Thinking of moving down to south Florida

The wife and I spent four days down there after our cruise and we loved it. The only downside that we saw was the obvious fact that the drivers are probably the worst in the world, but other than that, it was great. I have family members that live in the Hollywood/Hallandale beach area and that is where we would most likely prefer to live. It's laid back and close to both Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale. After the wife finishes nursing school, we plan on taking a serious look at relocating. Anyone have any experience living down there?

WD likes it a lot better than Pensacola last time I checked....He got him a nice place down there.

TEOTWAWKI wrote:WD likes it a lot better than Pensacola last time I checked....He got him a nice place down there.

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The Federal Pen?????

Hey man where is the love ? He did his time ...all of it in a regular old prison, not Club Fed, and made it out alive...give the man his props. Fact is he sent me some really funny letters about the neat folks he met. There were quite a few rich and famous people on the inside with him....One was a famous soccer player.
When they burned off the cane field all the rats ran out and under a cement slab that was washed out underneath. Well they plugged all the exits but one. Then they put a garden hose under the slab and as the rats ran out they took bets on how far the soccer player could kick them. They use ramon noodles as legal betting tender where WD was....The man is tough as nails and I still respect him.

Okay here's the bottom line. Or at least one of em. Or maybe it's not significant I don't know. But for me it's like this.
I'm too accustomed to having a change of seasons. That's only because I've lived over 90% of my life having that. The people who have lived 90% of their lives in tropical Florida would prefer not having a winter.

BUT, one's capacity for going from a long time with one, and then abruptly going to the other, should be a consideration. And I don't say that from reading travel brochures. It's because I have friends in Naples I visit every year for several days. In the winter. And the heat and humidity we have here in the summer, I'm feeling down there in the winter. And all I can think about is having to feel that shit year round and get no break from it.

I have family members that live in the Hollywood/Hallandale beach area and that is where we would most likely prefer to live. It's laid back and close to both Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale. After the wife finishes nursing school, we plan on taking a serious look at relocating. Anyone have any experience living down there?

I have two experiences from that area. The first was getting the best damn swordfish steak at Fort Lauderdale.......exquisite, but all I remember is that it was on the water on the sound side. The second experience was when I was about eight years old on a family vacation. We stayed at a motel at Hollywood beach area and the crabs were migrating.....I mean they were so thick that you could not walk. They covered the road, the parking lot, the pool deck, and filled the pool. My brother was about five, and he took a round support stick out of the back of the lounge chairs and proceeded to massacre about four hundred land crabs smashing them on the pool deck, sidewalks, and all over the motel area.....by the time my mother and the hotel staff had discovered all the dead crabs.......well we only stayed there one night. I will never forget that crab migration at Hollywood Florida, and the only reference I could get was this blog.

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/fort-pierce-fl/TFHRBUBT0C15K4IUR

My first time to go south was when I graduated elementary school. I was on the schoolboy patrol (all I remember about that is rolling the Coca-Cola traffic cop into the intersection) and they arranged a trip for us after school had ended. We went on school buses to Miami Beach. Stayed at the St. Moritz. It was a really old art deco hotel. At the time it was in disrepair and had a strong mold smell in it. But it was by god the coolest thing I had ever seen. And maybe still have ever seen.

My first time in Miami I got lost and called the secretary where I was headed for directions from a payphone...no cell phones back then. She practically screamed at me to drop the phone and head back north until I reached an exit. She said that right where I was standing there was a gun fight and people got shot a few days before....

TEOTWAWKI wrote:My first time in Miami I got lost and called the secretary where I was headed for directions from a payphone...no cell phones back then. She practically screamed at me to drop the phone and head back north until I reached an exit. She said that right where I was standing there was a gun fight and people got shot a few days before....

This is the honest to god's truth. I was on Miami Beach for business and it must have been about the early eighties. I stayed in north miami beach where the rates were less.
But I wanted to go to the Foutainebleau because I'd seen it in so many movies and tv shows.
I drove south on Collins. And when I got to the parking lot on the north side of the Eden Roc (the other high rent hotel at the time adjacent to the Fontainebleau) I looked to my left and there was a dude prying open the door of car which was parked right up on Collins.
It took me a moment to realize what I was seeing. For the first (and only) time in my life I was watching someone steal a car and unbelievably it was in broad daylight on the busiest street in Miami Beach.

I very, very much dislike the cold. We have seasons here in Huntsville. Leaves changing colors and all that. It is kind of nice.....until late Dec sets in and then it's still cold into March and this year even into April. But yesterday here was just astonishingly beautiful. The hills are green here again. Flowers are blooming. We don't have the level of humidity in the air here (yet) that I felt 3 weeks ago in St. Augustine, FL. And that's kind of nice...warm and pleasant, without the humidity.

There is probably not a winter I've spent in Northwest or Northeast Florida (and certainly not in Huntsville) where I didn't think--I want to move further south!!! But simply, South Florida is not "southern" enough for me. And I do very much like living in the South. So we will probably retire in Northeast Florida which still has a southern feel to it. We like the area south of Jacksonville--Ponte Vedra to Flagler Beach. It's a nice area that is close to Jax, close to Orlando and there are a lot of things to do and see within a 2 hour drive of that area.

Another nice thing about Northeast Florida....that area very rarely gets direct hits from hurricanes.

I used to train my butt of in p'cola to go down there for tennis tourns... the heat and humidity still would kill me.

I've always thght that the dolphins had a huge home field advantage... more than any team including the broncos.

I've always thght that the dolphins had a huge home field advantage.

They have historically needed it.........