticed several new shopping centres and restaurants springing up everywhere. We filled up with gas at Walmart at Cagans Crossing’s which at the time of writing was $2.77 and which we thought was reasonable and comparably cheap from what we noticed on the way. Imagine our dismay when we got to a newer Walmart and the gas was $2.69!!
Negotiating the roadworks which seem to be almost finished, so no hold ups, we turned left onto SR50. This is a pretty straight road and we passed through the City of Clermont - a few shops and professional buildings - and travelled around 20 miles before we turned right towards the advertised Farmer’s Market. It was quite pleasant to be driving with green fields all around, cattle grazing and plenty of hay bales that the farmers had harvested.
We reached the market but missed the free car park so found ourselves entering another car park which was $3 so not too costly. The place was heaving and it was only 0930 in the morning. We wanted to get our highly recommended breakfast, so asked for directions to the Speckled Butterbean. I doubt if we would have ever found it ourselves. It is a very County Style Restaurant with a buffet breakfast. Certainly not the best we have tasted but for $4.95 was reasonable value, and unlimited coffee at $1.25 was certainly more than welcome.
The market had rows and rows of indoor and outdoor stalls, selling fresh produce which was so much cheaper than the supermarkets, plants & tree’s, orchids galore, guns, knives, underwear, sunglasses, shoes, freshly baked bread, puppies by the cage full, birds and more birds, snakes, turtles, you name it, they had it.
There were lots of places to get something to eat and drink, and believe me, after walking round looking at what was mostly tacky things, we needed to have another drink before we wound our way back to Championsgate.
As we are not staying in our own villa due to having guests renting it until tomorrow, we needed to go and collect our mail and check up on the Christmas decorations which are in the process of being put up at the entrance. For my sins I am President of the Homeowners Association, so needed to see the guy's erecting them to make sure everything is going okay. Then it was off to check the lamp posts. Yes, the lamp posts. Each post has a number on them and you can go on line and report when the bulbs are not working...really interesting stuff. We then drove round the community and our MC's were outside their house, so they invited us in and we had a lovely lunch with them. A quick check on our villa and we found that the plants that we had asked our landscaper to put round our newly extended cage, had not been planted as promised. A phone call later and now scheduled for tomorrow.[msnoo]
Spent the evening packing up our bits and pieces and doing the washing etc., before we return to our own villa tomorrow. Looking forward to that....to be continued....please tell me when you get bored and I will stop[chatter][chatter]
Sandra
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