So I am back from Florida. I visited my cousin who is married to a retired American diplomat.

Well... I don't even know where to start. This was my first really long journey in terms of geographical distance. I was very curious about America. Actually I had planned this journey for years but something always came up.

The Americans are rich. They like everything that's big. Especially big cars. All cars are really big. But there are also huge onions or hats. Whereas in Hungary, the whole life is centered around cooking and eating, the American way of life is about spending money (and I guess also about working and earning money). Americans really waste a lot of everything, electricity, food, gas, money etc. Public spaces are clean (I heared New York City is an exception though). And they have huge traffic problems. They have no cooking and eating culture, though food in non fast food restaurants is excellent, relatively cheap (salmon for 15 Dollars!) and the portions are huge. I gained two kilograms in two weeks. But eating does not seem to be as much a social thing as in Europe. However, the desserts are rather sweet, including the famous Key Lime Pie. And I realized one thing about their restaurants: they invented fast food because all other food places are really slow.

I basically visited two places: Miami and Key West.

But let's start at the beginning. I bought my plane ticket from Austrian Airlines, with a transfer in Zürich. Two days before the departure I got an email that I was rebooked to Air Canada, I think this had to do with the strike at Lufthansa. I first flew to Toronto, and from there to Miami. So two days before the journey I had to get a visum for Canada, thank God I realized this in time. Luckily that was no problem and went very quickly. In Toronto I almost missed the plane to Miami because there was a huge queue at the border control, which actually happened at the Airport in Toronto. When I landed in Miami, I just picked up my luggage and left the airport. They only scanned my passport and all my fingerprints. Apparently my ESTA was already in the computer. Well and the officer also asked why I was going to the US. I told him that I wanted to visit my cousin for two weeks. They asked nothing about the ticket for returing to my home country, medications or anything. ESTA was also easy to get. Basically I only needed to provide my cousin's address and phone number. For the Canadian ETA I also had to write my cousin's address into the online application form. During my flights with Air Canada I saw male flight attendants for the first time in my life, there were even several of them on both flights. Air Canada is indeed an excellent airline, they had very good food and the plane was new and modern. The movies they provided however... let's just say they were for the masses. Although I am not a tv and movie person, I actually watched the first part of Dune. Because otherwise the flight was really long and boring. Before the landing in Toronto I could see from the plane that there was still quite a bit of snow. What I didn't like about the flight to Toronto though was the fact that they darkened the windows so it looked like it was night although the whole flight was during daylight. So I couldn't see the ocean from the plane.

Basically the whole time during my stay in Miami I had jetlag. Apparently jetlags are significantly worse if one travels from a cool climate zone to a warm place. It was really interesting though from a biological and scientfic point of view to experince this. My bedtime adjusted rather quickly, after approximately two days. This was not true for my waketime though. I usually wake up in the early morning, around 3 or 4 a.m., but then go back to sleep. I was only able to fall asleep again during the last two or three nights. And according to my research that is typical. Even though many people seem to adjust quickly when they fly from Europe to the East Coast, the structure of their sleep is off for weeks and they don't go into deep sleep. My appetite did not adjust at all, I was actually never hungry in the evening. My stool time adjusted during the last days. I think my blood pressure and body temperature also adjusted during the last days. Long story short: a jetlag is not a pleasant experince, even if you only go 5-6 timezones to the west. It's a great shock for the human body. And probably it's much easier to adjust until the age of 30 or so. If you want to make a relaxing holiday, don't travel through several time zones. Or stay there at least two months.

In Miami, the best place to take photos was probably the Fairchild tropical botanic garden.

I actually edited these photos on the iPad with a combination of Affinity Photo and the Apple Photos app. This was a really interesting experience, but I guess I could have done this on La Palma or the Azores as well.

Another interesting photographic experience was taking architecture shots with my smartphone.

Also edited with the Apple Photos app. I took quite a few good pics in Museum Park. I think they are really good architecture pics but they were not so successful on Pixelfed. Actually none of my photos that I posted during this journey got many likes. Apparently my followers ony eat landscapes and maybe the time of day when I posted them was also wrong. Maybe most of my followers are active in CET.

I really like the conception of Museum Park, the One Thousend Museum and other skyscrapers and the palm trees. This is really good spatial planning. Recently I had begun to like to photograph villages and cities in a landscape, but this was the first opportunity to photograph the combination of modern architecture and nature.

But in Museum Park, don't visit the Perez Museum, it's not worth the money. Ah, but what's really worth visiting is the Lowe Museum, which is a relatively small museum that displays art from all around the world. The European Old Masters are in an excellent condition and the admission to the museum is free.

Where am I supposed to continue? Well, I did see the Atlantic several times, but unfortunately I was not really able to swim in it. I was in Miami Beach only for one day, but it was low tide and the waves were so huge that it was impossible to swim. But it was really nice to relax at the beach and look at the sea after trying to swim in the water which was as high as my waist.

Key West is cute, with the old white wooden houses, we stayed in one of them, and the wild chickens and roosters running around everywhere. The butterfly house is definitely one of the best I have ever been to, but there were very many visitors.

The food on the Swiss Air plane on the flight back to Zürich was more like average or even not so good, and the machine was also older than the Air Canada plane. The movies were maybe a bit better but really old.

This onion is as huge as a really big apple.